Monday, January 30, 2012

Replay: Counterintuitive trues about urban transport

Enrique Peñalosa (former mayor of Bogotá) presented a pleasant lecture at LSE titled: Politics, Power, CitiesListen to podcast here (approx 91 min).

Here are some interesting snippets (They might look obvious to some of you. But do they look obvious to you mayor?)

  • What creates traffic is not the number of cars, is the number of trips and the length of trips.
  • Mobility and Traffic Jams are total different problems that require different solutions. Reducing car use is different than solving Traffic Jams.
  • To solve Traffic Jams is, in fact, to facilitate car use.
  • The only way to solve Mobility is with public transport. This will solve Mobility but not Traffic Jams.
  • The only way to solve Traffic Jams is restricting car use. And the most obvious way to restrict car us is restrict parking.
  • To park is not a Constitutional right anywhere.
  • For public transport the most important thing is Density.

*ps. I agree with these statements ("counterintuitive trues" as said Peñalosa). And I don't think they contradict the ideia of polycentric cities.

*ps2. He didn't say much (nothing) about land use... I missed that.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Lectureship in Demography at Unicamp (Brazil)














Another opportunity that might be of interest for some of you: now in Brazil at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the Population Studies Centre (NEPO).

(Salary: about U$4,600 per month)

obs. Thank Ricardo Ojima for the tip!

*Again, It's written in Portuguese only.... unfortunately that's the price we pay for being Brazil.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The creation of Municipalities in Brazil

The creation of municipalities in Brazil from 1872 to 2010 (written in Portuguese only…sorry...). Thanks Ernesto and Leo for the tip. How to overcome this issue for historical analysis? One possible answer is here.


Total creation of Municipalities in Brazil - 1872/2010
[Click on the chart to enlarge the image]


Total creation of Municipalities in Brazil by State - 1872/2010
[Click on the chart to enlarge the image]
(Source: IBGE)

Soundtrack: It's Automatic

Monday, January 23, 2012

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

2011 Global MetroMonitor

The Brookings Institute recently released their 2011 Global MetroMonitor, which analyses the economic growth in the world’s 200 largest metropolitan economies (including five Brazilian metropolitan areas).

It looks pretty interesting. For instance, "ninety percent of the fastest-growing metropolitan economies among the 200 largest worldwide were located outside North America and Western Europe". More here and here

View the interactive map for economic statistics on individual metro areas


soundtrack: que pena

Monday, January 16, 2012

World Population Prospects - 2010 Revision

Have I  mentioned the 2010 Revision of the World Population Prospects? You may download the Data in EXCEL format (all countries). Have fun!


Population by Total Fertility (millions)

Number of Countries by Total Fertility
Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2011): World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision. New York
Note: Only countries with a population of 100,000 or more in 2010 are included

Soundtrack: The Kooks

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Assorted links on Congestion

[image credit: Jacob]

  1. Congestion costs in Australia

  2. Braess paradox: “Put simply, the paradox ... says that adding a new road to a transportation network, rather than making things batter, may actually slow things down for all its users” (Vanderbilt in Traffic). We have just presented a working paper at the 8th Space Syntax Symposium that analyses the relationship between street-network connectivity and travel time variability. Well, It's jus a working paper but the results suggest that the Braess paradox should be the exception.

  3. The Case for Congestion Pricing

  4. "Congestion is a bit like cholesterol - if you don’t have any, you die"

  5. The Brazilian government has just signed a federal law that gives municipalities the legal support to implement congestion pricing schemes (revenue must be provided to public transportation) -  written in Portuguese only. 
Soundtrack: Lenine

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

off-topic: Spacebird's-eye View

More cities at Night seen from Spacebird's-eye View!

(via Dan Colman from Open Culture)

obs. Did you notice Randstad in the Netherlands?!

Traffic - Why we drive the way we do and....



I've read this book last year, but finally I stopped procrastinating   got time to write a post about it.

It's a really  interesting book, full of curiosities about traffic bevaiour flirting with sociology and economics. Here is the NYT's review



I selected four quotes that I would like to use as an epigraph:

  1. "The problem, as is so often the case in traffic, is that the collective result of everyone’s smart behavior begins to seem, on a larger scale, stupid" p.149

  2. “Traffic patterns are the desire lines of our everyday lives. They show us who we are and where we are going” p. 151

  3. "Traffic is thus a living laboratory of human interaction, a place thriving with subtle displays of implied power. When a light turns green at an intersection, for example, and the car ahead of another driver has not moved, there is some chance that a horn will be sounded. But when that horn will be sounded, for how long and how many times it will be sounded, who will be sounding the horn, and who the horn will be sounded at are not entirely random variables." p.34

  4. "If you look at trip rates by male versus female, and look at that by size of family…the women’s trip rates vary tremendously by size of family. Men’s trip rates look as if they didn’t even know they had a family. The men’s trip rates are almost independent of family size. What it obviously says is that the mother’s the one doing all the hauling." p.135

Monday, January 9, 2012

Behold the future (?)

Quantum Levitation  by 2100 you will probably not be using it to go to work


via uhull.com.br

The Ageing Debate

A simple infographic to understand the ageing debate (particularly in Germany).

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Generational Differences


ps. Religion: WTF is that "hello kitty with mustache" doing there?!

ps2. why the hell did I post this?

Monday, January 2, 2012

8th Space Syntax Symposium (2012)


Unfortunately, I will not attend to the event. However, Frederico de Holanda will present a paper of ours at the conference (break a leg!)