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Place entrepreneurs are powerful actors who promote and profit from urban development, such as business owners, landlords and property managers, developers, and local governments. I study the role of place entrepreneurs in constructing the material and symbolic value of places.
Project 1. Studying Place Reputation Using Computational Text Analysis
I use computational text analysis to investigate place reputation and neighborhood perceptions. Specifically, I have explored geo-tagged text data produced by the New York Times travel writers and Airbnb landlords.
Related articles:
Yoon, Hesu, and Andrew McCumber. 2024. “A Symbolic Hierarchy of Places: Global Inequalities in Tourism Narratives of the New York Times Travel Section.” Poetics 102 : 101848
Yoon, Hesu, and Megan Evans. Data analysis in progress. “Marketing Neighborhoods: How Airbnb Hosts Use Community Names as Branding.”
A figure from "A Symbolic Hierarchy of Places" showing how two measurements of "cultural value" and "natural value" of places differ. The y-axis represents how much "cultural" or "natural" tourism narratives are represented in the New York Times travel articles by region, and the x-axis represents how many UNESCO's "cultural" or "natural" heritages are located in regions.
Project 2. Studying the Built Environment
Neighborhoods provide rich institutional and visual environments - from residential and non-residential buildings to storefronts to parks and greeneries, impacting people's perceptions, experiences, and belonging. I study social processes that result in the production of the built environment and their implications on the existing spatial inequalities.
Related article:
Yoon, Hesu. 2024. “Aestheticizing Authenticity: Entrepreneurial Practices of Business Owners in Seoul’s Gentrifying Neighborhood.” Journal of Urban Design.
An image from "Aestheticizing Authenticity" showing the designs of storefronts in Yeonnam-doing, a gentrifying neighborhood in Seoul.
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