The relationship between space and people various with why people use the space. Digital Footprints seeks to investigate how tourists and visitors use the spaces created by urban architecture. Urban spaces are frequently populated by tourists with a very different agenda to those that live there. The different seasons of the year show rises and falls in the number of visitors to the city. This means that the influence tourists have on urban spaces can change. Understanding more about how tourists move through a city provides a vital part of understanding the relationship between urban spaces and people. Digital technology can help us monitor, and possibly serve, that relationship.
Tourists frequently inhabit public spaces and are drawn to similar attractions. However, little is known about the different agendas, routes and way-finding of tourists. Digital Footprints is a monitoring project which traces the path of a tourist using GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) technology. Tourists move around the city, visiting what they want, and their route is logged. Photos that they take can be integrated into the recorded trail by synchronising the times on the GPS device and the digital camera (a nice souvenir for the tourist, interesting information for us).
The trails are mapped out digitally, on Google Earth, and the tourist fills out a short questionnaire which asks about what they saw, and how they moved around the city (maps, landmarks etc.). This will help us understand the areas that tourists move around, how they move and the reasons why.
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