Chicago is a city of many sounds and smells—good and bad. Now a team of researchers are quantifying them around Chicago (and other major cities) to determine how people feel at various places.
The presumed geniuses at GoodCityLife, a research organization that strives “not to make cities smarter, but dwellers happier,” created Smelly Maps and Chatty Maps. They mined various photo-sharing sites, such as Flickr, for photos of different locations around the city, scrubbing the captions for the sounds and smells associated with the locations and the emotions the words seemed to evoke. (Messy data? Maybe. Cool idea? Definitely.)
Here are some Chicago smell and sound highlights found in the maps:
Lincoln Park Zoo has all of the smells and sounds of animals (well above 90 percent for both “nature” sounds and “animal” smells) and all of the joy that comes with visiting the zoo. Not even the nostril-burning smell of lion poop can ruin the trip, apparently.
Around Wrigley Field, the blasting music and only-appetizing-when-you’re-drunk-at-2-a.m. greasy food at crappy sports bars reign supreme (44 and 48.5 percent for music and food smells respectively), causing joy and anticipation. Don’t ask me how. We all know traveling near the Friendly Confines is a nightmare.
On the Kennedy Expressway, transport sounds and smells rang in as high as about 71 and 99.5 percent respectively at certain points along the road. And, shocker, anger and sadness were the highest reported emotions–as if there were any question of where that good ol’ Chicago road rage comes from. We’re all just trying to get where we’ve got to go, people.
For reasons beyond my comprehension, most of the Magnificent Mile and the Loop were high in nature sounds and smells, at about 74 percent and 58 percent respectively. Those corresponded to highly reported feelings of joy, trust and anticipation. Thanks, tourists, for seeing our loud and sometimes smelly city through rose-colored glasses … and then posting about it online.
Now, if you’re looking for pure, unadulterated joy? The area by the Montrose Dog Beach was high in feelings of trust and happiness, surrounded by the smells (hopefully excluding dog poop) and sounds (i.e. happy puppies barking) of nature, at about 62 and 88 percent respectively. Who doesn’t love that?
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