Mapping Gated Communities: An Empirical Assessment of Wikimapia Data Quality

The widespread proliferation of different types of volunteered geographic information (VGI) is noteworthy as is its potential application to urban studies. However, questions of data quality still remain. In some parts of the Middle East, gated communities have proliferated rapidly, but relatively little is known about their extent or spatial distribution. This case study of gated communities in the state of Bahrain assesses the quality of Wikimapia, a form of VGI, in accurately identifying elements of urban structure (e.g., gated communities) in an urban context from the Global South. Wikimapia demonstrated high levels of positional accuracy and relatively high levels of attribute accuracy. Identifying the locations of gated communities provides a foundation from which other research questions about segregated housing, fragmentation, and socioeconomic polarization can be addressed. These results highlight Wikimapia's potential as a data source for urban research, particularly in data-poor and non-Western/Northern contexts.