Assorted links

1. Las dimensiones de un mundo urbano (a good article by Manu Fernandez about global cities, suburbs, density, China etc.)
   
   
2. Urban Studies Conferences Worldwide
   
   
3. A great book on Program Evaluation (there is also a portuguese version available)
   
   
4. The fast-growing megacity of Chongqing (thanks to LMonasterio)

Why agglomerations exist (Thisse at Ipea)

Prof. Jacques-François Thisse is going to to honour us with a presentation at Ipea (Institute for Applied Economic Research - Brazil). As far as I know, it's going to be broadcast on the internet ! (I will post the link later);

Why agglomerations exist - a New Economic Geography perspective

Brasília, Brazil

Semptember, 1st.

9:30am till 12pm local time. (GMT -3:00) do the math! or click here to make the conversion to your local time.

Thisse is professor of economics at the Université Catholique de Louvain (He is also among the top 5% authors registered inRePEc).

Important: I belive the presentation will be translated to portuguese (and I hope it doesn't disturb the broadcast).

Should there be a “proper density”?

"Indeed, to anyone who respects consumer sovereignty, there is something a little jarring about Jacobs’s question: "What is the proper density for city dwellings?' " (E. Glaeser)

When it comes to urban planning, it seems there has been a long normative discussion about what should be a “proper density”. In this point I take Glaseser 's words as mine:

"Why in the world should there be a 'proper density'?
A good case can be made that cities succeed by offering
a diverse menu of neighborhoods that cater to a wide
range of tastes."

ps. Jane Jacobs wasn't always right.

Chinese housing bubble (?)

A great article about the uncertain Chinese real estate market by Wendell Cox. And guess what? Insufficient available data and fragile official statistics... hard to tell.

off-topic: What exactly is a Ph.D.?

This is a precise explanation (by Professor Matt Might) in a graphic way here.via Gismodo.

Looking for a taxi (NY and SF)

A great tip if you are looking for a taxi in NY: Taxi flow across Manhattan.*

BUT if you are looking for a cab in San Francisco, you could use the CabSpotting (via Flowing Data)

*by Matthew Bloch, Ford Fessenden and Shan Carter republished from the NY Times (via Map Scroll).

IpeaGEO launched !

IpeaGEO has been launched !

IpeaGEO is a free software for spatial analysis developed at the the Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea-Brazil). It combines spatial analysis (from the basics statistics to advanced spatial econometric models) with a friendly interface.

Although the software comes in portuguese, you should try it. Is pretty intuitive and much better than GeoDa !

You can download IpeaGEO here.

ps. 1 - The software was developed by Alexandre Ywata / Pedro Albuquerque and their team at the Division of Regional, Urban and Environmental Studies (Ipea-Brazil).

ps. 2 - A Brazilian dataset and some shape files come along with the software (also in portuguese). But, of course, you can use your data and shape files.

ps. 3 - Some of the available tools:

• Global and local measures of spatial dependence: Moran, Geary, Getis-Ord Gi*, Lisa
• Spatial segregation measures - eveness / exposition / clustering
• OLS, 2SLS, Logit, Probit, SAR, SEM, SAC, GMM, spatial GMM and others….

NY towards polycentricity (?)

The US Bureau of the Census has just released detailed commuting trip flow tables (it covers 2006 to 2008). The point that called my attention:

• Jobs-Housing Balance (“Manhattan has 2.71 jobs for every resident worker. It contrasts with employment the rest of the the city, where the jobs-housing balance at the county level is 0.67, the lowest in the metropolitan area”), and yet a Highly Decentralized Metropolitan Area (“Approximately 74% of employment is outside Manhattan and the jobs are comparatively evenly dispersed among the sectors”).

You can read a more detailed analysis at New Geography.

There is no free parking

There is no free parking - Or at least it shouldn't be. This is what Tyler Cowen says in his latest NYT column. See more discussion on this here and here.

and there still remains two questions:

a. How much land should be devoted to parking spaces?
b. Given the answer to (a), what should be the price for parking?

Visualizing traffic (Lisbon)

Pedro Cruz did a great work with this traffic visualization in Lisbon. Traffic speed and intensity are resented by colours intensities.

Visualizing traffic jam in Lisbon from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

via Visualizing Complexity. And here is an interview with him addressing the Information Visualization field.

World Population Distribution Map

Tired of those traditional World Population Distribution Maps? Bill Rankin came up with this creative way to understand population distribution in this planet!

via RadicalCartography

ps. it got me thinking about Global Warming and sea levels, desertification, etc.

Visualizing Migration

I have never seen a striking graphical visualization of migration flows. But this interactive migration map from Forbes is a pretty good one !

Intercounty Migration flows during 2008.

via MapScroll.

Netherlands population and the USA way of life

What if all of Netherlands's 15 million people were to live at the density of Los Angeles? Answer at StrangeMaps: The Dutch would occupy no more than one-seventh of its total area. Like in this map.

Ok. Now repeat that experiment with the population density of Manhattan. What do you think? Answer: all of the Netherlands’ inhabitants would occupy no more than 1.44% of the total territory of the Netherlands. Check the map. (Thanks to Frank Jacobs).

Now what if all of Earth’s six billion people were to live at the density of New York City ? Well, that's another post.

The Economist house-price indicators updated

The Economist Magazine updated its house-price indicators (here)

The Economist: "In Asia policymakers are trying to prick a bubble. In America they are still dealing with the consequences of the last one."

Thanks to Leonardo Monasterio again.