Computational Mapping of Linguistic Landscape Transformation in an At-Risk Urban Cultural Landscape

A 17-Year Street-View Study of Daerim-Dong, Seoul

Bibliographic Data

ID22031786
AuthorsYu Gu (0009-0005-9748-9555, Korea University of International Studies, corresponding author), Rui Kang (0000-0002-6144-2422, Korea University of International Studies), Ha Wang (Korea University of International Studies)
Year2026
Volume15
Issue6
Pages266
Publication date2026-06-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2220-9964 • E-ISSN: 2220-9964
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/ijgi15060266
OpenAlexW7164807492
LanguageEN
References cited25

Urban ethnic enclaves are historically layered cultural landscapes whose public signage encodes community vitality, power relations, and cultural identity in ways that conventional land-use inventories cannot capture. Addressing the absence of scalable, longitudinal computational methods for monitoring such at-risk landscapes, this study develops a reproducible digital-mapping pipeline that operationalises linguistic-landscape analysis as a cultural-heritage monitoring tool for heritage-sensitive land-use planning. Taking Daerim-dong—Seoul’s primary Joseonjok (Korean Chinese) enclave—as a case, we process 38,640 Kakao Map Road View images across 17 annual cross-sections (2008–2024). The pipeline integrates four methodological components: a bounded Spatial Weighting Correction that adjusts for uneven historical coverage; zero-shot semantic sign-function classification using the Qwen2-7B-Instruct model; an exploratory Difference-in-Differences design probing the 2016–2017 THAAD geopolitical disruption; and a Boundary Permeability Ratio (BPR) for tracking enclave edge dynamics. The results document a three-phase trajectory—rapid bilingual expansion (2008–2016), stabilisation (2016–2019), and a COVID-period contraction (2019–2024)—and show that raw sign-count metrics can systematically overstate minority-language decline during economic crises once crisis-period signage is isolated. The BPR is presented as a candidate leading indicator of enclave contraction whose operational thresholds remain to be calibrated through multi-enclave validation. As a methodological proof-of-concept, the study illustrates how computational street-view analysis can support cultural-landscape governance, offering urban planners and heritage managers an actionable, transparent baseline for monitoring at-risk multicultural urban landscapes

Cultural heritage · Linguistic landscape · Salient · Signage · Weighting · Human Mobility and Location-Based Analysis · Multilingual Education and Policy · Urbanization and City Planning

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