Monday, July 30, 2012

off-topic: Anthropologists



by Gary Larson via Beware of Images

London in figures and Fertility Crisis

The Economist's daily chart addressing London's demographic trends.*


* By the way, they have also published this article talking about the relation between recession and fertility in  Europe. Yes, economic uncertainty can be quite bad for fertility.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Quote of the day

"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life" (I. Kant).

obs. Now go get yourself organized !

Soundtrack for the weekend:

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Urban Network Analysis toolbox

A neat video introducing the Urban Network Analysis toolbox created by the City Form Research Group. at MIT.

The toolbox is distributed as free and open-source plugin-in for ArcGIS. Here you will find a demo presentantion and a link for downloading it ! (via RC21)

Monday, July 23, 2012

How food shapes our cities

Carolyn Steel is the author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (a book which goes to my never-ending wishlist.).

Friday, July 20, 2012

Peer effect

The importance of peer effect.


via Uhull SA

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Residential Location and Retirement Age

The new issue of Urban Studies is out and this paper caught my attention. It might interest some of you as well!



Abstract: Retirement age choice is introduced into a conventional model of residential location to show that the retirement age of workers who do not move after retirement can be influenced by the urban variation of leisure and housing prices. A retirement demand equation that incorporates commuting characteristics is estimated on a sample of US urban male owners interviewed by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. It is found that commuters retire around two years earlier than comparable home-based workers, although the evidence provides no support for this gap to be the result of differences in leisure or housing prices across both groups.

Extra links:

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Orbital Tour of Cities at Night

We have already seen some striking pictures of cities at Night seen from Space. Here is the explanation on how Nasa can make these beautiful images despite of orbital motion.

By the way, they now have a databse of over 4,000 images of cities at night (via The Regional Studies Blog).

Sunday, July 8, 2012

The Oldest Flow Map, created in 1837

According to this paper published in The Geographical Journal, this map is credited to be the Oldest Flow Map, created in 1837 by Henry D. Harness of the British Army. It shows traffic flows between Dublin and the rest of Ireland.  (via Michael Batty). Quite different from contemporary techniques....

Friday, July 6, 2012

Urban Picture

The Shard was inaugurated yesterday! It is the tallest building in Ocidental Europe and you can see it from almost anywhere in London. Here is a 360º view from the top of the Shard.

[photo credit: me ]

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Buenos Aires Urban Expansion

A gif depicting Buenos Aires urban expansion in three different time periods: until 1947; from 1947 to 1972 and 1972 onwards (thanks Leonardo Garateguy for the tip).

It's important to stress the avant-garde urbanization of Buenos Aires in contrast to other Latin American cities. Much could be said about this, but it would be out of our purpose with this blog. Besides, Guillhermo Tella probably has much more interesting things to say about it.


[image credit: Guillhermo Tella. A summary of his book here]

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

2nd Anniversary of Urban Demographics Blog

A few days ago (on June 29) we have completed the second anniversary of the Urban Demographics Blog! During this second year we have reached a total amount of:

  • 220 posts
  • 23,058 visits
  • 18,809 visitors
  • 239 subscribers
  • 520 likes on Facebook
  • 115 followers on twitter 

These were the most popular posts during this second year (based on the nº of page views):

Where readers come from (147 Countries)
  1. United States (36.1%)
  2. Brazil (11.8%)
  3. Canada (11.5%)
  4. United Kingdom (6.2%)
  5. Germany (2.9%)
  6. Australia (2.3%)
  7. France (2.2%)
  8. India (2.1%)
  9. Russia (1.4)
  10. Netherlands (1.3%)

From which cities do readers come? (3,517 Cities)
  1. Brasilia (1.169) thank you mom
  2. New York (674)
  3. Toronto (619)
  4. London (495)
  5. Sao Paulo (321)
  6. Los Angeles (314)
  7. Calgary (284)
  8. Washington (273)
  9. Not set (aka 'WTF') (261)
  10. Vancouver (250)