Under the Raedar

Cities Outlook 2012

2012-01-24T15:12:00.002Z

Yesterday saw the publication of the Centre for Cities annual 'Cities Outlook'. The lovely people at CfC have now produced this publication for five years and it receives significant press attention (and was even one of the most read on the BBC website). I've written a thing or two about cities on this blog so it thought I'd just provide a few notes on this most recent incarnation of Cities Outlook...

The first thing to note is that Cities Outlook 2012 uses Primary Urban Areas as a proxy for cities. See this document (and p.106-109 in particular). PUAs are not just the local authority area but rather a grouping of local authorities around a core local authority area. PUAs only exist for England (and there are 56 of them). For Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the definitions of 'city' are slightly different - see p.25 of Cities Outlook for more on this.

This has been covered a lot elsewhere, but 'the recovery' is at present not looking very good when compared to previous periods of economic turmoil - the chart on p.7 is particularly illustrative of this point.

There is no harm in reinforcing key messages, and Cities Outlook does this many times. The most important of which is probably: "Unemployment is likely to become an increasing problem in 2012". When the youth figures are taken into consideration (1m+) we can only speculate at how this will play out in the long term.

Hull and Cambridge are not necessarily on the same trajectory! See p.15 for more on this. Of course this is not really a fair comparison in some ways but it does illustrate some of the important differences between cities.

On p.31, I'm not convinced of the utility of the landmass comparison for the entire UK, particularly when the definitions vary across the UK (even if the graphic is quite pretty).

Let's all move to Milton Keynes (p. 36). On second thoughts, maybe not.

Three cheers for Aberdeen: "Every city in the UK apart from Aberdeen saw a decrease in their business stocks from 2009 to 2010". More information on business type would be useful here of course.

Some useful emissions data on p.65, which I suspect isn't entirely fair on Middlesbrough without some additional contextual information...

A very interesting piece of work!

England's Green Belt - 'Closed' Data

2012-01-15T22:31:00.002Z

At the moment I'm doing some work related to housing market search behaviour and I have a very interesting dataset for it. I thought it would be nice to compare housing market search patterns to where areas of green belt land in England are. This is where I ran into problems. Everyone knows that there is green belt land in England, but knowing precisely where it is and how to get this in digital format is more difficult.

It seems that, for whatever reason, Landmark Information Group have the rights to the data, as you can also see from this BBC map. The problem is, I was quoted a price of £35,000 + VAT for the full dataset. I've nothing against Landmark but I couldn't figure out why it would be so costly or why it is not open data. To cut a long story short, I got the data directly from the Department for Communities and Local Government but the licence means I can't really do much with it publicly, so I've made a small map below showing what it looks like.

The problem with this is that if a normal person* just wants to check which areas of the country are green belt and which aren't (and given current proposals to reform the planning system in England, this is quite important!), it cannot be done easily, if at all. What I'd really like to do is take the green belt shape file and put it on top of a Google map and then let the world see it. But it's not my data, it's not open data, so I can't. This seems like a pity and not just because I'm addicted to mapping things. It seems like a pity because this information should, I feel, be in the public domain in an accessible format.

*Clearly, I'm not a normal person or I would be doing something else at this time of day/week.

Daytime Population in the United States

2012-01-09T11:18:00.002Z

My last post on London's Daytime Population is getting a lot of page views, which is nice, so I thought I'd do something else on the same topic. Although I do try to make nice images with data, there are some very important planning-related issues here. The first is just to do with the importance of knowing how many people live in an area. In New York City, the city challenged the 2010 results because it could have led to less federal aid, and in the UK in 2011 the city of Cardiff claims there was an undercount which could have led to them missing out on £85 million of funding since 2001. In relation to daytime population, this is also very important, but more difficult to calculate, as Robert C. Schmitt discussed in 1956. So, I looked at the 3,111 counties of the lower 48 states in the US and mapped them by daytime population density, as you can see below.

View full size version

Why does it matter that we know what the daytime population of a place is? Well, there are many reasons including planning for public transit, traffic flow, infrastructure needs, utilities and even for developing evacuation procedures (Schmitt was writing in 1956 but perhaps this last point is still relevant today).

In the United States, the county with the highest daytime population density is New York County (aka Manhattan). It is far and away the leader in this category, with 126,100 persons per square mile. That doesn't quite match the daytime population density of the City of London but bear in mind that Manhattan covers 22 square miles! Manhattan's daytime population is also about 1.3 million more than its total resident population, which in 2010 was about 1.6 million.

London's Daytime Population

2011-12-21T14:12:00.000Z

A couple of months ago I did a short post on the difference between daytime and night time populations in the North West of England. I've been interested in this for a while but some other recent work from the US got me thinking about it again. More recently, the London Datastore released data on London's daytime population for 2010 so I thought I'd take a closer look at the data and do something with it. The graphic below pulls out the most interesting data - not least of which is the fact that London's daytime population is 9.3 million!

Full size version here

I downloaded the data, explored it and did a little 3D mapping of population density. The daytime population density figures for the City of London are quite staggering (350,000 people per square mile!). During the day, the population of Westminster is nearly 1 million - compared to about 250,000 permanent residents. The City of London only has about 11,700 permanent residents but its daytime population is 390,000. If you're looking for the London Borough with the most prams, then head to Newham - it has the highest number of children aged 0-4. If you're looking for overseas visitors, head to Westminster where you are bound to bump into one of the 65,000 or so who are there.

The data are very interesting, but also important. If we want to understand cities and how they work (and how to make them work better) then this kind of information is critical.

That's all for now...

Deprivation in Sheffield

2011-12-16T11:54:00.005Z

This summer I was asked to write a report about deprivation in Sheffield. I finished this in September and the reaction since then has been quite positive (i.e. people have actually been reading it!). So, I thought I'd link to it directly here and also pull out a few of the main findings from it. Click on the image below to see the pdf - or just click here.

In the report I look at how patterns of deprivation in Sheffield compare to 13 other cities in England. Sheffield is not as deprived as many other cities (e.g. Liverpool, Manchester) but the geography of deprivation in the city means that it is one of the most divided - spatially at least. In one sense this might have something to do with the boundaries of local authorities and how wide an area they cover but, ultimately, it is at the local government level that issues associated with deprivation are most acutely felt so the boundary issue is only part of the problem.

I also look at the differences between areas that seem to be similar in terms of how deprived they are. In doing so I draw upon some previous work I did with colleagues at the University of Manchester. The bottom line here is that there there is a need to think more deeply about the different roles and contexts of areas and how they differ from each other - particularly in relation to how policies are formulated.

There is also a need to think about issue of social and spatial inequality more widely rather than simply focusing on the 'most deprived' locations, though of course this will remain a policy priority in many cities.

Mapping Flows - An Update

2011-12-12T09:31:00.003Z

In many previous blog posts I talked about my experiments in flow mapping (exhibit 1, exhibit 2 ...). Usually this was about migration or commuting data and in the course of writing an academic paper on the subject I also put together a small website about flow mapping, with some examples. Now I've done a follow-up paper to this which is just out in Environment and Planning B (a couple of extracts shown below).

The point of this work is not simply to make pretty pictures. That might be an interesting by-product but it is more about the process of taking data and giving it some kind of meaning by mapping it. This is by no means trivial when you're looking at migration or commuting patterns which link hundreds or even thousands of places.

With this much data, you often have millions of individual cells of data, so making sense of it can be impossible without some kind of visual approach - and that's really what the paper is about. It's not really very complicated - at least, not conceptually - but the power of this type of approach is in its ability to generate knowledge from raw data.

In short, then, this kind of work is in many ways guided by Kenneth Boulding's maxim that "knowledge is always gained by the orderly loss of information".

NEETs in England, 2000 to 2011 (Animated Chart)

2011-11-29T09:27:00.002Z

The news last week that the number of 16 to 24 year olds in England not in education, employment or training (NEET) reached an all-time high was widely covered, and quite shocking since there are now 1.16 million 16 to 24 year olds in this category. I thought it might be quite interesting to look at the data more closely to see how it compares to other time periods. The Department for Education publish the NEET data on a quarterly basis and the most recent data are for the third quarter of 2011 at the regional level. "What would the quarterly data look like in an animated bar chart?", I hear you say. Click the image below to find out!

Click to see a full size version of this animation.

I should say that you'll need to watch the clip a few times in order to make sense of it (and use the pause button), but once you get your head round it, it tells an interesting story (it also dances a bit like an equalizer on an old stereo). The lowest NEET total for England was in the second quarter of 2000 (629,000) and the highest total comes from the third quarter of 2011 (1,163,000). The highest regional percentage figure for NEETs was in the third quarter of 2011 in the North West (23.9%) and the lowest was in the last quarter of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004 in the South West (7.4%).

Lots of interesting stories here but the most striking thing is the total number of NEETs in England.

Note: I created this using Google's motion charts and recorded it using Camtasia.

Children in Poverty

2011-11-19T08:05:00.001Z

I think I've already said enough - and done enough mapping - of general deprivation indices across the UK. Well, probably. Either way, I thought it would be interesting to take a slightly different view. In England, the Indices of Deprivation 2010 include two supplementary indices: the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI) and the Income Deprivation Affecting Older People Index (IDAOPI). Not very catchy acronyms, and these indices are not that well known, hence my efforts to map the IDACI data for England (screenshot below)...

The map I've produced in Google's Fusion Tables follows the format of many others I've done, but this time I've summarised the data using 2010 parliamentary constituencies - following the same method that the IMD people use to derive summary measures at the local authority level. On the main map, you can find out how deprived a constituency is (i.e. the relative rank in England) by clicking on it. Red = more deprived, blue = less deprived. Using this method, the constituencies with the highest levels of income deprivation affecting children are as follows:

Poplar and Limehouse
Bethnal Green and Bow
Manchester Central
Tottenham
Hackney South and Shoreditch
Birmingham Ladywood
Islington South and Finsbury
Edmonton
West Ham
Birmingham Hodge Hill

The really noticeable thing here is the number of London constituencies. In the general IMD for England, it is areas in the North West which dominate, but not here. As to why this is, there are many reasons but that's not the point today. Why not explore the national patterns on the map and see how your area compares (if you live in England). The most important thing about all this is, of course, the fact that so many children in England are adversely affected by income deprivation.

Learning from the past in regeneration?

2011-11-07T10:10:00.000Z

Last week, a government select committee published their report into regeneration. This was all about regeneration (and its failures) in England, but much of it resonates more widely. Before I mention what was in the report, it is worth noting the composition of the committee: 5 Labour MPs (including the committee chair), 6 Conservative MPs, 1 Liberal Democrat MP. I should also mention that last week a paper of mine was published. This is significant not because I had something published (!) but because the paper was entitled 'Learning from the Past? A Review of Approaches to Spatial Targeting in Urban Policy' and it has a lot to say about the issues in the select committee report. Unusually, for me, it also has no maps or stats in it! I look at examples from across the world and my view is that there is a problem with the way we conceptualise the 'problem' in urban policy, but enough about that.

Back to the select committee report... The most significant thing the report says - and this was widely reported in the news and regen media - is the following quote, from the opening paragraph of the conclusion:

"Regeneration to enable growth offers little evidence that the Government has a coherent strategy for addressing the country's regeneration needs. The document lacks strategic direction and fails to target action and resources at the communities most in need. The measures it sets out are unlikely to bring in sufficient resources or to attract the private sector investment that in many areas is badly needed."

The part about investment being badly needed in many areas is perhaps most significant in some of the former housing market renewal areas - one example being the Welsh streets in Liverpool - see a Google street view of this here. This subject is covered more generally in Part 3 of the report where there is a particularly powerful quote from from Ros Groves, Chair of a Liverpool residents' association, who said:

"We need to think what my people are living in and the conditions they are living in. It is a famous line: we have kids in schools; you ask them to draw a house and they will draw you a house with boarded-up windows, not fancy little curtains or anything else. To me, that is not a future that we can build on, which is criminal. We have a right to have a decent life and place where we live, and that is the one thing that we ask Government. Can we have it? Can we let any Pathfinder area be left with what some people are being left to live in?"

As you can tell, the committee are not exactly thrilled with the government's approach to the housing market renewal programme. Regeneration and Renewal used the word 'damning' and that about covers it.

In Learning the Lessons in Part 4 of the report there is a quote from Paul Lawless, Professor of Urban Policy at Sheffield Hallam University. His views on learning lessons are summed up in one particular quote:

"One marked weakness in this strand of policy has been a reluctance on the part of new administrations to learn from previous regeneration initiatives. There is every possibility of this happening again, as a new government launches a regeneration programme with little if any acknowledgement of lessons from previous interventions."

My small contribution to the literature effectively finds the same things, and not just in England but more widely in different parts of the world. Not learning from the past, however, is not restricted to regeneration but the implications of not doing so here are particularly severe for those living in areas targeted by urban policy.

Full details of the inquiry associated with the report can be found here. That's all I have to say for today! Take a look at the report - it makes fascinating reading (though I couldn't find it a pdf version).

Mapping Methods

2011-10-27T16:21:00.002+01:00

I've done a lot of mapping on this blog in recent months. Much of this has been about deprivation and my attempts to make more widely available maps on deprivation for different parts of the UK. For this, I've often used Google's Fusion Tables. The most recent work I've done with this data using Fusion Tables is to update the Welsh Deprivation work to include the most recent release of the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation from 2011. There's a screenshot below which links to a full page Google map. If you click on an area the pop-up will tell you all about it in relation to the WIMD data. This post isn't about the data but the most deprived area is in West Rhyl and the least deprived in Cardiff (Llandaff area).

But this post is about methods, so more on that before I go... The steps below relate to any kind of data I've mapped using Fusion Tables (warning: technical content!).

1. First of all I usually have to join attribute data to spatial data. I do this in ArcGIS but it works well in MapInfo too. If you're a MapInfo user and want to follow the steps below, use Universal Translator in MapInfo to convert the file to a Shapefile first.

2. I don't like overly detailed boundaries because of the large file sizes and often this exceeds the Fusion Tables file limit. So, I simplify the boundaries. For this, I use mapshaper, a great online tool. You can also use other GIS methods.

3. Then I use something called shpescape. This is a really great tool because it allows you just to zip your shapefile (i.e. the shp, shx, dbf and prj files) and then upload directly to Fusion Tables without having to convert to KML as an intermediate step.

4. Once there, all you need to do is go to Visualize / Map and then go to work customising things. This includes map colours and what appears in the Info Window pop up when you click an area. I've blogged on the Info Window code bit before.

5. If you want others to see it you must make it public. Just click 'Share' in the top right of the Fusion Table screen.

That's about it. The Info Window code bit takes a while to figure out but you can do so much with it.

Deprivation in Northern Ireland

2011-10-19T20:49:00.003+01:00

On this blog I've covered deprivation in England, deprivation in Scotland and deprivation in Wales but, to date, not deprivation in Northern Ireland. Today I'll complete the UK set by looking at deprivation in Northern Ireland according to the Multiple Deprivation Measure 2010. What I've done is produce a couple of Google fusion table maps. A screenshot from one is shown below and if you click on it you'll be taken to a web page where you can select any local authority area. Clicking an individual area on the map will reveal a pop-up with all the information for that area, including the map key...

I've also produced a full screen version of this fusion table map, as you can see below in the screenshot. Once again, you just have to click an area on the map to find out more about it.

I'm going to get on to the more general subject of mapping deprivation and different methods and options for this type of thing (including cartograms) in a subsequent post but first a quick look at the actual deprivation data for Northern Ireland. According to the MDM, the most deprived super output area is the one named 'Whiterock 2' in Belfast, though this in itself is not perhaps that significant. Of more significance is where the clusters of the most deprived areas appear - and this is generally in Belfast and Derry. These two local government areas both have 47% of their super output areas classified among the 20% most deprived in Northern Ireland. Craigavon and Lisburn are next on the list, at 27% and 17% respectively. Having said that, many of the least deprived areas are also in Belfast, but this pattern is not mirrored in Derry.

In many ways, then, spatial patterns of deprivation in Northern Ireland are similar to those in different parts of the UK, with an inner-urban focus and smaller pockets and clusters of deprivation elsewhere. These are often located in close proximity to areas of affluence, though of course that is not really what the MDM measures.

The final image is a simple dot map showing the location of the 10% most and 10% least deprived super output areas in Northern Ireland in 2010...

The last thing to say is that this measure is produced by the same team who produce the deprivation indices for other parts of the UK. The web pages for the MDM are pretty useful and contain everything you need to know.

How Big is London?

2011-10-13T22:29:00.001+01:00

In studies of cities and urban areas, a common question that crops up is 'how big' a particular city is. I'd be inclined to answer this in terms of population, which for Greater London in mid-2010 was 7.83million. Most urban academics, however, are more pedantic and if you asked them how big London is, they might ask what you mean by 'big' and what you mean by 'London'. So, following the theme of some posts over the past year I decided to take a look at this purely in terms of the land area of some key UK 'cities'. I looked at the London Boroughs for Greater London, plus local authority areas for the English core cities, plus Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast. I then put them side by side at the same map scale and produced the following image...

The cities (i.e. the local authorities) in the image above are ranked by land area. London is the largest, at around 610 square miles, and Nottingham is the smallest at around 30 square miles. One issue when thinking about all of this is the extent to which most of the UK's cities are 'underbounded' in the sense that the core local authority area with the name of the city does not reflect the true extent of the functional urban area. Manchester is a classic example of this, whereas Leeds is more 'overbounded'. Tony Champion and Mike Coombes, among others, have written about this - e.g. in this presentation. In many ways this is quite a serious policy challenge, particularly when it comes to understanding and planning for wider metropolitan housing and labour market processes. But I'm getting carried away with myself now!

Finally, I thought it would be interesting to compare the areas in the image above to the UK's largest local authority by area. I did this because a) I'm from the Highland region and b) see reason a). The Highland region is, famously, about the size of Belgium and it is bigger than both Wales and Northern Ireland by some way. In relation to the latter, it is more than twice the size in terms of land area. However, in mid-2010 the total population of the Highland region was only 221,630. A final nugget of information: the Highland region is about 275 times larger than Liverpool. The image below shows the Highland region at the same scale as the areas in the first image. Perhaps we should all move up north and have more space! Or perhaps not.

P.S. The City of London is the smallest administrative 'district' in the UK, at around 1.1 square miles.

Comparing Populations: Night Time vs. Day Time

2011-10-03T10:34:00.003+01:00

Esteemed Canadian and fellow researcher Brian Webb, from the University of Manchester, recently sent me an interesting image which compares the population of Washington D.C. in the day to the population at night. This got me thinking. I did a bit of digging and found some of my old data. Put simply, I had two datasets for wards in the North West of England. One file contained the resident population of wards and the other had the population of wards during the day time (i.e. residents, minus out-commuters, plus in commuters). Out of this came two visualisations, as shown below (red peaks = more people) and a short video.

I also decided to turn this into a very simple animation, which is embedded below. I have also produced a larger version of this on its own page. Note: the video embedded below will keep playing once you click play. The larger version allows you to pause the video and watch at your own pace.

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Although these are really just some pretty pictures there are some important points to be made here. We think about the population of places - and the associated local costs and constraints - in relation to resident population but in some areas the day time population is so high that the impact on the local area is far out of proportion to the size of the resident population. Another matter is the well known issue of spatial mismatch or, more generally, understanding the differences between where people live and where people work and the implications of this.

In short, understanding the spatiality of populations is important for planning and policy purposes - these visuals are just a simple way of telling the story of data. This is important because the data on display here comes from an analysis of a commuting data matrix of 1000 x 1000, or one million cells of data. So, another point here is that data on its own is not information, as we all know.

The New ONS Website

2011-09-27T12:18:00.004+01:00

Not all that long ago, the Office for National Statistics unveiled their new website which, in my view, is significantly better than the old one (screenshot of the new site below). There have been some teething problems but I just wanted to highlight some of the interactive data features.

There's a box to the right of the home page which says 'Interactive Content' and if you click on it you will be taken to a page full of more interesting visualisations of ONS data. There's a map and data visualisation using unemployment benefit claimants plus lots more.

On the population page, you can also see up to date snapshots for the UK, including the up to date total population (currently estimated to be 62.3 million). The site is not yet perfect but is definitely worth a closer look.

Energy Consumption in London

2011-09-18T22:15:00.003+01:00

Gas price rises have been in the news quite a lot in recent months, and with good reason. Clearly, it's a big issue in many ways so I've been trying to explore more about it from a data point of view. This is where the Department of Energy and Climate Change come in, because they now provide quite localised energy consumption data for the whole of Great Britain. There's quite a lot of it and it can be a bit messy and difficult to understand but if you want to find out more the full explanatory pdf is here. From my point of view, I was interested to see how it looked spatially, so I took the domestic gas consumption data for London in 2008 and 2009 and mapped it at the small area level. I've done a full screen map which you can see by clicking on this link but you can also see it embedded below, though it works best full screen. Click an area on the map to see consumption data for that area and a key which explains the colour coding.

Click here to see the full screen version

Finally, a simple dot map of where most domestic gas is used in London. This reflects a number of things, not least the size of properties, but perhaps also things like poverty and deprivation... The final thing to say is that the highest gas consumption areas consume about 41,000 kWh per year and the lowest areas less than 10,000. The London average is about 15,000 kWh.

Comparing Populations: China, US, Europe

2011-09-08T11:05:00.005+01:00

Since the US and China have both recently (2010) conducted a census I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the population results. Given the vastness of the US and China, I thought I'd do a little experiment and compare Chinese province populations with US states and European countries. I've put this data into a spreadsheet as well and also produced a map graphic comparing various areas. The purpose here is to highlight the large populations of so many Chinese provinces.

Some interesting nuggets from the data...

Guangdong province in China now has a population of 104 million, which is more than any European nation except Russia (141 million). The European part of Russia has 110 million.
Poland, Shanxi province and California all have around 37 million people.
Shanghai has 22 million compared to Romania at 23 million.
Beijing and New York state both have about 19.5 million people.
In total, ten Chinese provinces have a population of 50 million or more. The US and China have a very similar land area.
Be honest, did you know that Anhui province has about the same population as Italy (60 million)?

Finally, some non-Chinese comparisons. Greece and Ohio both have a population of about 11.5 million and Michigan and Belarus are similar at about 9.5 million. Wisconsin and Denmark both have about 5.7 million people, and Finland and Minnesota have about 5.4 million. At the lower end of the scale, North Dakota and Montenegro both have about 670,000 people.

Divided Cities?

2011-09-02T14:10:00.008+01:00

There has been a lot of talk recently about the links between deprivation and the recent riots in England (e.g. this from the Guardian), and since I'm interested in the issue I thought I would do some very basic analysis to look at the spatial divisions of deprivation in English cities. To do this I took London, the eight core cities plus Bradford, Coventry, Hull and Leicester and mapped the 10% most (in red) and 10% least (in blue) deprived (IMD 2010) areas on one large map graphic. The results are shown below - click the image to enlarge.

Some interesting comparisons can be made from this image. In Hull, Leicester, Manchester and Nottingham there are no areas amongst England's 10% most deprived and in Liverpool there is only one. In Sheffield there is a clear NE/SW split in terms of the location of the most and least deprived and in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool the number of areas in the most deprived 10% is quite high.

Not much else to say now except that I think in studies of deprivation we should perhaps be more concerned with inequalities and how they manifest themselves spatially.

Housing Stock in England

2011-08-22T07:07:00.007+01:00

A short while ago I had reason to look into data on housing stock in England at the local authority level. I didn't do much with this but did produce a map and a little bit of preliminary analysis so I thought I'd share it here. The data are from the Department for Communities and Local Government's Live Tables and in particular the series on housing stock for 2010. First of all, a map showing the percentage of housing stock in each local authority that is owned by a housing association.

There is so much you can say about the meaning of this kind of data - related to policy, local political context and so on - but just some numbers for now. The local authority with the highest % of stock owned by housing associations is Tower Hamlets, at 29.0% - other high areas are Knowsley (28.6%), Sunderland (28.0), Liverpool (28.0%), Halton (25.6%), Middlesbrough (25.5%) and Manchester (24.7%). So, London, the North West and the North East have the highest values. At the other end of the scale, Castle Point in Essex has only 1.3% of its stock owned by housing associations.

Some other numbers... The area with the highest percentage of housing owned by the local authority is Southwark, at 34.1% but this is something of an outlier as the next highest is Harlow at 28.1%. At the opposite end of the scale, many areas have no stock in local authority hands, given the trend for stock transfer over recent decades. What about % private vs. % housing association + local authority owned? Well, in Castle point, 94.6% of the housing stock is in private hands and 93.0% in Medway in Kent. The lowest private % figures are in London, with Southwark (53.1%), Hackney (54.0%), Islington (56.5%), Tower Hamlets (57.8%) and Lambeth (62.4%) occupying the top five spots. Total dwelling stock in England is 22.7m.

One further thing... I obtained a detailed list of housing associations in England from the Tenant Services Authority so I produced a fusion table map of it. Individual points on the map are clickable. Click here for the full size version.

Info Windows for Google Maps (from Fusion Tables)

2011-08-16T20:48:00.009+01:00

A slightly boring technical post today because from time to time people get in touch to ask technical questions. So, I thought I'd just share a bit of my (limited) knowledge on controlling what appears in a google map info window when you click a map layer using Fusion Tables. Most of this probably applies to non-Fusion Table maps as well. Here's what I'm talking about...

Link directly to this page here.

As you can see from the screenshot above, this info window has a chart (drawn from the Fusion Table which is mapped) an image (a map key) and some text, which also pulls out unique data for each area on the map when you click on it. Since Fusion Tables are relatively new, there isn't an awful lot of information out there on how to do this (at least not info that simpletons like me can understand) so I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with the code behind the info windows. There is some useful information on this page and the pages it links to but when you have your own dataset it can be a bit difficult to grasp.

Not much else to say except that I've copied an image below which shows the code and the info window side by side. If you click on the image it should take you to a PowerPoint file which you can then use to copy the code if you wish. I'm certainly no expert but someone may find this useful!

Comparing Deprivation in the English Core Cities

2011-08-11T15:44:00.003+01:00

The eight English core cities outside London often work together on issues that affect them. One thing I've been looking at recently on some work in Sheffield is how the core cities compare in terms of patterns of deprivation. So, I've mapped and compared them below. Red areas are amongst the 10% most deprived in England and the darkest blue areas are amongst the 10% least deprived in England. The maps are at different scales but the point here is just to provide a quick visual comparison of cities in this map matrix view.

Joblessness in Edinburgh and Glasgow

2011-08-02T17:20:00.007+01:00

I'm currently finishing off a piece of work relating to spatial patterns of labour market deprivation in Scotland so I thought I'd share a couple of findings about the contrasting cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow*. I've been using data from the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (2009) employment deprivation domain, which gives a jobless rate for each small area (Data Zone). The official explanation is that it is 'involuntary exclusion from the labour force' and it includes things like unemployment claimants and incapacity benefit claimants.

I've been looking at the data within the context of local labour markets and have done some comparisons between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The data are now a bit old (from 2008) but what's really interesting are the numbers... In Glasgow, the total population of Data Zones where the jobless rate was 25% or more was a little over 170,000 (more than the population of Dundee) and areas with a rate of 33% or more contained just over 51,000 people (more than the population of Perth). By contrast, the figures for Edinburgh were just under 25,000 and just under 11,000 respectively. Even when you take into account the difference in population (about 600,000 for Glasgow vs. 450,000 for Edinburgh) that's a big difference! I know this contrast isn't particularly surprising but the numbers did surprise me a bit.

*I've added Aberdeen and Dundee because David Manley suggested it. A good idea!

Deprivation in Wales

2011-07-27T14:21:00.002+01:00

My experiments in mapping deprivation continue... I should really have done something on Wales before now but to make up for it I've done a 3D annotated map, a Google fusion table version with Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2005 and 2008 data (also embedded below), plus a new version of a fusion table map with a drop-down menu for choosing local authority areas. For both the google map versions you can find out about each area just by clicking on it.

Click here for a full size version, and here's the shortened URL http://goo.gl/GYnIF

Finally, here's a screenshot of the page with the drop-down menu for selecting local authorities. You can click here, or click on the image below to go to the separate web page for this one...

Local Deprivation in England

2011-07-26T11:00:00.001+01:00

Rather than leave my English Indices of Deprivation fusion table work on a single blog page, I thought I'd take a minute or two to put it on a separate web page with its own address. A screenshot of the result is shown below. I've just used blogger for this and added a floating key so that no matter where you zoom or pan you can remember the colour scheme. The colour scheme is based on quintiles (i.e. 20% most deprived, 40% most deprived and so on). Click the image below to go to the web page. It's very basic!

United States Census 2010

2011-07-08T14:04:00.005+01:00

The 2010 US Census was conducted in April 2010 and already the results are looking very interesting. By the end of 2010 there was a new total population figure for the US, indicating a growth of 9.7% between 2000 and 2010. The total population on the twenty third US Census day was 308,745,538. This is just over double the total population from 1950. For a more up to date population estimate, you can check the US population clock from the US Census Bureau. Because I'm interested in all this, I've produce a graphic which shows population density and some population data for the lower 48 states, at county level. A couple of nuggets here: Los Angeles county has nearly 10 million people and Loving County (Texas) has only 82 people. All other counties lie somewhere in between...

Does Anyone Look at This Blog?

2011-06-30T21:25:00.008+01:00

When I started this blog I wasn't really sure if anyone would ever look at it but as it turns out people somehow find it and some lost souls even return more than once! Even more surprisingly (for me) is that people often get in touch with me because of it, which is really good because I like to make contact with like-minded researchers and share ideas in this way. Google Analytics allows you to keep track of the number of visitors and the country of origin so I thought I'd highlight the usefulness of that and also post some charts of the visits to my blog...

Here's a chart showing visits per day since I started blogging (as usual, click images to enlarge)

This is a Google Analytics map showing visits per country (still work to do in Africa!)

Most blog visits in the USA come from California

The point of this post is threefold. 1 - to highlight the magical properties of Google Analytics. It really is brilliant. 2 - to demonstrate that blogging does help connect like-minded people and make collaboration possible. 3 - to write about something other than deprivation!

P.S. There will be more on deprivation in the near future...

Commuting Animation for 2001

2011-06-17T11:02:00.008+01:00

The results of the 2011 Census will not be released for a while yet and in the case of migration and commuting data it usually takes about two or three years before we get our hands on it. I've recently been looking at commuting patterns at district level in the UK from the 2001 data in anticipation of studying changes when the 2011 data are released and have put together this short animation. You can play the animation and also use the slider on the time line to control the speed yourself... (it may take a moment or two to load)

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

I've just selected 18 different districts from across the UK and looked at the range of commuting origins. A couple of points to note here. I've only included flows over ten in order to cut out some of the 'noise' associated with very low flow numbers. Also, for Belfast, the commuting data is split into Belfast North, South, East and West so that one looks a little different.

A few points of note. City of London and Westminster have the highest inflows in the UK, at over 300,000 and 400,000 respectively. I've chosen a sample of places just to give reasonable geographical coverage. What I aim to look at in the relatively near future is commuting and deprivation together, but this is a slow-burner...

Here's the image file for City of London, just as an example. Click the image to see it in full size.

World Prison Populations

2011-06-16T20:09:00.006+01:00

I was going to post something else on deprivation, and I will do again soon, but today it's time for something completely different. For one reason or another I've been thinking about prison populations in different countries in the world. Maybe it's because I've been watching Banged up Abroad on National Geographic! Anyway, I got interested in it and started looking at the data and publications on the International Centre for Prison Studies website. It's all very interesting and at times alarming but thanks to the people at ICPS we have a reasonably good idea about all this. The 8th Edition of the World Prison Population List puts the total prison population at about 9.8 million in 2008 - roughly the same as the total population of Sweden! A couple of quick 'top ten' charts now...

The United States, China and Russia account for almost half the total world prison population. The US total in 2008 was 2.3 million, which is more than the entire population of Latvia and more than half the total population of Ireland. The prison population is more than the city population of Houston and not far off the city population of Chicago. The United States also has the highest rate of imprisonment per 1,000 persons, as you can see below...

In 2008, the rate of imprisonment in the US was 7.6 per 1,000. Russia was next at 6.3 and then Rwanda at 6.0. European nations generally have a much lower rate, with the United Kingdom at 1.5, France at 1.0 and Sweden at 0.7.

You can play around with the numbers to discover lots of interesting facts. If the UK had the same imprisonment rate as the US then instead of having a prison population of 90,000 or so, it would have a prison population of 465,000. On the other hand, if the US had the same rate as the UK, they would have 458,000 prisoners and not 2.3 million. Food for thought...

Given the topic, I'll end this rather random post with this...

IMD 2004, 2007, 2010 - Change Over Time...

2011-06-01T08:39:00.005+01:00

This is the last deprivation-related post in a while. I promise. I've been experimenting with English IMD data from 2004, 2007 and 2010 and have finally found a moment to do to it what I did to the Scottish IMD data, where it is all online and clicking an area produces a chart showing change in rank through time. In this new example, I've also added in the change in rank between 2004 and 2010, as you can see below. The rank change doesn't tell you if an area became more deprived in absolute terms, only that it is less or more deprived in relation to the other 32,481 LSOAs in England.

You can see in the example above a case of a quite large change in rank. This is for an LSOA in London. The maps are quite basic because I don't have time right now to build a more sophisticated site but the colour scheme is based on quintiles, with red most deprived, yellow next and blues less deprived (the darker the blue, the less deprived), as below.

For the moment, I don't have any plans to extend this analysis to Wales or Northern Ireland, but you never know...

Employment Deprivation in England and Scotland

2011-05-25T10:34:00.003+01:00

I'm doing a talk today at the Employment Research Institute in Edinburgh, so I thought I'd put my presentation here and also post a few nuggets of information. Employment deprivation is the subject of the talk and I've been exploring spatial patterns in relation to this. What is 'employment deprivation'? It's involuntary exclusion from the labour force.

A few bits of information... Out of the different indices of deprivation for England and Scotland between 2004 and 2010, the highest figure for employment deprivation was in a LSOA in Rochdale, with 75% of people out of work. The highest figure in Scotland was a Data Zone in Glasgow in 2004 and one in Edinburgh in 2006 with 65% of working age people not in work. There are no major surprises in the general spatial pattens but there are interesting findings in the spatial analysis in the presentation (well, that's what I think).

Further Fusion Experiments

2011-05-22T21:05:00.008+01:00

A short post today to report on some further experimentation with google maps, fusion tables and Scottish deprivation data. I've been exploring patterns of deprivation for a talk I'm giving at the Employment Research Institute in Edinburgh this coming week. Some results follow but in the examples below, the red areas are most deprived, yellow next most and blue less deprived. First of all we have an extract from Wick...

Then one from Inverness...

And finally one from Campbeltown...

The point here is not really to map deprivation data, though of course that's what I've been doing. Instead, it is to test the capabilities of fusion tables. More specifically, I've tried to make the data from the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation from 2004, 2006 and 2009 appear in a chart when you click on an area - and I have been able to get it to work. When you click on any area in any of the maps above (best to use a full screen version), you'll see a chart in the info window that pops up, like this:

Information on how to do this can be found here. It's not that difficult but it does take a while to figure out. My view is that fusion tables are a very powerful way of visualising data and making it easily accessible online. Still in its infancy really but worth a look.

The Voting Decision in a Spatial Context

2011-05-16T21:01:00.005+01:00

In much of my recent work I've been interested in the concept of spatial context and the idea that what happens in one area influences nearby areas (cf. Waldo Tobler). There are many different areas of research related to this but two of them are political geography and spatial statistics. So, with the recent AV vote in the UK, I thought I'd see if there were any contextual effects with the voting. This map of London is the result of some quick analysis I did...

The important thing here is not the overall result (an emphatic 'No' to AV), but the manner in which the 'Yes' vote is spatially clustered. Early work on this kind of thing was pioneered by Kevin Cox in the late 1960s and later by Ron Johnston. I just thought I'd play around with the data to see what it looked like on the map.

Deprivation and Map Distortion (SIMD 2009)

2011-05-05T16:43:00.004+01:00

I'm doing a seminar at the Employment Research Institute in Edinburgh later this month on the topic of employment deprivation in England and Scotland. Recent posts have mostly been about England and patterns of deprivation there and I've been neglecting my native land. So, I thought I would use some of the data to take a look at patterns of deprivation in Scotland using a population-weighted cartogram. The result is below (click to view full size).

Now I need to get on with some more in-depth analysis of employment data...

Google Fusion Tables

2011-04-30T15:40:00.004+01:00

A short post today about the wonderful Google Fusion Tables. It may sound baffling, but Fusion Tables are basically a service (provided by Google, obviously) that allows you to manage and map large databases 'in the cloud', as they say. In plain speak, you can upload large tables of data and display them and map them and share them. For someone like me who is into mapping data, this is great because all you need to do is get your data into kml format. This can be done with normal GIS software like ArcGIS but the best way I have found is to use shpescape.

The example above is just something I created a couple of years ago in ArcGIS and then recently uploaded to Fusion Tables. It's a 'tile finder' for Ordnance Survey data so you can figure out which 20km tile you need to get based on which area you are interested in. This is not the point here though - I'm just showing how you can get data into google map format very easily.

If you work with lots of data on a regular basis - and particularly any mappable data - you should take a look at Fusion Tables...

The IMD in 3D

2011-04-12T07:17:00.005+01:00

Before I move on from experimenting with the deprivation data from the new English Indices of Deprivation I thought I'd do a 3D version, just for fun. The images below are the results of my experiments. The first image has labels for various places. The second image does not and is also at a higher resolution.

When you add a third dimension certain places stand out more (e.g. coastal areas) but there is a balance to be struck here, as always... That's enough IMD mapping for now!

The Domains of the IMD

2011-04-08T08:59:00.011+01:00

What most people look at when they see the Indices of Deprivation is the combined Index of Deprivation score and rank for each area. I do this too, but it's always interesting to examine the individual domains to see how areas rank and what the spatial patterns look like. So, time for a map on all of this... (click to enlarge)

In the above image, you'll see that I've produced a raster map for each of the different domains of the English IMD 2010 and that each is sized according to the percentage weighting it gets in the final IMD. There are some interesting differences between domains which, by the way, are covered in Chapter 3 of the technical report.

Income and employment account for nearly half of the weighting for the final IMD score so these maps look pretty similar to the overall IMD map but there are interesting differences with other domains, in particular Barriers to Housing and Services. This picks up a lot of rural areas but also many in London and some other urban locations. Health deprivation and disability also differs from the final IMD map with a more obvious north-south / coalfield pattern. Finally, the most deprived LSOA on each domain is as follows...

Income: E01005482 in the Central and Falinge ward of Rochdale
Employment: E01005482 in the Central and Falinge ward of Rochdale
Health and Disability: E01005482 in the Central and Falinge ward of Rochdale
Education, Skills and Training: E01013640 in the Braunstone Park ward of Leicester
Barriers to Housing and Services: E01000604 in the Stonebridge ward of Brent
Crime: E01005454 in the Waterhead ward of Oldham
Living Environment: E01001780 in the Hoxton ward of Hackney

The fact that these domains are in different spreadsheets makes mapping it all a bit more time-consuming but since I combined them all anyway I decided to create raster versions just to provide a more fluid overview of the patterns across England. I'm sure I'll keep milking this data for a while!

Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2009 - Google Map

2011-04-03T07:43:00.007+01:00

Recently I've been experimenting with google fusion tables and the mapping and database opportunities they present. One dataset I used for this was the new English Indices of Deprivation for 2010 - something the Guardian picked up. This was only really a quick experiment (literally done over an hour or so) but I was impressed with the capabilities.

Since, I'm from Scotland I also did a Scottish version - click the image below to go to the test site. Again, this is only experimental but I find it useful for exploring the data in an easy to use manner.

Technical note: this also led me to discover the amazing shpescape aka Shape to Fusion for converting shapefiles to fusion format - code which was written by Josh Livni at google. Enough nerdspeak for now.

English Indices of Deprivation 2010 - A North-South Divide?

2011-03-27T20:13:00.010+01:00

I've been looking at the new Indices of Deprivation a bit more since my last post. Despite the headline-grabbing fact that England's most deprived area is in Essex - in the south of England - the overall patterns remain dominated by the North. This map highlights the least and most deprived areas in England and also notes some important exceptions (click map for full size image)...

I've also put together an animation showing the 1%, 2%, 3%, etc. most deprived areas all the way up to the 10% most deprived - and then the 10% least deprived (as in the map above) in order to demonstrate the general north-south divide. Notice how the cities of Liverpool and Manchester in particular dominate these patterns. If you want to control the animation, you can hit pause then move the slider along the time bar yourself (the video may take a moment to load).

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

This version is just a small blog size version - I've also posted a larger version on my University of Sheffield pages. So, in contrast to the headlines, it seems clear that deprivation remains more firmly entrenched in the north than in the south (with some exceptions of course).

Indices of Deprivation 2010

2011-03-24T07:50:00.013Z

The English Indices of Deprivation 2010 were published this morning. Previous Indices were published in 2000, 2004 and 2007. I've decided to do a few posts on this because I find it very interesting and it does have real implications in relation to policy. In this post, I've done some basic mapping and analysis (click on any map to view it full size).

A quick snapshot first: the most deprived LSOA is in Tendring, Essex. It used to be in Liverpool. Overall, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Knowsley, Hull, Hackney and Tower Hamlets remain the most deprived local authorities. So, no major surprises.

Overview for the whole of England, with a list of top ten most deprived LSOAs.

Overview cartogram for England, with a list of top ten most deprived LSOAs.

Detailed map showing location of the most deprived LSOA in England.

A zoomable google map version of the above, for good measure.

View Tendring 018A in a larger map

A more focused map of Merseyside, showing Liverpool, Sefton and Knowsley.

Note: The Indices of Deprivation 2010 are produced for small areas called LSOAs. These lower layer super output areas are not 'neighbourhoods' in a formal sense but they often have a high degree of internal similarity. The average population of an LSOA is about 1500 and in total there are 32,482 of them in England. The data used in the Indices are mostly from 2008 but you can read more about this in the technical report.

World Population and Projections

2011-03-16T06:32:00.005Z

I've been thinking about the future a lot recently because I've been working on a proposal involving scenarios and visions for the future of Europe. So, time to post a couple of things on population change and projections. The first thing is that if you type 'world population' into google, you'll get the following results:

Clicking on the graphic will take you to the google chart where you can turn different countries on and off by ticking the boxes. This makes it easy to compare data on population change from 1960 to 2009 (as below).

The data are from the World Development Indicators of The World Bank. But what if you want to know about the future. Well, there are lots of projections for different countries, but I don't think there are any that go as far as the 2004 report from the United Nations, entitled World Population 2300. Yes, the year 2300.

This is a 254 page report by the Economic and Social Affairs division and they firsst consider projections to 2050 and discuss assumptions and long-range possibilities. Part 2 looks at different scenarios and different areas of the world (e.g. Oceania). Other parts look at country rankings, population density and ageing. The world population projection for 2300 is projected to be about 9 billion. This has already been covered in a Worldmapper map, so no map here. That's all for now...

Repeating Shapes in ArcGIS

2011-03-04T10:38:00.004Z

It's been a while since I wrote about a GIS tool. Sometimes when I'm working with geographic data the need arises to create a set of repeating shapes and I look for tools to automate it. In ArcGIS, the best I've found is Repeating Shapes for ArcGIS by Jeff Jenness.

Very easy to download and install and then you can get started. Some example images below based on hexagons and the documentation pdf.

GDP in the EU27 and the United Kingdom

2011-02-25T16:46:00.008Z

New data on regional gross domestic product (GDP) was published by Eurostat yesterday. It is for the year of 2008 and covers the 27 Member States. When you look at the data for NUTS 2 level the results are very interesting. When you account for purchasing power standards and index the EU average at 100, the highest figure is Inner London, at 343. The lowest figure is for the Bulgarian region of Severozapaden - officially the poorest region in the EU by this measure.

Here's how it looks on the map...

Clearly, the eastern and southern parts of the EU territory are 'poorest' by this measure and there are some major concentrations of low values in the accession states - particularly in Bulgaria and Romania. Of the 64 regions with a GDP of below 75% of the EU average, here's where they are:

"Among the 64 regions below the 75% level, fifteen were in Poland, seven each in the Czech Republic and Romania, six each in Bulgaria and Hungary, four each in Italy and Portugal, three each in Greece, France (all overseas departments) and Slovakia, two in the United Kingdom, one in Spain, as well as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania."

Within the UK, there is significant variation, from 71 in West Wales and the Valleys to 343 in Inner London, though it is worth pointing out that GDP data is affected by commuting patterns, particularly in areas of high in-commuting like Inner London. Nonetheless, here's how it looks on the chart...

As you'd expect, this new data has led to various news stories, including this one by the BBC. The data on GDP are never as up to date as we'd like, but it is interesting looking across the regions of the EU and particularly so when we map it.

Smarter Cities - IBM

2011-02-15T20:46:00.006Z

Over the past few years there has been a growing awareness of the ways in which technology can help cities work more effectively and efficiently. One major initiative in this vein is IBM's Smarter Cities project/programme, which is all about being 'smart' as cities grow and grow and consume more of the world's resources.

Why IBM are doing this, the rationale behind it and the steps they are actually taking are on their website, but here's how they start explaining it all:

"In 1900, only 13% of the world's population lived in cities. By 2050, that number will have risen to 70%. We are adding the equivalent of seven New Yorks to the planet every year.

This unprecedented urbanisation is both a sign of our economic and societal progress and a strain on the planet's infrastructure. It's a challenge felt by mayors, heads of economic development, our schools, police chiefs and other leaders who each help to build and support the communities in which we live.

The challenges these leaders face — educating the young, keeping citizens safe and healthy, attracting and facilitating commerce, and enabling the smooth flow of planes, trains, cars and pedestrians — are compounded by the global economic downturn.

Thankfully, help is at hand. Around the world, intelligence is being infused into the way our cities work."

For more on the above, see the short pdf document...

I've just highlighted the UK section of the IBM Smarter Cities site here but it does refer to places across the globe and in the Case Study section you can see examples from Alameda, Queensland and Madrid, among other places. There's even a story about 'CovJam' - click the link to find out more and watch the video below!

The IBM site is certainly worth a look...

There is a special conference on this theme at MIT in April, called Forum on Future Cities, which is likely to be very interesting.

University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI)

2011-02-09T10:07:00.004Z

Once upon a time, when you put the search term 'UHI' into google, you might have been left with a lot of results about urban heat islands. Now, searching for 'UHI' (from within the UK) will lead you towards the University of the Highlands and Islands website. It's been a long time coming but it only officially became a University in February 2011.

Why do I care, and why am I writing about this? Because I'm from the Highlands, I studied the structure and location of UHI during my MA dissertation research and - most importantly - there has never been a University in this area before. The Highland local authority area is not quite the same as the area covered by UHI, but even on its own it is bigger than Belgium (coincidentally, where I'm going today) - so it meant that young people often had to leave if they wanted to go to University. Now they have a choice.

The University is comprised of 13 different institutions, spread throughout the Highlands and Islands, from Shetland in the far north to Perth in the south. The range of courses is slightly different from other universities and it includes education in Gaelic too.

I'm very happy about this development, though in the history of higher education in Scotland and the UK it could have arrived at a better time!

Exactly how big is the United Kingdom?

2011-01-24T12:11:00.021Z

Following on from the theme of a recent post, about the size of different countries, I thought it would be interesting to compare the size of the United Kingdom to other parts of the world. The UK covers an area of about 243,000 square km., which is quite big in some ways, but not so big in others (ask any Canadian). It's all a matter of perspective. Some maps and facts below, with the UK superimposed on different parts of the world. Click the maps to see them in full size.

Russia is 70 times larger than the UK
Canada is about 41 times larger than the UK (and has lots of ice road truckers)
The USA and China are both approximately 40 times larger than the UK
Brazil is 35 times bigger than the UK
Australia is about 32 times bigger than the UK
India is 13 times bigger
Sudan is 10 times bigger (even if the South does split it will still be massive!)
Iran is 7 times bigger
France is twice as big (this is just the European part, not the overseas départements)

NOTES: I've used an equal area projection so there is a bit more map distortion than I'd like but that's unavoidable. For the USA I've shown the continental US and Alaska on separate maps. I've not shown Hawaii this time.

Poll Everywhere - audience response for lectures

2011-01-10T11:56:00.004Z

I've not blogged on e-learning stuff for a while so time for a new one. Today I'm speaking at the University of Sheffield's annual Learning and Teaching conference. My talk is all about integrating 'low-tech' technology into teaching - the slides are online too. One thing I'm doing is demonstrating Poll Everywhere for audience response in lectures (screenshot of home page below).

It can often be very useful to get feedback from students during or at the end of teaching sessions. Since the vast majority of students now have mobile phone deals with unlimited texts or can get online via their phones, Poll Everywhere is making a real impact in this area. It's very easy to use and it is free for classes of up to 32 students. An example below of how you can also embed the polls in web pages... If you click an option below you can see the results of this crucial poll!

Replace your audience response systems with Poll Everywhere

Many universities in the UK (e.g. Brighton, Greenwich) are now using Poll Everywhere, so it may be here to stay. I think it is a very effective tool for quick feedback from students.

EUROCITIES - Tackling Urban Poverty

2011-01-03T17:11:00.004Z

Just in case you missed it, 2010 was the year for tackling poverty and social exclusion in Europe, according to Eurocities - well, actually the European Commission, but Eurocities agree! There is a very interesting video about all this - see below. Some interesting examples in the video from across Europe.

What is Eurocities? Here's what they say...

EUROCITIES is the network of major European cities. We bring together the local governments of more than 140 large cities in over 30 European countries.

We influence and work with the EU institutions to respond to common issues that impact the day-to-day lives of Europeans. Our aim is to shape the opinions of stakeholders in Brussels to ultimately shift legislation in a way that helps city governments address the EU's strategic challenges at the local level. A large part of our work is aimed at reinforcing the role and place that local government should have in a multi-level governance structure.

Based on the EU's three key challenges, EUROCITIES' policy priorities are:

Climate
Recovery
Inclusion

The Size of Countries: USA and China

2010-12-22T21:40:00.008Z

There have been a few blog posts elsewhere recently about the size of Africa. Kai Krause was the original blogger on this with his 'True Size of Africa' map, which is very impressive. This was picked up by a couple of other blogs, including the Economist's take on it and the Spatial Analysis blog at CASA.

I've recently been looking at this kind of thing from a different perspective but still in relation to the size of countries. Some of this has involved playing around with regions, nations and population data. I thought it would be interesting to look at the USA and China since they are very similar in area but very different in population.

Some images below. Click to view them full size. This first one puts the USA and China side-by-side with population data included and the second one superimposes China on the USA's land area.

The Future for England's Cities...

2010-12-19T18:57:00.006Z

A quick post today on some recent research by the Centre for Cities. Their report - entitled 'Grand Designs? A new approach to the built environment in England’s cities' takes a look at what the future might hold for England's cities in relation to regeneration and the built environment.

Some interesting findings and analysis of population data going back to 1801. One particularly encouraging view is that money urgently needs to be found to continue the work in housing market renewal areas across England.

There are also some interesting maps and animations. I'm not saying they're interesting just because I did them, but because of the patterns they reveal. Honest. The latter can be found on the Grand Designs web page and the former in the report itself. Regular visitors to this blog (if there are any!) may recognise the animations from previous work I've done.

MIT and Great Britain Regions

2010-12-09T20:28:00.004Z

Some interesting news from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) via the BBC News website...

Analysts from the SENSEable City Lab have produced a new map of the regions of Great Britain using a novel approach. The new map is based on telecoms data of human interactions (i.e. phone calls) and it is based on a dataset of "12 billion calls over a one-month period, estimating more than 95% coverage of the Great Britain's residential and business landlines". They must have a big computer. What does it all look like? Check out this video:

There's a longer paper on this and it's worth also checking out the Network&Society pages related to the work. You can even download a zip file with all the maps and use them free of copyright (so long as you acknowledge the source). The main map to feature in the BBC story is shown below - interesting when you compare it to some of the flow maps for the UK that I've blogged on before...

Experiments in Colour

2010-11-30T23:30:00.006Z

I've been experimenting with colour and animations a lot recently. This involves producing a lot of material that ends up on the floor of the editing room, so to speak. So, I made an entirely pointless animation of said cuttings... The one below is an animated gif (nerd speak) of the North West of England and its commuting 'intensity' (i.e. spikes for areas where people commute to). The visual effects are just from my experiments - some just for the sake of art. An assault on the eyeballs, to be sure!

How to Shade Your Maps - Colorbrewer

2010-11-24T08:19:00.005Z

A short post today about 'Colorbrewer'. What is it? It's a website by Cynthia Brewer, Mark Harrower and Penn State University (home of many GIS/visualisation boffins) which you can use to help you decide what colours you maps should be. This is not a trivial matter and it is often difficult to develop an appropriate colour scheme that looks good, is colour blind friendly, print friendly and photocopy friendly. Hence the Colorbrewer website.

You can choose from a variety of colour schemes, you can choose the number of colours in you colour scheme, you can export the information in various ways and you can even download a 'colortool' extension for ArcGIS.

There is so much advice on the website - it really is excellent but I just never got round to blogging about it until now. Ultimately you still have to make choices yourself but with Colorbrewer these choices can be much more appropriate. Take a look...

A Vision of Britain Through Time

2010-11-14T09:12:00.005Z

I've been doing some work recently which involves the analysis of population change in England from 1801 to 2009. The data for this has come from the Census (which goes back to 1801) and mid-year population estimates (for 2009). The data itself has been sourced from a wonderful website called A vision of Britain through time, based at the University of Portsmouth. It's an innovative and pretty comprehensive exercise in historical stats and historical GIS.

As you can see from the screenshot above, you can enter a place name to find a place, you can look at various landcover maps, you can look at historical maps, Census reports and even travel writing by such distinguished contributors as Samuel Johnson, Daniel Defoe, Celia Fiennes and the wonderfully named Gerald of Wales.

Samuel Johnson's writing is from his 'A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland' and is both shocking and funny seen from today's perspective. He very much disapproves of the 'Highland manners' and he calls Loch Ness 'a very remarkable diffusion of water without islands'.

The maps (as above) are really interesting and you can, for example, take a look at your area in the 19th and 20th centuries as well as look at the present day OpenStreetMap version.

To sum up, lots to look and and worth a look.

Concentrated Poverty

2010-11-12T10:57:00.006Z

I've been doing some work on the issue of concentrated poverty recently. Whilst doing this I came across an interesting video or two from the Brookings Institution featuring Alan Berube, a Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program. Here's what he had to say:

I also produced a very short animation of patterns of poverty in London between 1999 and 2005, based on the Economic Deprivation Index. As you can see, there is not much change between years and the areas of concentrated poverty (in red) do not change too much. It's a bit 'rough and ready' but does the job...

Local Enterprise Partnerships

2010-10-29T21:30:00.008+01:00

In my previous post about Local Enterprise Partnerships I noted that 56 applications had been put forward to BIS/CLG (note here that BIS said they had 62 responses to the invitation to form LEPs but CLG said that 56 proposals were received). There have been some significant developments since then... The publication of the Local Growth White Paper yesterday formally introduced the Regional Growth Fund and states that RDAs are to be shut down by April 2012. This was not really news though. What was new was the announcement of the 24 areas which have been asked to form the first wave of LEPs (see below - click on image to view full size).

You can find more detailed maps of the areas here and on page 39 of the White Paper. I just made the image above because the official maps are a bit muddled/confusing. Some LEPs cover very large areas with many local authorities included (e.g. Kent, Greater Essex and East Sussex), some cover few local authorities but large areas (e.g. Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly) and many others cover local authorities in city region areas (e.g. Liverpool City Region). Some of them will no doubt come up with snappier names than they have at present although 'Coast to Capital' is the early front-runner for best name.

Large parts of England are covered by first wave LEPs (e.g. West Midlands, North West) and the striking thing from the detail of the White Paper is the difference between the Regional Growth Fund and the level of RDA funding previously available. Other sources worth a look are the Analytical paper on sub-national growth (SERC obviously a major influence here), details of the Regional Growth Fund (in a nutshell, £1.4bn over the three years from 2011 to 2014) and the remaining links at the bottom of this page.

There is also a new BIS website on 'Setting out the path to sustainable growth' introduced by the author of the 'one-eyed smile' (see the bottom of this document to understand what I mean).

Sheffield Deprivation

2010-10-25T15:06:00.003+01:00

I've been experimenting with deprivation data (again) and google maps (again). This time I've overlaid deprivation data for Sheffield on to google maps. I did this by using a fairly simple technique, which includes making sure the geographic projection is correct. I've described this before too.

You can pan/zoom on the embedded map below, but to see the full thing you'll need to click on 'View Larger Map'. Once you've done that you can see further information on the left hand side. You can turn layers on and off using the little tick boxes on the left and you can query the map by clicking it.

Not much else to say apart from take a look at the map below.

View Larger Map

London Datastore

2010-10-20T10:53:00.007+01:00

I've posted stuff before (e.g. economic deprivation, population growth) about London so this post is about data for London which is available via the London Datastore. It is a website run by the Greater London Authority which you can go to if you want data for London (obviously).

What kind of data is available? Well, you could look at the GLA Budget, average house prices, or even data on abandoned vehicles. You could also take a look at the A-Z list and/or search the archive. Hours of fun.

The data are available at various spatial scales, some below Borough level and some not. Finally, here's a map of Cannabis Possession Incidents recorded by the British Transport Police for a two-year period up to July 2010. This just covers incidents on trains, tracks, stations, etc. Click the map to see full size. The highest value is in Westminster.

Travel to Work Areas / Labour Market Areas

2010-10-08T15:43:00.005+01:00

I've been doing some work recently which uses travel to work areas rather than local authority boundaries. The analysis is on deprivation in England using the Economic Deprivation Index, so I thought it would make more sense to do the work within the context of more local labour market areas. In England, the best proxy for these is the travel to work area or TTWA.

There are currently 243 of them defined in the UK - and there is a lot more information on this (including the methodology) available here. One part of what I have been doing is to compare the size of TTWAs for different places.

In the maps below you can see the London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester TTWAs displayed at the same geographical scale. The TTWA areas are coloured and the local authority boundaries are overlaid on top of this with black lines. Click on the image below to see it full size in your web browser.

It may be a bit of a surprise to see how big some of the non-London TTWAs are. Clearly, London is the largest and includes the most local authorities but Manchester and Birmingham in particular cover large areas and Liverpool covers a large north to south area.

100 Essential Books of Planning

2010-09-19T19:15:00.005+01:00

Since this is my 100th attempt at a coherent post, I thought it would be a good idea to reflect upon something numerically appropriate.

In 2009, to celebrate 100 years of the American planning movement, the American Planning Association decided to put together a list of 'essential books of planning' - which of course contains 100 books. All good planners own well thumbed copies of all 100 and most have committed them to memory. Perhaps not. Actually, there are many people may have forgotten about/never heard of. The quick, at-a-glance pdf list is worth downloading just to check this.

The list is compiled by decade, and it makes interesting reading. Some examples below (can't say I've read them all but I did particularly like Leopold's A Sand County Almanac)...

Bowling Alone (Putnam, 2000)
The Rise of the Creative Class (Florida, 2002)
The Devil in the White City (Larson, 2004)
The Geography of Nowhere (Kunstler, 1994)
Edge City (Garreau, 1991)
Cities of Tomorrow (Hall, 1988)
Life Between Buildings (Gehl, 1987)
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (Whyte, 1980)
A Reader in Planning Theory (Faludi, 1973)
Small is Beautiful (Schumacher, 1973)
The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jacobs, 1961)
The Image of the City (Lynch, 1960)
Towards New Towns for America (Stein, 1951)
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (Leopold, 1949)
The Structure and Growth of Residential Neighborhoods in American Cities (Hoyt, 1939)
Towards a New Architecture (Le Corbusier, 1923; in English, 1927)
Cities in Evolution (Geddes, 1915)

...if you're wondering why Garden Cities of To-Morrow is not on the list, check your dates. Obviously, the list is US-centric but it does make interesting reading. There are even some 'methods' books on the list, such as Krueckeberg and Silvers' 1974 text on Urban Planning Analysis. Also, there are many on the list that are not really 'planning' books as such, like von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944).

Filtering Flow Data

2010-09-16T16:21:00.004+01:00

My adventures in spatial interaction visualisation continue. I'm currently finalising some more of this work in a paper I'm writing and it gets quite complicated so I've tried to think of ways to simplify the patterns within the vast datasets I've been working with.

The image below shows inter-district migration in the UK for 2001 at different flow magnitudes in a very short animation. This is just one example of the kind of visual things I've been working on recently.

Flow Map Layout

2010-09-13T12:30:00.007+01:00

I've been experimenting with mapping flow data (again) and this time have been looking at Flow Map Layout, by Phan et al. at Stanford. There is a short paper on it, and a slideshare presentation, but basically it offers a slightly different approach to flow mapping.

I experimented using UK commuting data for 2001. I looked at the top 50 flows (by district) into Greater London. This equates to more than 550,000 commuters going in to London but it excludes intra-London moves obviously. It's a bit tricky at first when you are trying to get used to it but when you do you can produce some nice images... Click on the image below to see it full size.

You can move things around in the (basic) mapping interface and it is actually quite flexible. There are some display options for colours and edge routing, etc.

The largest inflow was from Epping Forest, with around 26,000 commuters.

Local Enterprise Partnerships in England

2010-09-08T07:08:00.008+01:00

Some recent news from England, where the Government has announced that 56 proposals for Local Enterprise Partnerships have been received. Although they are not similar in scale to the previous regional structures, there is evidence that they have some functional basis.

Among the proposals are Liverpool City Region, Kent and Medway, 'Enterprise M3' (covering parts of Hampshire and Surrey), 'Gatwick Diamond' and Sheffield City Region. All this came about because of a letter Vince Cable and Eric Pickles sent to Local Authority and Business Leaders in June 2010.

Interesting snippets from the letter include 'separate arrangements will apply in London' and 'the Coalition Government is determined to rebalance the economy towards the private sector' and - interestingly - 'we wish to enable partnerships to better reflect the natural economic geography of the areas they serve and hence to cover real functional economic and travel to work areas'.

Given this last statement, the list of the proposals submitted begins to look more interesting...

Economic Deprivation in London

2010-08-26T13:36:00.004+01:00

I've recently been doing some analysis of the Economic Deprivation Index for England, focusing on a number of different cities. This is part of some research I'm doing into concentrated disadvantage more generally so I thought I'd just post a map showing the data for London in 2005.

The map below shows data for the EDI in London in 2005. It's pretty similar to what you'd expect but it does make interesting viewing... If you click the image it will open up full size in your web browser.

That's all for now, but I plan to post more like this in future.

Save as DBF in Excel 2007

2010-07-23T14:39:00.006+01:00

One common problem for ArcGIS users over the past few years has been the decision of Microsoft not to allow users the option of saving files in dbf format from Excel 2007. It's not a problem if you are still using Excel 2003 but if you only have Excel 2007 it makes what was previously quite simple a lot more difficult.

One tool I've recently used is an Excel Add-In produced by Gyula Gulyas from theXLwiz blog. There are some useful dbf videos on his youtube channe l which is, possibly, the only one in the world to combine videos about dbase file formats and videos of cheerleading!

Anyway, I have the tool. It cost me £17.34 ($25 USD) but it has been worth every penny. I know there are other options and I've tried some of them, but the Gulyas tool is so simple and effective and results in very compact file sizes. I highly recommend it!

A Nearest Neighbour Index of Multiple Deprivation

2010-07-14T09:19:00.005+01:00

I've blogged before about my attempts to add a more spatial dimension to the existing Indices of Deprivation for England. In this post, I have decided to share the data for my calculations on a Nearest Neighbour Index of Multiple Deprivation, following the method described in this paper.

The image below shows the IMD2007 (left) and NNIMD2007 (right) for Birmngham, with red most deprived and blue least deprived.

I have put together a spreadsheet containing the original IMD data plus my NNIMD data for all 32,482 LSOAs in England. If you click on the links below you can access the data - you'll need to click the 'download' link to get the data.

NNIMD dataset - Excel 2003 version (.xls)

NNIMD dataset - Excel 2007 version (.xlsx)

Creating Cartograms - Some Options

2010-06-23T06:53:00.004+01:00

One of the most difficult things to do properly with GIS is to create cartograms. They can be very powerful visually (e.g. Worldmapper, see below) but producing accurate representations is not simple. I've been experimenting with this over the years, and have now come to some conclusions...

You could use something like MAPresso to create cartograms but it's not necessarily the easiest application to get into. If you're an ArcGIS user you could try the CartogramCreator extension.

However, I've recently experimented with ScapeToad and have found it to be the best tool. It's stand-alone software for producing cartograms (despite the funny name) and it works really well and there are many useful options for creating cartograms. It's very easy to use as well.

European Geodata - NUTS, etc.

2010-06-16T16:24:00.004+01:00

Need to find digital boundaries for the European Union? Tried googling but no success? They are of course available via UKBorders in the UK but if you can't get them this way then you can find them via search but it's not that easy.

The first thing you need to do is go to the Eurostat Geodata pages. Then from the menu on the left you can select 'Reference' or 'Archive' to get to the download section. Once you're there you just need to click on the kind of data you want (e.g. 'Administrative units/statistical units') and you are taken to the download page where there are lots of links...

And that's it.

Some interesting datasets, including:

Corine Land Cover
Urban Morphological Zones
Degree of urbanisation
NUTS boundaries (down to NUTS3)
Elevation
Settlement names

Centre for Cities - Private Sector Growth

2010-06-15T15:33:00.005+01:00

A quick post today about some recent work published by the Centre for Cities. The report, called 'Private sector cities: A new geography of opportunity' looks at the question of private sector growth in England and the issue of whether any spatial 'rebalancing' is needed in relation to fostering private sector growth.

It was written by the Centre for Cities' Chris Webber and Paul Swinney and has had quite lot of media attention (e.g. this Financial Times article) since its publication. Worth a look - and not just because of the fancy graphics!

Sheffield Demolition

2010-06-07T17:24:00.014+01:00

Quiet on the blogging front recently, but yesterday I had the chance to see a Sheffield Building toppled. The old Osborne Mushets on Penistone road (in street view below), was demolished to make way for new development. More changes to Sheffield's old industrial landscape.

View Larger Map

I took some photos and a video of the event...

Functional Typology Website

2010-05-14T19:22:00.005+01:00

When I worked at the University of Manchester I was involved in some work which developed a functional typology of deprived neighbourhoods. I've mentioned this before in the blog. Well, now there is a website on it, produced by the Centre for Urban Policy Studies at the University of Manchester.

It tells you all about the typology, has a google map version with LSOA boundaries, and describes the methodology and results. It also provides details of publications relating to the typology. A screenshot is shown below. Go to the Functional Typology of Deprived Neighbourhoods website to see more...

A Lightbox and a 3D Map

2010-04-19T13:46:00.008+01:00

A short post today, following the theme of some other recent posts. I've been experimenting with creating different kinds of 3D surfaces with Ordnance Survey data. I've also been experimenting with ways of displaying these online.

So, what's a 'lightbox' - well, it's a way of making an image pop-out on screen with the background darkened. Click the image below to see this in action. The 3D map in the lightbox is just a surface model I created using an OS 1:50,000 colour raster tile for the Inverness/Moray Firth area in the north of Scotland.

Further details of how to integrate lightboxes into blogger (for nerds) can be found here.

Video Tutorials for GIS

2010-04-14T10:03:00.006+01:00

I've not been saying much recently about screencasting, or video tutorials, but I have been working in this area quite a lot over the past year - mainly in conjunction with SalfordGIS. I've just come back from the Planning Research UK Conference in Chelmsford where I was speaking about my work in this area. So, I thought it was about time for another GIS screencast post.

The video below is one of a series I've produced in collaboration with SalfordGIS. This one is a basic ArcMap demo but we also have lots of MapInfo videos too. For both GIS applications skills from basic to advanced are covered. The videos are all around 3 to 5 minutes long each, with one task demonstrated per video. The idea is not to replace traditional GIS training but to provide quick refreshers of key skills.

Manchester Commuter Inflows

2010-04-11T11:56:00.006+01:00

A short post today on visualizing commuting flows. I've used some 3D GIS techniques to create a commuting surface for the North West of England (based on wards). Areas with peaks represent high in-commuting. Manchester dominates the North West pattern, as seen below.

I added in flow lines to this map in order to see which 'peaks' were being by-passed on the way to Manchester, and from where. The lines on the map below represent flows of 25 or more from individual wards in the North West. Not a huge number per ward, but it all adds up. When you think of how many people are doing this and how far they come it is significant however...

This is only really a rough draft, but it does communicate quite a bit of information and it tells a familiar story of urban commuting. Click on the map to see it in full size.

OS OpenData - It's Here!

2010-04-01T20:41:00.002+01:00

So, Ordnance Survey today unveiled their new 'OS OpenData' service, where anyone can download high quality OS datasets for viewing or for use in a GIS. Personal and commercial re-use is allowed, though the largest scale datasets (e.g. MasterMap) are not included in this 'free' service. Nonetheless, it's an excellent development. The official government document has more details, and the data download section is now live. In recognition of this historic day, I've done a quick video tour of the new service. I'll blog on something different next time...

OS OpenSpace - free web mapping

2010-03-29T21:06:00.013+01:00

Following on from the subject of the previous post on Ordnance Survey, I've been experimenting with their excellent new OpenSpace service, launched in January. The OS OpenSpace API is free to access and lets developers create web applications and online projects with Ordnance Survey maps.

Put simply, you can now easily make a map with OS data and put it on your website. On blogger it can be a bit tricky, but overall it's not that difficult and there are many options for customisation. The map below is just an example - it is fully interactive. I made it quickly using the web-map builder. (For those of a technical persuasion, I just pasted in some iframe code on blogger - the actual html file is on my university server.) I may do more with this in future but for the time being this is it...

Ordnance Survey Data - A Revolution?

2010-03-26T16:05:00.008Z

Following the news some time ago that most Ordnance Survey data (if not all - still waiting for details) is to be made available free of charge for re-use by personal and commercial users, the GI fraternity is abuzz with anticipation. I am also pretty excited about this development since it will make working with geographic data and using GIS in the United Kingdom much easier. It should also increase the number of users, as SalfordGIS point out.

The current understanding is that from April 1, 2010 several OS datasets (e.g. 1:50,000 colour raster) will be made freely available. What are the implications of this? Just some thoughts...

Anyone will be able to download and print original OS maps, free of charge
Anyone will be able to use OS data to derive new maps - previously this was forbidden
GIS users will use data in new and innovative ways
GIS consultants will increase in number
In general, many good things will happen and geographic knowledge will increase

Much more will be written on this in the media in the coming weeks and there is no doubt it is an exciting time if you are in any way involved in the world of geographic information in the United Kingdom.

The future is full of possibilities!

NSNR Final Evaluation

2010-03-13T13:10:00.007Z

Just over a week ago (4th March 2010), the final evaluations of two major English urban policy initiatives were published by CLG. One of these was the New Deal for Communities (NDC) final assessmen t - the other was the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (NSNR) final report. This short post is about the latter document, which contains 119 pages in all.

The NSNR was launched in 2001 with the notion that "within 10 to 20 years no-one should be seriously disadvantaged by where they live" - a very noble (unrealistic?) goal. The report itself covers the following, in some detail:

the nature of deprived neighbourhoods;
change in deprived areas;
factors influencing change in deprived neighbourhoods;
the impact of NSNR on deprived neighbourhoods;
the effectiveness of NSNR arrangements; and
lessons for the future.

With all such evaluations, however, the real issue is not the evaluation itself but the wider context within which the programme operates. It has been said that the most effective anti-poverty strategy is economic growth and in many ways this is true, but even in a period of sustained growth (e.g. 1997 to 2007) what we have seen is a deepening of concentrated deprivation in many cities, though there have been some successes. So, on p. 80 we have "overall value for money appeared to be good for the majority of the interventions" and on p. 112 a more engouraging statement: "in terms of value for money, NRF appears to have performed well – demonstrably so with regard to reducing worklessness in particular"

Some earlier work I was involved in at the Centre for Urban Policy Studies is reported from p. 18 to 21 and there are many other interesting results, data and maps. The report also makes a very kind acknowledgement of my input!

Visualising London Population Growth

2010-03-07T21:36:00.014Z

Update, 7 June 2011 - See bottom of post for a new animation...

Following the theme of the last post - and the last series of posts with video content and animations, this is a short post on the development of London's population, by Borough, from 1801 to 2001. The data is, of course, Crown Copyright - and I downloaded the files from here, in case you want to know. There are a lot of data here, so how to make sense of it? First of all, an animated bar chart sequence, with the original 1963 Inner London Boroughs (i.e. not the ONS definition) in red and the Outer London Boroughs in blue...

You can see it in full size here, to enable reading of label names.

The next experiment in visualizing this data was to convert it into a Google motion chart. The results of this are shown below. You can start the graphics by hitting the play button and you can query them by hovering over any of the coloured bubbles. To label a bubble, just click it. It's a bit small here but this is just for illustration. Experiment with the tabs at the top of the initial chart to see the data in a different format. There's lots of options for experimenting here...

Finally, a view of what all this looks like spatially, in 3D.

As for the data itself, you can discover a lot from these visualizations, but the high point in population for a London Borough was Tower Hamlets in 1901, with 597,000 and the low point was in Brent with 2,000 in 1801 and 1811.

Postscript, 7 June 2011. I've since done a proper London animation for the Centre for Cities. A small version is shown below. For the full version, check this link.

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Geovisualization

2010-02-27T16:37:00.014Z

Following on from the previous post, I dug out some of my previous work, did a bit of experimenting, editing and touching-up to produce some new geovisualizations. I believe that geovizualisation is about more than just making pretty maps - it is about communicating a lot of spatial data in an effective way, which could not otherwise be easily digested.

In short, geovisualization is part spatial data analysis, part graphic design, part art. In this post, I've tried to use a combination of techniques in order to produce the set of images below. The data displayed is commuting for wards in North West England in 2001. I used a GIS to create the raster images and convert them to 3D, I used some image editing tools to add labels, and I used some more advanced techniques for the colour/grey background focus ones.

Click on the individual images to view in full size at best resolution - the smaller versions below are not super high quality. Areas with high red spikes = areas of high in-commuting and blue = areas of high out-commuting. In effect, the red areas are where people work and the blue areas are where people live, though in reality there is of course some overlap.

Image 1 - Commuting in NW England, 2001

Image 2 - Same image as above, but with labels

Image 3 - Same image, with different colours

Image 4 - More colour experimentation

Image 5 - Colour focus area for Manchester

Image 6 - Colour focus area for Liverpool

dataviz - Improving data visualisation for the public sector

2010-02-26T19:58:00.004Z

The topic of today's post is dataviz, a new website devoted to improving data visualisation - specifically focused on the public sector. It's a joint initiative between CLG and OCSI and is really quite an attractive new website with lots of interesting visualisation examples, including Time magazine's population density spike map.

There's a CLG pdf document about this new development here, and it explains all the 'what', 'why' and 'how' questions about the project. Finally, the gallery of examples is definitely worth a look...

Journal Rankings from Australia

2010-02-24T08:51:00.009Z

A lot has been written (e.g. see this) about the RAE, so this is not the focus of this post. Instead, this post is about journal rankings. The link here is that the eqivalent exercise in Australia (Excellence in Research for Australia, or ERA) has produced a ranked list of journals to be used in assessing academic outputs. Clearly, this is contentious and controversial and it has heated up exchanges in e-mail lists worldwide. It has also been written about in the mainstream press.

First, though, where can we find these rankings? Click here to find them, and click on the next link to download the Excel spreadsheet with all the data.

In many nations, academics are assessed on the basis of their research outputs. Here in the UK, this was previously done using the Research Assessment Exercise and will next be done via the Research Excellence Framework, in 2012.

Journals are ranked on a four-point scale: A*, A, B and C. Clearly, this is not good news for C-ranked journals or, in fact, most B-ranked journals. Even some of the A-ranked journals can't be happy about this. However, I'm sure the A*-ranked journals are happy. But, what on earth do these tiers mean? The associated web page is here, but this is the gist of it:

A* - Typically an A* journal would be one of the best in its field or subfield in which to publish and would typically cover the entire field/subfield. Virtually all papers they publish will be of a very high quality. These are journals where most of the work is important (it will really shape the field) and where researchers boast about getting accepted. Acceptance rates would typically be low and the editorial board would be dominated by field leaders, including many from top institutions.

A - The majority of papers in a Tier A journal will be of very high quality. Publishing in an A journal would enhance the author’s standing, showing they have real engagement with the global research community and that they have something to say about problems of some significance. Typical signs of an A journal are lowish acceptance rates and an editorial board which includes a reasonable fraction of well known researchers from top institutions.

B - Tier B covers journals with a solid, though not outstanding, reputation. Generally, in a Tier B journal, one would expect only a few papers of very high quality. They are often important outlets for the work of PhD students and early career researchers. Typical examples would be regional journals with high acceptance rates, and editorial boards that have few leading researchers from top international institutions.

C - Tier C includes quality, peer reviewed, journals that do not meet the criteria of the higher tiers.

In the field that I mainly work in, and journal types I would submit journal articles to (urban and regional planning, human geography), how does this translate?

Well, here are some examples of journals by ranking tier:

A* - Urban Studies, Regional Studies, Town Planning Review, Environment and Planning B, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Journal of Planning Literaure, Progress in Planning...

A - Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Housing Studies, European Planning Studies, Environment and Planning A, International Planning Studies, Cities, Environment and Planning D, Planning Theory and Practice...

B - Area, Australian Geographer, Geoforum, Spatial Economic Analysis, Space and Polity, Professional Geographer, Australian Planner, GeoJournal...

C - Applied Geography, Journal of Geography, Critical Planning, Scottish Geographical Journal, Global Built Environment Review, Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal...

Should we be worried? Probably, though some of this is country-specific and many journal ranks would change if this exercise was carried out in other countries. However, a precedent has been set... (and I didn't even mention the conference rankings!)

Fly to in Google Earth

2010-02-19T10:28:00.003Z

Another video post today. Some time ago I was experimenting with the latest update of Google Earth, which at the time was (and still is) version 5. The 'Fly to' function allows you to enter a place name, address or other geographic identifier and when you hit search Google Earth flies there. There's a short video on this on the Google Earth pages.

I find these kinds of tools very useful for teaching and helping students think about spaces and places, though not usually at the global level. There is now even a Flight Simulator in Google Earth, one based on a jet and one based on a slower aircraft - lots of fun, but not totally relevant for teaching planning students...

The short video below starts includes the places I've lived in and/or worked in since I was born and ends at the University of Sheffield, where I currently work.

London Commuting Surface in 3D

2010-02-18T17:12:00.004Z

I've moved on from some of my original flow mapping work of 2008/09 and am now working on different kinds of things. However, I came across some interesting work on geovisualisation at The University of Manchester Geospatial blog which made me want to revisit previous work.

In particular, the reference to a short population density animation caught my attention.

In short, I have experimented with 3D animated geovisualisations - in this instance it is of my London flow surface and flow lines using commuting data. There's a short video below (it may take a moment or two to load - it's a large file).

Google Street View Video

2010-01-26T12:03:00.010Z

A short post today about the Street View function in Google Maps. Recently, Inverness in the north of Scotland came online with this so I've been having a look around. The coverage is expanding all the time, but not into Germany (see map below).

Overall, I find it to be a really useful tool for teaching and learning in urban planning - and also very good for just having a look around new places and trying to spot people you know. I was curious to see if a video could be made from Street View, so I came up the the short clip below...

Red Road Flats, Glasgow

2010-01-18T20:52:00.012Z

Since they're not going to be with us much longer, I'm writing a short post about the Red Road Flats in Glasgow - a group of eight high-rise social housing blocks in the north of the city. I used to live just over a mile away from them and it will be strange when they are gone since they have been such a feature of the city's skyline for more than 40 years. There's some really interesting material on the flats on this website, set up specially to document their demolition.

Just to be more precise about where they are, here's a Google streetview:

View Larger Map

There's also a series of Quicktime panoramas here (with further links on the right of this page). There's also a gritty/disturbing 2006 film of the same name which is set there. There are hundreds of other potential links, but the final one here is from a short BBC film of the area. The schedule for demolition is a little unclear, but the first block is supposed to be toppled in spring 2010.

Finally, I edited one of my very own Red Road photos (taken in 2005) to see what the skyline will look like from Petershill Road once they are all gone (the picture below is a small animated gif).

Obama's Urban Policy in 2009

2010-01-15T08:16:00.004Z

I've blogged before about Barack Obama's urban policy approach in the US and recently came across a video by the National Journal Online which reviews his progress over the first year. He gets about 4 or 5 out of 10 according to most, and the video has some interesting comments from Adolfo Carrión.

GeoDa - for spatial data analysis

2010-01-08T08:42:00.006Z

A quick post today on GeoDa - a piece of software for spatial data analysis, and also a centre for geospatial analysis and computation at Arizona State University. I've used the software for a few years and found it really useful, so thought I'd do a short post on it and a little video too, just to demonstrate what it looks like in action.

In the video I've not done any analysis or explored any of the capabilities with GeoDa, but rather just shown how the interface works and performed a couple of basic tasks, like adding a shapefile and making a basic choropleth map. The main thing I've used it for is measuring spatial autocorrelation in relation to deprivation in England but there are so many other uses and it is now very widely used (among spatial stats boffins at least!).

The version I'm demonstrating here isn't the only software that the GeoDa people produce - for a full list, see here. However, it is a very powerful tool for geospatial analysis and one that many researchers could not now do without...

Regeneration 2000-2009

2010-01-01T11:58:00.004Z

Much has been written about regeneration in the UK over the past decade. A couple of days ago I saw a piece in the Guardian about 'regeneration in the noughties'. Interesting stuff - basically, it says that a decade of regeneration has resulted in nice looking city centres but not a lot else. In particular, it looks at the experience in Sheffield. (For Sheffield, the Sheffield blog is also quite interesting.)

I wrote a blog post about this general topic ages ago but it's useful to reflect on the past decade since the new one looks like it will be all about public spending cuts and not much shiny new regeneration.

A plan to save Detroit?

2009-12-14T22:15:00.008Z

A recent article by Bruce Katz captured my attention today. It's entitled 'The Detroit Project: A Plan for Solving America's Greatest Urban Disaster' - strong words indeed. It's of interest to me for a few reasons: 1. urban policy is one of my main research areas; 2. it mentions Sheffield - where I live; 3. it uses European examples in a positive light; 4. it makes international comparisons; 5. my Grandparents used to live and work in Detroit (they were immigrants in the early 1930s); 6. I've been there and seen the city first-hand (see photos below).

The policy challenges faced in Detroit are huge. The population has halved since 1950, unemployment is at 28% and there are 1,220 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Despite all this, I found it a very enjoyable city to visit. Maybe that's because I've also lived in cities such as Glasgow and Liverpool and I like interesting places. Anyone who has driven along the lower dock road in Liverpool and West Fort Street in Detroit will understand. However, the claim that 'Europe is filled with cities that have risen from similarly miserable conditions' is, in my view, a bit over the top. Having said that, anyone who grew up in Liverpool in the 1980s would understand the comparison.

I do agree with the assertion that 'recovery requires at least a generation' - as Katz says.

Public Spending in the UK

2009-11-25T12:18:00.003Z

The Guardian have been doing some interesting things with data over the past couple of years, including setting up their data store. One of the most interesting visualisations they have produced relates to public spending in the UK. The most recent version of this graphic (produced in conjunction with the Institute for Fiscal Studies), for 2008-09 reveals some interesting things...

Total spending was £620.685 billion, up 7% on the previous year
Department for Work and Pensions (state pensions, housing benefit, etc.) spending was £135.7 billion
£94.552 billion was spent on the NHS
Interest payments on debt were £24.1 billion
'Financial stability' measures (i.e. bailing out the banks) was £85.5 billion
More money was spent bailing out LTSB and RBS (£36.9 billion) than on the Department for Communities and Local Government (£36.8 billion)
DCLG spending for local and regional government was £25.4 billion

There's a fully fledged article on all this, and links to the downloadable pdf on the Guardian pages relating to this analysis. There's also a related flickr page for visualisations.

Old Industrial Landscapes

2009-11-18T11:57:00.003Z

A short post today, on the topic of old industrial landscapes. Specifically, pictures of Kelham Island in Sheffield. I showed some German professors around this area during the summer as part of a short walking tour. I find the area fascinating so here are some photos I took.

Click the slideshow below to see the full size version.

British National Grid and Google Maps

2009-11-11T15:23:00.008Z

This post follows on from a recent one about the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2009 and in particular the interactive mapping function they provide.

The most deprived area in Scotland, according to the new Index, just happens to be centred on Celtic Park, Glasgow. This is, in technical terms, Data Zone S01003279. But, there's a slight problem - the Data Zones are somewhat displaced. It's not too big an issue in relation to the SIMD data because Data Zones match Ordnance Survey data and the Scottish Government have all this behind the scenes so they do of course know on a street-by-street basis where things are.

However, for the online map interface, it does mean that the Data Zone is not in the right place. It also means that people using the interactive mapping facility could end up thinking they live in one area, when they actually live in another since the level of displacement often moves Data Zones into the wrong street.

So, it got me thinking. What would you have to do to get the Data Zones in the right place on Google Maps (this also applies to Google Earth)? It's quite simple really (if you're a nerd and you have the right software)... N.B. the SIMD data is not based on Google Maps, but rather the Microsoft Virtual Earth mapping facility.

Convert the Data Zone Shapefile from British National Grid to WGS84 in ArcGIS. Best done via ArcToolbox/Data Management Tools/Projections and Transformations/Feature/Project and then selecting the right files for transformation to the correct projection. More useful information can be found here.
Use Kevin Martin's excellent Export to KML tool to convert the Shapefile to KML. You can set transparency here and it will export as a transparent KML layer, as in the maps below.
If you've got a Google account you can then upload the KML file directly into the My Maps facility and the Data Zone appears there. From there you can add a description and edit in other ways.

Here's what it looks like if you don't get the projection right the first time (click the link below the map to see the full thing) - note how the edges of the Data Zone don't match the streets.

View Data Zone S01003279 - Displaced in a larger map

And here's how it looks if you convert to the correct projection before you export to KML (again, click the link below the map to see it full size):

View S01003279 in a larger map

So, a simple bit of GIS work before putting all this online solves the problem.

Google Motion Charts

2009-11-07T13:33:00.014Z

This post is about Google's motion charts and how useful they are for displaying data in a dynamic format. In this example, I've taken data for four cities in the north of England, and compared change over time from 2000 to 2008. I've used the following indicators:

Total population - from ONS mid-year population estimates
Working age population - from ONS mid-year population estimates
VAT Stock at end of year - from NOMIS, a measure of business vitality (only got up to 2007 for this)
Claimant Count - from NOMIS, those claiming unemployment benefit
House prices - median house price for each area, from CLG Live Tables

You can compare any data against any data by clicking below and beside each axis. You can size the bubbles according to any variable and choose to turn any area's data on or off. They're really easy to use. Try experimenting with the example below, or the larger version I've linked to (note that you can click the tabs to the top right of the chart for a different data view). Pressing the 'play' button in the bottom left of the chart will start the animation.

All you need to make this is a some data and a free Google account. And a bit of time and patience. Once you get how it works it's really easy, and very effective. This is just an example using some English data.

For a REALLY impressive demonstration, see gapminder.

For a larger version of the chart shown below, I've put together a separate page.

Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2009

2009-10-30T08:23:00.005Z

Being of Scottish origin and interested as I am in understanding and measuring deprivation, the recently published Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2009 is today's topic. It updates previous indices (SIMD2004, SIMD2006) and it measures small area deprivation in a way similar to other deprivation indices used across the UK. More information on the indicators used can be found here, and useful background and methodology information is also available. There's now even an interactive mapping function, based on Microsoft Silverlight and Virtual Earth mapping technology.

There has been quite a bit of press coverage of this, for example - The Times, The Herald, the BBC, and of course the Sun. There was also a press release from the SNP. Here's a screenshot showing the location of the most deprived area in Scotland according to the SIMD2009 (click the image to see it full size).

By the way, the link between deprivation and football stadia is not unique to Glasgow or Scotland. North Liverpool and Anfield on the English IMD2004 and IMD2007 is another good example, as is the Millennium Stadium and the Welsh IMD2005. I will have to do another post on this topic...

CloudMade

2009-10-25T15:12:00.022Z

This post is all about CloudMade. What is it? This is how they describe themselves:

"CloudMade helps you make the most of map data. We source our maps from OpenStreetMap, the community mapping project which is making a free map of the world. Our aim is to continue the democratization of geo data and to expand access to open geo data through a range of simple yet powerful tools and APIs."

OpenStreetMap's UK homepage can be found here. So, it's basically all about mapping the world but not charging the earth for it. Or anything at all! OpenStreetMap was started in 2004 by Steve Coast, one of the co-founders of CloudMade. Play around with the map below...

View Larger Map

Why does this all matter? Because it's the start of a movement which could make available geo-data which was previously very costly and heavily restricted by licensing issues. It could be particularly good for GIS users in the UK. CloudMade have downloads available for a number of different data types, including Shapefiles, for the entire world. The coverage is sometimes patchy (though not for most areas), but it's growing by the day.

Here's the UK downloads page.

The Shapefiles are not complete, and the administrative data is in polyline rather than polygon format, but there is a lot of useful stuff here. In conclusion, the UK data is not yet comparable to high cost alternatives, but this is a good start!

European Cities Monitor

2009-10-20T11:49:00.005+01:00

The European Cities Monitor 2009 has recently been published, by Cushman and Wakefield, a global real estate firm. They've been doing it since 1990 and it is, essentially, a survey of Europe's major business centres.

This edition contains some well known facts - London, Paris and Frankfurt (in that order) remain at the top of the pile in relation to doing business in Europe. However, there are many more interesting nuggets, such as:

Birmingham is the biggest mover, up to 14th;
Rome moved up three places, but only from 25th to 22nd; and
Istanbul moved from 29th to 27th.

Lots of work has been done in this area, both from an academic point of view and from the private sector. However, the same things consistently emerge from research on doing business in cities. Hence, the most important things identified this year are quite familiar:

Easy access to markets, customers, clients;
Availability of qualified staff;
Quality of telecommunications;
Transport links with other cities, and internationally...

I could go on, but each of these were all reported as essential by more than 50% of survey respondents. Finally, what about quality of life? The top five cities are as follows:

Barcelona
Geneva
Munich
Oslo
Madrid

In total, 500 companies were surveyed and 34 cities were included in the analysis.