Out for vacation!

Close to heaven! I will be out for vacation for like a week. (and I do not intend to check my emails!)

UN Demographic Manuals On-line

Here is the link for the classical manuals and guides of demographic methods and techniques issued by the United Nations over a long period of time. It presents a series of 23 manual organized by thePopulation Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat.

JTLU - Journal of Transport and Land Use

The latest JTLU (Journal of Transport and Land Use) is on line with a special issue: Land Use-Transportation Modeling with UrbanSim. Some interesting papers!

off-topic: twitter Demographics

twitter: I'm really not into it. But if you are, you can check some twitter Demographics. [viaUrbanTick]

DEMIG research project at Oxford

The International Migration Institute (IMI) at the University of Oxford seeks to award two fully-funded DPhil studentships commencing 1 October 2011 for the ‘Determinants of International Migration’ (DEMIG) research project.

Closing date for applications: 30 September 2010

More information here.

Race and ethnicity mapped

Inspired by Bill Rankin’s Chicago Boundaries (2009), Eric Fischer mapped race and ethnicity for other 40 American cities! obs. Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, and Orange is Hispanic, and each dot is 25 people. Data from Census 2000.

Washington DC

Detroit

Los Angeles

(by Eric Fischer via FlowingData)

Demographic issues discussed at More or Less

1. What the population world wide would be today if the first World War have never happend -With Professor Jay M. Winter. Click Here to listen. (from the 21th minute on)
   
   
2. How reliable are life expectancy figures? - Professor Paul Sweeting. Click Here to listen.

Via More or Less, the BBC Radio 4 programme focussing on numbers and statistics (by Tim Harford). Two great suggestions from Leonardo Monsterio.

Commute Map

What could you do if you had origin-destination commute data, zip codes and Google Maps API ?

Great job Harry Kao !

(via The Map Room)

Assorted links

• Density - How Much Is Too Much? (Thanks LMonasterio for the tip)
  
  
• A distorted cartogram of the World's Population
  
  
• GIS future: 3D city models
  
  
• Posters for the fiftieth anniversary of Brasilia. (Thanks to MarginalRevolution.)

Visualizing Migration II

Again with the challenge of visualizing Migration: WNYC (a New York based public radio station) did an informal survey asking listeners their recente migration movements (Map Your Moves). They offered the raw data (1,700 respondents) for free download and received 15 suggestions of visualization . These are my favorites (both interactive).

by Hermann Zschiegner

by Moritz Stefaner

Check the other suggestions here. (via FlowingData)

ps. sounds a bit like ManyEyes philosophy.

visualizing Life Cycle

Life Cycle is a very important variable to understand demographics, though it's hard to represent it graphically. The Designer Ritwik Dey created an interesting way to visualize his own Life Cyle.

(via informationisbeautiful)

Demographic factors of China's economic growth

Joel Kotkin published an article suggesting 5 key reasons why China is not likely to become the world's largest economy. It caught my attention the fact that 4 of them are demographic-related in some way.

According to J. Kotkin, China is more likely to face problems such as (1) Scarce water, (2) lack of adequate energy resources and (3) limited food production over the next decades. As I was reading the article, I couldn't help remembering Malthus. In order to sustain economic growth, China will need to face a 4th obstacle: rapidly aging population and shrinking workforce (a clearly demographic problem).

By 2050 31% of China's population will be older than 60. “There will be over 400 million elderly, with virtually no social security and few children to support them”. And Kotkin also calls the attention to:

1. The preference for male children has skewed sex demographics dramatically, with roughly 30 million more marriageable boys than girls.
   
2. The logical solution to this dilemma would be immigration, but China's culture appears far too insular for such an event. Rather than a benevolent "socialist" super power China, whose population is made up over 90% Han Chinese, will bestride the world as a racially homogeneous, and communalistic "Middle Kingdom."

It's funny because usually China demographics are considered an important factor to China's economic growth. Hey! Not that I agree with Joel Kotkin all the time, but it's an interesting article. You can read it here.

ps. The 5th key reason: Chinese political instability on the long run as a result of a combination of authoritarian regime and growing inequality

Brazilian Census 2010

"...I have five dependents: one President, one Senator, two Deputies and a mangy dog."

(By Cerino)

Visualizing regional urban systems

I am currently working in a research project about regional urban systems in Brazil.

It's all about urban networks: urban functions and urban hierarchy; Christaller; spatial distribution of cities and how they connect to each other; Sassem; management centers; Growth Poles, Perroux etc.

And when it comes to network of cities, it's hard to find good visualization at the appropriate scale. So I post here some really extraordinary visualizations presented by BBC (series Britain From Above)

Telephone Network

The Lights of Britain

Air Traffic

Mapping the Anthropocene

Professors Erle Ellis and Navin Ramankutty (University of Maryland) have come out with a new set of maps that show how anthromes (i.e. Anthropogenic biomes) have changed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

via Wired (thanks again to my friend Leonardo Monasterio)

Prof. Thisse Presentation: Why agglomerations exist

The presentantion of Prof. Thisse was broadcast live today.

I hope you have enjoyed it.