Marketta Kyttä
Biographic Data
| ID | 4492287 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marketta Kyttä |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marketta |
| FAMILY NAME | Kyttä |
| SIGNATURE | KYTTÄ M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aalto University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9969-8194 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 94 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Examining public participation GIS (PPGIS) as a tool for collecting perceptions of outdoor lighting
Balancing the adverse effects of artificial light at night (ALAN) with its benefits remains a critical challenge. As strategies for managing ALAN evolve, it is essential to consider the experiences of the people who are the primary beneficiaries of artificial lighting in decision-making and management processes. Participatory methods such as Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) are widely used in urban and environmental res…
The citizens have participated – what now? An action research study of factors impacting the use of participatory citizen knowledge in planning processes
Citizen participation is embedded into planning practice and policy, yet it remains unclear how the results of participation are shared in planning organisations and utilised to inform planning outcomes. This article examines barriers and enablers for systematic gathering, sharing and utilisation of participatory citizen knowledge and analyses the collaborative development of knowledge-sharing practices in two Finnish municipalities. The article …
The influence of structural characteristics, perceived environmental quality and spatial behaviour on health and well-being of suburban dwellers - a context sensitive study
Structural features influence PEQ, health, well-being, and spatial behavior. • Road access is crucial for maintaining suburban functional environmental quality. • Service access shapes polycentric or monocentric activity space patterns. • Social quality and greenery access are key to health, happiness, and well-being. • Sustainable suburbs require green, social, and service-oriented infrastructure
Beyond the backyard
Despite the emergence of virtual spaces as arenas for public participation, the geographies of digital participation have gained relatively little attention. Besides considering who participates and why, there is an evident gap in research considering the spatial relationships between the participants of digital urban planning processes and the spaces that are the subject of their participation. This paper proposes a working concept of the spatia…
How has digital participatory mapping influenced urban planning
Although the successfulness of public participation projects has been studied from many different perspectives, there is a lack of knowledge of how participation influences the planning outcomes. Through the interview study of nine Finnish urban planning projects, we studied how the use of a digital public participation GIS tool has influenced the outcomes of urban planning. In the selected cases the information collected with a PPGIS tool has be…
Predicting context-sensitive urban green space quality to support urban green infrastructure planning
Urban green spaces (UGSs) support human health and well-being in diverse ways. In addition to their availability and accessibility, also the quality of UGSs is relevant for understanding human-environment interactions between urban populations and their local UGS. However, data on UGS quality are rarely available with the geographic coverage required for spatial decision making and urban green infrastructure (UGI) planning and management. This st…
Redefining Neighborhood Boundaries Using Activity Spaces
Neighborhoods are typically conceptualised as static administrative units with clearly defined boundaries. However, residents’ everyday mobility forms activity spaces which are variable in both extent and fabric. This study introduces a novel aggregate model of individualized activity spaces based on Public Participation geographic information system (PPGIS) data collected in Espoo (Finland) to capture the variable and fuzzy character of the spac…
Intelligence for Future Cities
Maptionnaire
Prioritizing participatory planning solutions
Prioritization of knowledge produced in participatory planning has been approached mainly from the perspective of whose perspectives are most in need of consideration. We ask, whether it is also possible to consider which locations, based on the knowledge from participants, should be prioritized. We developed a place-based approach to inform spatial decision making especially when the prioritization of limited resources is necessary. In the place…
Intelligence for Future Cities
Using community surveys with participatory mapping to monitor comprehensive plan implementation
Comprehensive or general plans are long-range documents intended to guide future urban or regional land use, growth, and development. Structured and periodic monitoring and evaluation of plan implementation is important to identifying when plans should be revised or updated based on changed planning assumptions or conditions, but such monitoring is uncommon. In this study we present and illustrate a research-based method to evaluate general plan …
Important places in landscape – investigating the determinants of perceived landscape value in the suburban area of Wrocław, Poland
Landscape planning studies usually consider landscape values through expert assessments of landscape aesthetic quality. Combining such expert assessments with people’s perceptions as derived from citizen-based approaches is advisable, but scientific knowledge gaps exist regarding explanatory variables of perceived landscape values. This study aims to investigate determinants of landscape value as perceived by citizens. The suburban area of Wrocla…
Associations between Children’s Physical Activity and Neighborhood Environments Using GIS
Regular participation in physical activity is essential for children's physical, mental, and cognitive health. Neighborhood environments may be especially important for children who are more likely to spend time in the environment proximal to home. This article provides an update of evidence for associations between children's physical activity behaviors and objectively assessed environmental characteristics derived using geographical information…
Safety perceptions in university campuses
This study reports the variation in safety perceptions of university students ( N = 196 university students) on university campuses in South China, focusing on the risk of crime and traffic incidents. Using a public participation geographic information system, we explore potential links between students’ perceptions and campus characteristics. We conclude that environmental cues associated with the risk of crime victimisation (e.g. lack of natura…
Shopping trip mode choice of older adults
Rapid growth of the older population worldwide, coupled with their overreliance on automobile and its negative consequences for the environment and for their wellbeing, has encouraged research on travel behavior of this age group. This study contributes to the literature by providing an integrated analysis of the effects of sociodemographic, built environmental, psycho-social, trip, and activity space attributes on shopping trip mode choice of ol…
Delineating the geographic context of physical activities
Current social ecological physical activity research applies simple conceptualizations and methods of the spatial context. While conceptual and methodological concerns have been repeatedly expressed, no substantive progress has been made in the use of spatial approaches. To further our understanding on place effects on health, future studies should carefully consider the choice of spatial approaches, and their effect on study results
Centricity and multi-locality of activity spaces
Measures of individual mobility, such as activity space, can help improve our understanding of people's interactions with their everyday environments. Activity spaces are, however, not only concentrated around homes but also people can form several clusters of destinations, typically around their daily life centers. This has previously been discussed under terms such as spatial polygamy, centricity, and multi-locality, but empirical evidence of s…
A context sensitive approach to anonymizing public participation GIS data
Use of Public Participation Geographic Information System (PPGIS) for data collection has been significantly growing over the past few years in different areas of research and practice. With the growing amount of data, there is little doubt that a potentially wider community can benefit from open access to them. Additionally, open data add to the transparency of research and can be considered as an essential feature of science. However, data anon…
Honouring the participatory mapping contributions and enduring legacy of Professor Gregory G. Brown
This commentary honours the seminal and foundational contributions of Professor Gregory G. (Greg) Brown to the fields of public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS), natural resource management and spatial planning. We synthesise his work into four theses that underpinned his three decades of research: 1) The mapping of place values provides place-specific information about sense of place which can aid in the assessment of the ris…
Objective measurement of children's physical activity geographies
This study aimed to systematically identify, map out, and describe geographical information systems (GIS)-based approaches that have been employed to measure children's neighborhood geographies for physical activity behaviors. Forty studies were included, most were conducted in the USA. Heterogeneity in GIS methods and measures was found. The majority of studies estimated children's environments using Euclidean or network buffers ranging from 100…
The relationship between people's activities and values with the protection level and biodiversity
We investigated how people's recreational activities, values, and land use preferences are related to the protection level, biodiversity and cultural heritage values of nature-based tourism areas in northern Finland. We assessed peoples' opinions using a public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) and analyzed the data together with spatial biodiversity and cultural heritage data from the same area. Associations between the PPGIS p…
Does mapping improve public participation? Exploring the pros and cons of using public participation GIS in urban planning practices
While participatory urban and regional planning have become a widely accepted approach to enhance the democratic aims of community and urban development, challenges still remain. Planners lack the knowledge of usable tools to reach broader groups of participants, which can turn participation into a small-group elitist activity. Also, the quality and utilisation of the knowledge produced is problematic, the collected data remains invisible and sys…
Beyond Housing Preferences
The concept of residential housing preferences has been studied across multiple disciplines, with extensive literature supporting both stated and revealed preference methods. This study argues that both preference types, stated and revealed, should be assessed concurrently to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of residential housing choices. To provide evidence, this research used findings from a public participation GIS survey that ident…
Understanding children’s neighbourhood destinations
Children interact with and are greatly affected by their neighbourhoods. This research aims to understand the places children go in their neighbourhood and their perceptions of them. A child-centred approach was used to map destinations and ask open-ended survey questions, using Maptionnaire (a public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) mapping software). Overall, 1102 children aged 7-13 years, from 19 schools in Auckland, New Zea…
The last free-range children? Children’s independent mobility in Finland in the 1990s and 2010s
The study reports the degree of children’s independent mobility (CIM) in Finland for over two decades, from the beginning of the 1990s up to 2011. The first part of the research examined the differences of CIM in five different settlements in 2011: inner city, suburban, large town, small town, and rural village. A cross-sectional survey was used on a total of 821 7- to 15-year-old children in various settlements in different parts of Finland. Ind…
Children as urbanites
Increasingly, children are residing in urban environments, yet little is known about the urban affordances for children. A place-based approach was employed to map the urban experiences of over 1300 children residing in Helsinki (Finland) and in Tokyo (Japan) in terms of meaningful places (affordances), travel mode and accompaniment to these places. Shared affordances were considered behavior settings, and audited on-site by trained experts for t…
Urban structural and socioeconomic effects on local, national and international travel patterns and greenhouse gas emissions of young adults
A Psychologically Meaningful Description of Environments Requires a Relational Approach
We firmly agree with Coolen that a significant contribution the ecological approach (Gibson, 1979) can make to environment‐behavior studies concerns the central but vexing question of meaning. It i
Objective measurement of children's physical activity geographies
This study aimed to systematically identify, map out, and describe geographical information systems (GIS)-based approaches that have been employed to measure children's neighborhood geographies for physical activity behaviors. Forty studies were included, most were conducted in the USA. Heterogeneity in GIS methods and measures was found. The majority of studies estimated children's environments using Euclidean or network buffers ranging from 100…
Understanding children’s neighbourhood destinations
Children interact with and are greatly affected by their neighbourhoods. This research aims to understand the places children go in their neighbourhood and their perceptions of them. A child-centred approach was used to map destinations and ask open-ended survey questions, using Maptionnaire (a public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) mapping software). Overall, 1102 children aged 7-13 years, from 19 schools in Auckland, New Zea…
Delineating the geographic context of physical activities
Current social ecological physical activity research applies simple conceptualizations and methods of the spatial context. While conceptual and methodological concerns have been repeatedly expressed, no substantive progress has been made in the use of spatial approaches. To further our understanding on place effects on health, future studies should carefully consider the choice of spatial approaches, and their effect on study results
Fostering incidental experiences of nature through green infrastructure planning
Concern for a diminished human experience of nature and subsequent decreased human well-being is addressed via a consideration of green infrastructure's potential to facilitate unplanned or incidental nature experience. Incidental nature experience is conceptualized and illustrated in order to consider this seldom addressed aspect of human interaction with nature in green infrastructure planning. Special attention has been paid to the ability of …
Beyond Housing Preferences
The concept of residential housing preferences has been studied across multiple disciplines, with extensive literature supporting both stated and revealed preference methods. This study argues that both preference types, stated and revealed, should be assessed concurrently to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of residential housing choices. To provide evidence, this research used findings from a public participation GIS survey that ident…
Safety perceptions in university campuses
This study reports the variation in safety perceptions of university students ( N = 196 university students) on university campuses in South China, focusing on the risk of crime and traffic incidents. Using a public participation geographic information system, we explore potential links between students’ perceptions and campus characteristics. We conclude that environmental cues associated with the risk of crime victimisation (e.g. lack of natura…
Centricity and multi-locality of activity spaces
Measures of individual mobility, such as activity space, can help improve our understanding of people's interactions with their everyday environments. Activity spaces are, however, not only concentrated around homes but also people can form several clusters of destinations, typically around their daily life centers. This has previously been discussed under terms such as spatial polygamy, centricity, and multi-locality, but empirical evidence of s…
The relationship between people's activities and values with the protection level and biodiversity
We investigated how people's recreational activities, values, and land use preferences are related to the protection level, biodiversity and cultural heritage values of nature-based tourism areas in northern Finland. We assessed peoples' opinions using a public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) and analyzed the data together with spatial biodiversity and cultural heritage data from the same area. Associations between the PPGIS p…
Residential dissonance and walking for transport
Affordances of Children's Environments in the Context of Cities, Small Towns, Suburbs and Rural Villages in Finland and Belarus
Restorative Experience, Self-Regulation, and Children's Place Preferences
The extent of children's independent mobility and the number of actualized affordances as criteria for child-friendly environments
Children and their Environments
This fascinating book examines theories of children's perceptions of space and place and explores how these theories are applied to the world of children. The focus is on children in large real world spaces; places that children live in, explore and learn from. These include classrooms, playgrounds, homes and yards, towns, communities, countryside, natural environments, and the wider world. An international team of authors compare the experiences…
A Psychologically Meaningful Description of Environments Requires a Relational Approach
We firmly agree with Coolen that a significant contribution the ecological approach (Gibson, 1979) can make to environment‐behavior studies concerns the central but vexing question of meaning. It i
Children's active travel and independent mobility in four countries
Towards contextually sensitive urban densification
The prospects for urban densification
Study of the environmental outcomes of urban densification is a highly context-dependent task. Our study shows that collecting and processing place-based survey data by means of the softGIS method is clearly helpful here. With the map-based internet questionnaire each response remains connected to both the physical environment and the everyday life of the respondent. In our study of the Kuninkaankolmio area (located in the Helsinki metropolitan r…
Key issues and research priorities for public participation GIS (PPGIS)
The last free-range children? Children’s independent mobility in Finland in the 1990s and 2010s
The study reports the degree of children’s independent mobility (CIM) in Finland for over two decades, from the beginning of the 1990s up to 2011. The first part of the research examined the differences of CIM in five different settlements in 2011: inner city, suburban, large town, small town, and rural village. A cross-sectional survey was used on a total of 821 7- to 15-year-old children in various settlements in different parts of Finland. Ind…
Urban happiness
Previous studies have reported multifaceted, controversial social outcomes of densely built urban settings. Social sustainability of urban environments have rarely been studied in a context-sensitive manner, identifying the specific ways urban structural characteristics contribute to the behavioural, experiential and well-being outcomes. In this study, an online public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) methodology allowed the pl…
Let the Citizens Map—Public Participation GIS as a Planning Support System in the Helsinki Master Plan Process
Current public participation methods are laborious, reach few participants and are ineffective at gathering usable information for planning. This situation leads often to mistrust and dissatisfaction in the process and outcome. This article identifies the critical conditions for meaningful use of public participation GIS (PPGIS) tools to support the making of master plan in Helsinki. With PPGIS tools, residents’ insight of their living environmen…
Sense of Place, Fast and Slow
Over the past 40 years, the sense of place concept has been well-established across a range of applications and settings; however, most theoretical developments have "privileged the slow." Evidence suggests that place attachments and place meanings are slow to evolve, sometimes not matching material or social reality (lag effects), and also tending to inhibit change. Here, we present some key blind spots in sense of place scholarship and then sug…
Fostering incidental experiences of nature through green infrastructure planning
Concern for a diminished human experience of nature and subsequent decreased human well-being is addressed via a consideration of green infrastructure's potential to facilitate unplanned or incidental nature experience. Incidental nature experience is conceptualized and illustrated in order to consider this seldom addressed aspect of human interaction with nature in green infrastructure planning. Special attention has been paid to the ability of …
Key issues and priorities in participatory mapping
Environmental, Individual and Personal Goal Influences on Older Adults’ Walking in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area
Physical activity is a fundamental factor in healthy ageing, and the built environment has been linked to individual health outcomes. Understanding the linkages between older adult's walking and the built environment are key to designing supportive environments for active ageing. However, the variety of different spatial scales of human mobility has been largely overlooked in the environmental health research. This study used an online participat…
Children as urbanites
Increasingly, children are residing in urban environments, yet little is known about the urban affordances for children. A place-based approach was employed to map the urban experiences of over 1300 children residing in Helsinki (Finland) and in Tokyo (Japan) in terms of meaningful places (affordances), travel mode and accompaniment to these places. Shared affordances were considered behavior settings, and audited on-site by trained experts for t…
Residential dissonance and walking for transport
Urban structural and socioeconomic effects on local, national and international travel patterns and greenhouse gas emissions of young adults
Does mapping improve public participation? Exploring the pros and cons of using public participation GIS in urban planning practices
While participatory urban and regional planning have become a widely accepted approach to enhance the democratic aims of community and urban development, challenges still remain. Planners lack the knowledge of usable tools to reach broader groups of participants, which can turn participation into a small-group elitist activity. Also, the quality and utilisation of the knowledge produced is problematic, the collected data remains invisible and sys…
Beyond Housing Preferences
The concept of residential housing preferences has been studied across multiple disciplines, with extensive literature supporting both stated and revealed preference methods. This study argues that both preference types, stated and revealed, should be assessed concurrently to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of residential housing choices. To provide evidence, this research used findings from a public participation GIS survey that ident…
Understanding children’s neighbourhood destinations
Children interact with and are greatly affected by their neighbourhoods. This research aims to understand the places children go in their neighbourhood and their perceptions of them. A child-centred approach was used to map destinations and ask open-ended survey questions, using Maptionnaire (a public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) mapping software). Overall, 1102 children aged 7-13 years, from 19 schools in Auckland, New Zea…
A context sensitive approach to anonymizing public participation GIS data
Use of Public Participation Geographic Information System (PPGIS) for data collection has been significantly growing over the past few years in different areas of research and practice. With the growing amount of data, there is little doubt that a potentially wider community can benefit from open access to them. Additionally, open data add to the transparency of research and can be considered as an essential feature of science. However, data anon…
Honouring the participatory mapping contributions and enduring legacy of Professor Gregory G. Brown
This commentary honours the seminal and foundational contributions of Professor Gregory G. (Greg) Brown to the fields of public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS), natural resource management and spatial planning. We synthesise his work into four theses that underpinned his three decades of research: 1) The mapping of place values provides place-specific information about sense of place which can aid in the assessment of the ris…
Objective measurement of children's physical activity geographies
This study aimed to systematically identify, map out, and describe geographical information systems (GIS)-based approaches that have been employed to measure children's neighborhood geographies for physical activity behaviors. Forty studies were included, most were conducted in the USA. Heterogeneity in GIS methods and measures was found. The majority of studies estimated children's environments using Euclidean or network buffers ranging from 100…
Geography (36 works) · Computer Science (21 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Environmental planning (18 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Urban Transport and Accessibility (17 works) · Urban Green Space and Health (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Engineering (13 works) · Land Use and Ecosystem Services (12 works)