4th Anniversary of Urban Demographics !

Today marks the fourth anniversary of Urban Demographics Blog! And blogging still makes up for an important part of my procrastination learning !

Here are some stats that show a summary of the blog and its readers over the past year:

• 190 posts
• 306 subscribers  
• 31,898 visitors 
• 51,249 visits
• 1,085 likes on Facebook 
• 1,572 followers on Twitter

The most popular posts:

1. Making 3D Maps in Excel
2. Subway systems of Rio and Shanghai 1993-2013
3. The most cited authors in Sociology
4. Urban Density Patterns in 9 Global Cities 
5. Population Density Maps

and 5 of my preferred posts:

1. 200 years of Urban Expansion
2. IPUMS-International and Brazilian census microdata
3. Accessibility Observatory + GTFS data
4. Global Innovation and Diffusion in Public Transport
5. If Christaller had Google Earth

Where do readers come from (Top 5)? (175 Countries, 4,665 Cities)

1. United States (29%)
2. Brazil (16%)
3. United Kingdom (8%)
4. Germany (4%)
5. Canada (3%)

And the Top 5 sites that sent visitors here:

1. Google (24%)
2. Direct traffic to the blog (24%)
3. Facebook (20%)
4. Twitter (9%)
5. Feedburner (3%)

Thanks everyone for the support and suggestions via comments and emails !

Urban Picture

New York City at sundown, 1930s

[image credit:? via @HistoryInPics]

Soundtrack: 

Looking for Human Mobility Patterns through Internet services

Here is an interesting approach to estimate the number of international visitors going to Brazil during World Cup: Check-Ins on Facebook! I couldn't find who is the author of this video.

Visitors to Brazil Check In on Facebook During World Cup from Facebook on Vimeo.

But when it comes to using the Internet to identify human mobility patterns though, I think Emilio Zagheni is a great academic reference. In this blog, we have already mentioned one of Zagheni's work, where he uses e-mail data to estimate global migration rates. He has also developed similar studies using Twitter Data and IP Geolocation.

There is also a whole different group of studies using Internet services to identify mobility patterns at the city scale. If you're more interested in this scale of analysis, this post might work as a starting point `A day in the life of a city`, but you should not forget the research of Cesar Hidalgo and colleagues using mobile phone data to study human mobility (and this one).

Abstract Art

This is a great paper abstract! Not the most informative abstract tough, but I liked the idea of using word clouds as 'visual abstract'.

This is from the paper "Eigenvalue Fractal Geometry: An Alternative Approach to Fractal Generation", recently published  by Sandra Arlinghaus and Daniel Griffith on Solstice: An Electronic Journal of Geography and Mathematics. Thanks Sandra for the tip.

[image credit: Arlinghaus and Griffith, tagxedo]

Related Link:

• If Christaller had Google Earth

Chart of the Day

Comparing the UK Department for Transport forecasts of road traffic with actual road traffic (via George Monbiot). Interestingly, it repeats the same systematic error the US Department of Transportation has been making for years.

The full story is here: 

Since the 1980s, the Department for Transport has consistently forecast traffic growth along a steep trajectory. But the distance covered by car drivers in England is now 7% lower than it was in 1997. The total volume of traffic has flatlined since 2002, nixing every prediction the department has made. Last year, 32 transport professors wrote to the secretary of state pointing out that, in the absence of traffic growth, "the basis for major infrastructure spending decisions appears to be changing".

The only thing likely to induce more traffic growth, they argued, is building more trunk roads, and that would put intolerable pressure on the city streets into which they feed. The facts might have changed, but the policy remains the same. The department continues to make the same failed forecasts, using the same failed model. The desire to build – and to appease the construction industry and motoring lobby – comes first, and the forecasts are made to fit.

[image credit: Better Transport]

7 Misconceptions about Urbanization

George Martine (former president of the Brazilian Association for Population Studies ABEP) was the lead author of the UN Population Fund's (UNFPA) report State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth.

In this seminar, Martine discussed seven common misconceptions about urbanization (ht Eduardo Marandola).

1. Urbanization is inherently bad
2. Most urban growth occurs in mega cities
3. Urban growth comes mainly from migration to cities
4. Rural-Urban migration can and should be stopped
5. The poor are a marginal minority in cities
6. Cities occupy a huge amount of land area
7. As a whole, urbanization inevitably harms the environment

Assorted links

1. High resolution maps of urban perception of safety (via C Hidalgo)
   
   
2. The transformation of Colombia’s second city will be hard to copy
   
   
3. A peculiar photo session in Brasilia
   
   
4. Demography's 50th Anniversary! (via Bernarado Lanza)
   
   
5. Oxford University launches new online course on International Labour Migration: Economics, Politics and Ethics
   
   
6. How the Recession Reshaped the US Economy, in 255 Charts (in one chart)
   
   
7. 7 Hand Gestures That Make You Look Like a Real Intellectual (via Vinicius Netto) - I loved the 'The Tiny Dialectic' one.
   
   
8. Map Compare: a useful tool to compare basemaps and cartogrphic styles
   
   
9. Metions to equality, fairness, freedom and liberty in the Democratic and Republican platforms since 1948 

The Landscape of Transport Studies

In a recent Editorial for the journal Transport Reviews, David Banister presents some interesting numbers about the growth of transport-related journals.

I have searched through the Ulrich’s database and have identified 85 transport journals that are refereed and are available in print. [..] the numbers of transport journals has more than doubled from 1990 – 2010, and a further 14 more have been started in the last three years.

David also reports that over the years 1945–2013 there have been 58,000 papers published with the word transportation in the title.

Irrespective of the numbers, it is again the growth that stands out. Less than 1% of these papers with the word transportation in the title were published prior to 1960, and just over 8% by 1980. Between 1980 and 2000, this figure increased to 36%, and the remaining 64% have been published since 2000. 

Related Link;

• Tim Schwanen comments on Elsevier`s list with the 25 Most Popular Papers on Transport by 2013 (The list is here, and it`s open access).

Message of the Day

A universal law of physics recently discovered:

[Image Credit: Captain Crom via Leo Monasterio]

Assorted links, World Cup special edition

1. World Cup Stadiums from Space
   
   
2. Chart: Every goal scored in the World Cup, by minute
   
   
3. updated! A Google Street View of Brazil's painted streets for World Cup 2014 (ht Analise Real!)
   
   
4. Forget about the football. This is possibly the most important event of the World Cup, thanks to this man and his team
   
   
5. Christopher Gaffney seminar on the social discontent around the World Cup and Olympics
   
   
6. Brazil's anti-World Cup street art in pictures 
   
   
7. World Cup football predictions here and here. Yeap, Brazil is the favourite
   
   
8. A great explanation of the World Cup And FIFA , by John Oliver

Urban Picture

the Zipper building, by Victor Enrich

[image credit: Victor Enrich]

Music for the weekend

ps. No animal was hurt during this post.

New 'workplace zone' Census stats for the UK

Robin Edwards calls attention to a new set of statistical areas developed by the Uk Office of National Statistics to report workplace data from the 2011 Census, called Workplace Zones. He has made some nice maps that give a glimpse of the potential these areas can have to urban and transport studies. If only we had these data when we were writing this paper. :(

Related Link: The U.S Census Bureau has made available an online mapping tool that displays demographic info of states, counties, and census tracts. It`s called Census Explorer and it also presents some data on retail and a commuting edition for 1990-2000-2012.

[image credit: Robin Edwards]

Visualizing Disabled Freedom Pass trips on the London Underground

Gareth Simons has done an amazing work visualizing Disabled Freedom Pass trips on the London Underground. More details on his website.

obs. @transportforall has also produce nice map showing how the Tube network looks like if you can’t use stairs. Simple map with strong message.

Related Link:

• A Guide To Alternative London Tube Maps