NYC School of Data 2026

A Sense of Place is a research project created by Columbia MPA candidate Jali Packer that explores how New Yorkers experience their neighborhoods and how these experiences can be measured through open data. Drawing upon psychogeography, digital trace data and machine learning, the project demonstrates how residents collectively shape the emotional character of the places they inhabit.

This work analyzes millions of geo-tagged Flickr images to capture how people describe and perceive their surroundings through the concept of urban ambiance. These ambiance dimensions include creativity, liveliness, quietness, uniqueness and more. The project then combines this information with demographic, land-use and personality-trait data at the neighborhood level. Using data visualization and machine learning, the analysis identifies which factors best predict how a neighborhood feels.

There will be a presentation on the research followed by the chance to engage with the data. Participants will have their own 'maps' that they can fill-in, to provide their perspective on neighborhoods in New York City.