Qualitative Geographic Information Systems in Urban Analysis
Summary
Qualitative Geographic Information Systems (GIS) represent a transformative strand within urban analysis, enriching conventional spatial methods with narrative, participatory and humanistic perspectives. By integrating interviews, personal diaries, photographic records and community workshops directly into mapping platforms, researchers gain nuanced insight into how residents perceive, inhabit and contest urban spaces. This approach emphasises meaning, emotion and social relations alongside standard metrics of density, land use and infrastructure. It supports inclusive planning by engaging diverse stakeholders—older adults, marginalised groups and youth—in mapping exercises that reveal lived experiences of walkability, safety, belonging and exclusion. Emerging methodologies combine natural language processing with spatial tags to explore themes such as attachment to place, fear of crime and everyday mobility, while participatory mobile mapping and spatial video geonarratives capture real-time commentary linked to precise locations. In doing so, qualitative GIS fosters a more holistic understanding of urban phenomena, informs context-sensitive policy and bridges the gap between technical analysis and community knowledge.
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Qualitative Geographic Information Systems in Urban Analysis publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in qualitative geographic information systems in urban analysis across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Qualitative GIS: An approach that integrates narrative, interview or participatory data with spatial analysis to explore meanings and perceptions in place-based research.
Geo-narrative: A spatially referenced narrative or oral commentary linked to geographic coordinates, enabling thematic mapping of personal or expert perspectives.
Geo-phenomenology: A humanistic GIS method that applies phenomenological principles to spatial data, capturing lived experience and emotional attachment in maps.
Spatio-temporal analysis: The examination of how phenomena evolve across both space and time by integrating chronological data with geographic information.
References
- A qualitative geographical information systems approach to explore how older people over 70 years interact with and define their neighbourhood environment. Health & Place (2015).
- Spatial video geonarratives and health: case studies in post-disaster recovery, crime, mosquito control and tuberculosis in the homeless. International Journal of Health Geographics (2015).
- Spatially integrated social sciences: opportunities for computational urban science. Computational Urban Science (2025).
- Geo-Phenomenology: A Qualitative and Humanistic GIS Approach to Exploring Lived Experience. The Professional Geographer (2024).
- Neighbourhood environments for a healthy lifestyle among young single-person households experiencing housing poverty in Seoul, South Korea: a spatiotemporal qualitative study protocol. BMJ Open (2024).
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