Say Goodbye to 2011

Borderless Economics

Another book added to my cart on Amazon: Borderless Economics (written by Robert Guest, The Economist’s Business Editor).

Among other things, the book tackles brain drain and global poverty, how migration fosters innovation and cultural syncretism and how it is infecting China with ideas that will eventually turn it democratic.

You may find the author talking about the book here (a 15 minute Interview).

By the way, there is another book on migration that might interest you (available for free download.): The State of Environmental Migration (SEM) 2010. It's a co-publishing by IDDRI and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), edited by François Gemenne, Pauline Brücker and Joshua Glasser. I thank Ojima for the tip!

soundtrack: Crave You ft. Giselle

The Secret Life of Chaos (BBC)

BBC came up with this documentary on Chaos theory. Very interesting if you are into fractals, complexity theory or if you want to understand the simple mathematics behind Nature and Society.

(more short previews here, here)

(via Thiago Augustus from projetoblog)

Carved Book Landscapes

Amazing Carved Book Landscapes by Guy Laramee

soundtrack: hang jam

2012 Call for papers (so far)

• XVIII Conference of the Brazilian Association of Population Studies (ABEP)
• Deadline for abstract submission: 16 April 2012
  
  
• Annual International Conference of the Royal Geographical Society
• Deadline for abstract submission: 9 March 2012
  
  
• 5th Conference of the Latin American Population Association (ALAP)
• Deadline for abstract submission: 15 March 201
  
  
• 32nd International Geographical Congress (IGC) (HT Ricardo Ojima)
• Deadline for abstract submission:  08 January 2012
  
  
• The IUSSP Seminar on Pathways to Health: How intermediary life conditions mediate or modify early life effects (HT Ricardo Ojima)
• Deadline for abstract submission: 16 January 2012

***Hopefully I'm going to meet you at ABEP and/or ALAP. 

Austrian Urban Economics

I just now got time the chance to read the post series "Cities and the Market Process 1, 2 and 3" that Leo have suggested two months ago.

Critics of free market urban development may argue that this system will produce less-than-perfect cities, so city planners should step in to make improvements. The Austrian response is that of course the free market cannot produce utopian cities, but no other system could do better. Believing that a regulated city would be superior to the market outcome is succumbing to the Nirvana fallacy. Markets aren’t perfect, but they’re the best we’ve got.

I'm not fully convinced at all, although the post series have made some good points. Market Urbanism has just got on my blogroll! 

soundtrack: Ali Farka Toure

The Best City Time Lapse of 2011

The Best City Time Lapse Videos of 2011 according to Eric Jaffe. A second opinion here.

I particularly like the time lapse video of Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) by Rob Whitworth. (and LA Light by Colin Rich)

Traffic in Frenetic HCMC, Vietnam from Rob Whitworth on Vimeo.

Assorted links

1. Here you can listen to the full Beatles discography (at the same time!) "Massive mash up"
   
   
2. Some really absurd interesting photos of Las Vegas Landscape
   
   
3. Bike share program in Rio de Janeiro  Let me assure you it's pretty simple to use it.
   
   
4. Evolution of the London Underground Map 1889-2002 (HT Leo)
   
   
5. Opportunities at Brown University - BIARI program (HT Ricardo Ojima)
   
   
6. The Best Data Visualization Projects of 2011

soundtrack: Baden

Brazilian Census 2010: Favela population

(image credit: Alberto Pomares)

"Brazil had 6,329 subnormal agglomerates in 2010 (aka Favelas), invaded properties, grotas (type of cave), slums in glens, poor communities, shanty towns, slums in backwaters, mocambos (type of shack) and stilt houses, among others – in 323 of the 5,565 municipalities. They concentrated 6.0% of the Brazilian population (11,425,644 inhabitants), distributed in 3,224,529 occupied private households (5.6% of the total). Twenty metropolitan areas concentrated 88.6% of these subnormal households, and almost half of them (49.8%) were located in the Southeast Region."

soundtrack: Favela

The Economist house-price indicators and the Chinese housing bubble

The Economist Magazine updated its house-price indicators.They say that the bursting of the global housing bubble is only halfway through. 

Krugman and Wendell Cox have a few words suggesting why we shouldn't be so optimistic about the Chinese real estate market.

soundtrack: Caetano

Dencity

We have already seen some interesting population density maps around here. Fathom Information Design came up with this project Dencity that uses circles of various size and hue*. (via Nathan Yau)

*We have already posted another project by the Fathom Information Design called All Streets. This might interest space syntax specialists.

soundtrack: Moby

Christmas gift

My Christmas gift for the UD readers!

Happy Holidays !

(via tudo ao mesmo tempo agora)

soundtrack: merchand

Old Traffic Congestion Problem

Does this picture look familiar? London, 1965.

(Source: Heinz Zinram at London Transport Museum via infosthetics)

Exceptional Space - book recommendation

I would like to reccomend a book for those Space Syntax enthusiasts: Exceptional Space by Prof. Frederico Holanda (this is the English edition of his doctoral thesis, supervised by Professor Bill Hillier). I have read the portuguese version and it is a terrifc book for urban planners, geographers or sociologists with focus on the spatial dimension of human relations.

Record inequality between rich and poor

new OECD report "Divided We Stand". The full report with truckloads of data, tables and graphs here.

(via The Global Sociology)

Fertility Transition in Brazil

Mapping the Timing, Pace, and Scale of the Fertility Transition in Brazil - a recent paper by Potter, Cavenaghi and others published at PDR.

It's a very interesting paper even if you are not into fertility studies. And you can have some fun with their data and maps !

Figure7 - Bayesian estimates of the duration of fertility transition (t90–t10)

Source: Potter et al , 2010.

soundtrack: you wish

Cities and Climate Change (Article Collection)

Routledge has just published on its website the 'Cities and Climate Change Article Collection'.

They have put together more than 60 articles, both FREE and recommended further reading, across a range of subjects, including

• transport and the environment

• adaptable cities

• sustainable urban housing, green building design

• pollution and the city

• regional environmental planning

soundtrack: Find my baby

Message of the Day

(via tudo ao mesmo tempo agora  ! I really like this blog!)

I can't take this song out of my head:

Assorted Links

1. The curious relationship between place names and population density (For all my anthropologist friends out there)
   
   
2. Workshop Intergenerational Approaches to Social and Economic Policy (HT Ricardo Ojima)
   
   
3. PAA Webinar on December 13 – Balancing Employment with Child and Elder Care: The Implications of Changing Workplaces and Families
   
   
4. The Top 10 Relationship Words That Aren't Translatable Into English (you may watch a good example for the Portuguese word 'Cafuné' with our Lovely Owl here)
   
   
5. (Less than) six degrees of separation ? and the age of your facebook friends.
   
   
6. Digital map with the locations of Favelas and Cortiços in São Paulo municipality (via mbarrosfilho)

Prata da Casa: Climate change in Brazil

new book! Jorge Hargrave and other colleagues at Ipea launched the book Climate Change in Brazil: economic, social and regulatory aspects at the 'Durban Climate Change Conference 2011'.

Portuguese version also available !

Urban Picture: Weird Traffic System

Just a fast post today: 

Brasília's Weird Traffic System

(via 9gag)

soundtrack: Ray

Housing Finance Policy and Segregation

Paavo Monkkonen has just published a paper that examines the impact of the expansion of housing finance on socioeconomic segregation in Mexican cities.

This would be a very nice hypothesis to be tested for the Brazilian case. Brazil had a huge housing finance policy from the 60's to the 80's with the National Housing Bank (BNH). Since 2009 the Federal Government has been carrying out a very big social housing program called Minha Casa, Minha Vida (My House, My Life). I think this is a good idea to consider if you are a PhD candidate in Brazil.

soundtrack: Os Mulheres Negras - Summertime

off-topic: Venice backstage

Here is a bit of Venice's history and how it works. Strongly recommended if you're planning a trip to Venice (via the great Open Culture).


Venice Backstage. How does Venice work? from Insula spa on Vimeo.

Enjoy your weekend!

soundtrack: Laranja

Brazilian Census 2010: a few more results

IBGE released a few more results of the 2010 Brazilian Census.

• 2010 Life Tables
• Interactive charts with summary figures (HT Erivelton Guedes)

soundtrack: Embraceable You

Assorted Links

1. The Future of Science 2021
   
   
2. Measuring racism with Google search (the paper shows that Barak Obama lost 3-5 percentage points of the popular vote in 2008 because he is black)
   
   
3. Call for papers: Convergence special issue on mobile media in Brazil
   
   
4. Announcement of Congestion Pricing in Bogota
   
   
5. The Greater Tokyo Area, as compared to the UK
   
   
6. The one-second film festival held by Montblanc
   
   
7. An interactive map showing oil production by country from 1960 to 2010 (via The Map Room)

soundtrack: Céu



Tweet

Urban Demographics is now on Twitter !

@UrbDemographics

Spread the words: we are now on Twitter ! @UrbDemographics

I'm still learning how to use it. You will have to be patient with me during this test period.

Baby Deficit and Economic Crises

In his paper 'The Baby Deficit' Science 2006, Michael Balter points out why public policies are unlikely to reverse fertility declines. His abstract couldn't be more brief:

"As fertility rates decline across the developed world, governments are offering big incentives for childbearing. Experts don't expect them to have much effect."

And talking about fertility reversion, economic recession will not help much in that. Read this NYT piece Fewer Births in a Bad Economy. How low can fertility get in Europe?

(image credit: NYT)

Untangling the City

A new CASA Working Paper by Michael Batty. I will probably take a few hours to really understand the paper. But I'll try it !

[image credit: ?    I love this image. It reminds me of a movie scene from 'Inception']

According to M. Batty, the paper describes "the transition from thinking of ‘cities as machines’ to ‘cities as organisms’". I wonder what could be clinically diagnosed as an urban cancer...


soundtrack: Beck

NeW! 'Prata da Casa' session: regional and urban economics handbook

I'm starting a new post session called "Prata da Casa" to recommend some good research and publications by my colleagues here at the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA).

"Prata da Casa" is a Portuguese expression that in this case refers to some good 'homegrown research'. So I'm inaugurating this session with a recent regional and urban economics handbook with emphasis on Brazil:

Regional and Urban Economics: Theories and methods with emphasis on Brazil (organized by Bruno Cruz, Bernardo Furtado, Leonardo Monasterio and Waldery Rodrigues Júnior) - Portuguese Version Only

off-topic: Modernist Modernist Monuments

I bumped into these bizarre and still beautiful Modernist Monuments. I would say that we have something similar here in Brasília in a much smaller scale with the Crystals Square (by Burle Marx).

This reminded me of a book with fascinating photos from Frederic Chaubin depicting socialist architectural eccentricities: 

Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed 

soundtrack for the weekend: Legião Urbana

Travel Time Maps

We have already seen some Isochronic maps here at Urban Demographics. This post shows a few more Travel Time Maps for other cities around the world.

• A very good analysis on travel time variation across Melbourne and Victoria (Australia)
  
  
•  a few  UK Cities

• Mapnificent for more than 20 cities (tutorial video here)
  
  
• New York - Travel Times on Commuter Rail via (visual complexity)
  
  
• Isochronic London Underground (interactive)
  
  
• and the most attractive: Netherlands Isochronic Map (by Vincent Meertens via wired)
  

TIMEMAPS from graphsic on Vimeo.

Road Casualties Mapped

Road accident casualties mapped for the USA and for Britain (by The Guardian via David Levinson)

Recommended Podcasts

We are opening a new session on the right column of this blog with ‘recommended Podcasts’. 

I usually listen to them on my daily walking commute to my work place or I do it as I wash the dishes  it helps keeping me away from marital problem 

I will start the session recommending two podcasts:

• Shift: Stories Behind the Stats from CBC Radio (rss or itunes) - this one it focuses on the front lines of demographic change.
  
  
• Transport Studies Unit Podcasts by Oxford University (rss or itunes)*

* by the way, you might enjoy this seminar by Professor Robert Cervero (UC Berkeley): Mobility, place-making, and economic competitiveness 

(seminar review, screencast and presentation slides)

off-topic: Lovely Owl

I just couldn't help it. It is too damn cute to ignore it.

Migration Patterns and the Bubble

Jon Bruner of Forbes comes up again with a new graphical visualization of migration flows in the US (now using IRS data to map county migration).

[image credit: Jon Bruner/Forbes via Nathan Yau]

How does it relates to the recent real estate crisis in the USA? William Frey wrote down some of his thoughts on this (more here).

*Click here if you want learn how to built this kind of map (using JavaScript, Python and MySQ) .

By the way, here is related map by William Frey.

[image credit: William Frey]

soundtrack: Tulipa Ruiz (Brazil)

Assorted Links

• Lecture: Complexity in Regional Regional Science by Michael Batty (congratulations for the prize!)
  
  
  
  
• candidate for the 'Creative Title Award'.  And now you're probably singing this song.
  
  
  
  
• The Popularity of Data Analysis Software (via Leo Monasterio)
  
  
  
  
• Regularización de asentamientos informales en América Latina (new book by Edesio Fernandes published by The Lincoln Institute) available for download in Spanish or Portuguese.
  
  
  
  
• Rio de Janeiro under the clouds and Brasília from above (HT Paulo Afonso Rheingantz)
  
  
  
  
• Data on Property Tax in the USA.

soundtrack: Feist

Urban Picture

The  work  vacation trip to Rio de Janeiro was really good. I ran into this as I walked through the CBD.

Petrobras Building, Rio de Janeiro

[Photo credit: Rafael Pereira using TiltShift Generator]

and I could also go to two excellent concerts: Pearl Jam and Broken Social Scene! (Elisa and Gui, thank you guys for hosting me)

soundtrack: BSS

Population Projections Seminar highlights

I have just come back from a  work  vacation trip to Rio de Janeiro, where I could attend to this seminar on Population Estimates and Projections. It was a great seminar! Here are my highlights:

• Demographic housing demand: estimates by household sizes (by Gustavo Givisiez)
  
  
• Household projections: methods, application and current practice (by Brenda Yepez-Martinez. Here is her phd thesis)*
  
  
• Health Services Demand Projection: Methods and application for Brazil (by Cristina Guimarães)
  
  
• Demographic models for projections of social sector demand (by Tim Miller) *
  
  
• Sergei Scherbov (the man behind IIASA probabilistic population projection) and his intriguing perspective on population ageing. Papers here and here. a five-minute presentation here.

*I couldn't find the actually presented paper.

Key Works in Sociology

Key Works in Sociology infographic . (via Graphic Sociology)

[Click here to enlarge the image - image credit: Norton]

I have told you that one of my favorite books in sociology is "Suicide: a study in Sociology" by Émile Durkheim (1858-1917). 

My second favorite author is Erving Goffman with his microsociology approach in "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life".

soundtrack: Chico e Caetano

off-topic: Flying over Planet Earth

Cities at Night seen from Spacebird's-eye View (again).

 from Michael König on Vimeo.
(via Dan Colman from Open Culture)

Assorted links

• Issac Newton’s first published research paper (via open culture)
  
  
• We have reached 50 likes on FaceBook! thank you mom
  
  
• 36 Hours in Brasília by the NYTimes (a comment on this here)
  
  
• Event: CHINA - Supercities and Mega-Migrations: China’s Urban Futures (via urban systems)
  
  
• 3rd Annual IPSA-AISP Summer School in Concepts and Methods in Political Science - deadline for applications is November 20, 2011 (HT Joice Melo Vieira)
  
  
• Sense of Patterns: Visualizing mobility data - Twenty Four hours of Taxis (via UrbanTick)

off-topic: The zipper of your pants

Where does the zipper of your pants (and all your made-in-China products) come from?

China's Top 100 Industrial Clusters

(by The China Sourcing Blog)

[Click on the map for a bigger view]

 

 (via human scale cities)

Event: Population Estimates and Projections

More information here. Final program here.

Assorted links on Urban Sprawl

• A Meta-Analysis of Global Urban Land Expansion (more on this paper here)
  
  
• "Wrestling Sprawl to the Ground" a great paper title. The paper is also pretty good!
  
  
• The Costs of Smart Growth Revisited: A 40 Year Perspective (great piece)
  
  
• Growth Rings - The flight of Americans to the suburbs

(image credit: Stephen von Worley)

• Do Freeway Traffic Management Strategies Exacerbate Urban Sprawl?
  
  
• Multidimensional Urban Sprawl in Europe: A Self-organizing Map Approach
  
  
• Is sprawl over? Nops!

soundtrack: subirodoistiozin

The demographic challenge in Brazil

OECD has just published its 'Economic Surveys' on Brazil (thanks Leo for the tip). According to the report, the aging of the population is a major challenge in Brazil. This is not big news, but they say it in a concise manner:

"Like many emerging-market economies, Brazil’s population is going to age rapidly in the coming decade (Figure 1). The share of the elderly population is expected to double in less than 20 years, a transition that took around three times as long for today’s advanced economies. These demographic changes will alter the  macroeconomic environment. Assuming no policy changes, lower working-age population growth could lower potential output growth significantly by the middle of the century. This fall will most probably be partially compensated by the effect of the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC) on productivity growth, but that impact is hard to estimate. Ageing is also likely to increase savings through life-cycle dynamics, although in Brazil’s case prospects for aggregate savings will depend on the effectiveness of social and labour-market policies in continuing to lower the share of poor households, who traditionally save less. Ageing will also tilt public spending toward greater outlays on old-age pensions and health and long-term care and less on education, but the aggregate impact on public finance is likely to be negative."

Figure 1.  The speed of population ageing*

*Number of years for the share of population 65+ to double from around 10% to around 20%

Note: United Nations population projections have been used. Numbers for France and the United Kingdom correspond to an increase from 12% to around 20%.
Source: OECD calculations

Fuzzy Logic explained

Explaining Fuzzy logic with one image:

(via Nathan Yau  again )

A talk with Lotfi A. Zadeh (the father of fuzzy logic) here.


soundtrack: BSS

The Laws of Migration illustrated

Waldo Tobler presents a three-minute short talk about Ravenstein (the author behind (the Laws of Migration, 1885).

(via Michael Batty)

Multiple Choice Statistics Homework

Try this:

(via Nathan Yau via @gnat)

Soundtrack for this post: Tim M.

Countdown to a World of 7 Billion

UNFPA has just published this year's State of World Population report. Yes! According to official estimateswe, we are about to reach 7 Billion People on earth. So I decided to replay this post:

And talking about the world population, every now and then someone comes up with the overpopulation issue. Usually it is referred to as the "overpopulation problem" or the "demographic bomb".

via Kelso’s Corner

This is the promo motion graphic for the World Population Special Series brought by National Geographic (the article here and some pictures here). I couldn't agree more with these two conclusive excerpts:

"But one can also draw a different conclusion—that fixating on population numbers is not the best way to confront the future. People packed into slums need help, but the problem that needs solving is poverty and lack of infrastructure, not overpopulation. Giving every woman access to family planning services is a good idea—“the one strategy that can make the biggest difference to women’s lives,” Chandra calls it. But the most aggressive population control program imaginable will not save Bangladesh from sea level rise, Rwanda from another genocide, or all of us from our enormous environmental problems."

"The number of people does matter, of course. But how people consume resources matters a lot more. Some of us leave much bigger footprints than others. The central challenge for the future of people and the planet is how to raise more of us out of poverty—the slum dwellers in Delhi, the subsistence farmers in Rwanda—while reducing the impact each of us has on the planet."

Assorted links on Life Expectancy

• How much is life expectancy expected to rise? via MR
  (check this too)
  
  
• Longer Lives and Lower Health Costs in 2040. Are you serious?
  
  
• Changes in World Inequality in Length of Life: 1970–2000
  
  
• Long-term trends in the longevity of scientific elites (dammit, I'm not included in this sample)
  
  
• Interactive graphic of life expectancy across the USA (via maptd)

It's all about cities connections

Roads, railways, Airline routes, tranmission lines and submarine cables: In the end, it's all about cities connections!

Great work on mapping the Anthropocene by Felix Pharand-Deschenes and Globaïa Team. Thanks Romulo Krafta for the tip!

! Now this is comparable to the BBC series Britain From Above !

You may click here for more awesome images.

funny obs.: The number of Mcdonald's restaurants is considered as one "Anthropocene Indicator" !

obs. 2: You must be asking as I am : "Where did he get this data?!!"

obs. 3: Sorry Professors Erle Ellis and Navin Ramankutty...

Urban Picture

Just a short post today as I've been busy in the last few days...
Urban Picture of the Day: 'NY state of mind vs LA state of mind' [beautiful photo by jimmay bones]

Soundtrack for this post: Manamanah (1976) - petit gateau version here!

Community connections via mobile phone

What criteria one should use to define a region? How about 'community' connections via mobile phone ?

Check this out (via Nathan Yau).