This paper focuses on the adoption of big data visual representation and semantic interpretation to study complex urban patterns in places largely impervious to traditional mapping technologies and documentary analytical tools. In particular, it examines stadiums built by China in the Global South as part of a broader strategy of building diplomacy. Between 1959 and 2022, China facilitated approximately 2,000 construction projects in developing countries, among which more than 150 are large-scale sports facilities. While these buildings have mainly been analyzed from architectural and typological perspectives, their relationships with the surrounding urban environments and their effects on local communities and ecosystems have remained largely unexplored and difficult to interpret. This paper demonstrates how big data — particularly Location-Based Social Network (LBSN) data — together with visualization and AI-supported interpretation systems, can provide new opportunities to understand the capacity of these large-scale architectural infrastructures to attract people, influence movement patterns throughout urban space, and generate economic and social impacts on the existing city.
Representation Advances And CHallenges association