Evaluative image 2.0: A web mapping approach to capture people’s perceptions of a city

Abstract Evaluative images can help urban planners understand the way citizens perceive their cities. In the seminal article by Jack Nasar, evaluative images were created by means of face‐to‐face interviews. The present article proposes, implements and evaluates a complementary approach to create evaluative images of cities, namely through web mapping. The approach was implemented in an open‐source system called eImage. A user study with 59 participants was conducted in Lisbon, Portugal, to test eImage for usability and usefulness. The study revealed that eImage can help different groups of society quickly voice their opinions on places in their cities that they like/dislike, and that a face‐to‐face data‐collection setting (as opposed to an online one) has a positive influence on the data‐collection workflow. The lessons learned in this study may be useful to planners interested in generating composite pictures of how citizens perceive their cities.