Assorted Links

1. Where on earth is the Berlin wall?   Full story here
   
   
2. You could fit all the planets of the Solar System within the distance between the Earth and the Moon
   
   
3. The gradparents of smartcars  via MR
   
   
4. A Visual Survey of Text Visualization Techniques
   
   
5. A Globe-Spanning Accent Map for the Word 'Potato'
   
   
6. OECD report: How was life? Global well-being since 1820 via Leo Monasterio
   
   
7. Varian on Big Data: New Tricks for Econometrics via Gary King
   
   
8. The Twitter map of the Brazilian Elections

Manhattan Inside the Grand Canyon

Gus Petro has an amazing artwork to illustrate what it would look like if you dropped Manhattan into the Grand Canyon (via Mark Byrnes). 

[image credit: Gus Petro]

[image credit: Gus Petro]

Petro has another amazing work putting London by the sea. You should check it out and consider this as a Christmas Gift for someone like me. #justsaying

[image credit: Gus Petro]

World population and human capital (webcast)

Heads up:

Prof. Wolfgang Lutz (IIASA / Wittgenstein Center) will deliver a public lecture on 'world population and human capital in the 21st century', next week (November 3, 2014 17:00 GMT). This event is also being live webcast on here. The event is organized by the the Oxford Martin School and will be followed by a panel discussion with other demography professors from Oxford.

Prof. Lutz and his team are in the forefront of incorporating educational attainment in population projections and have many influential papers in Nature, Science, PDR, etc.  Highly recommended event! 

ps. By the way, you might like this interactive population pyramids of population projections and education composition.

[Image Credit: Lutz and KC, 2011]

Which cities have least affordable housing?

A new report by McKinsey Global Inst. compares housing affordability across 100 cities. HT/ the Daily Charts team at The Economist, who came up with a nice interactive chart.

[image credit: The Economist]

Assorted Links

1. What happens when you try to bring your Nobel Prize through airport security?
   
   
2. 1907-1915 - Russia Before the Revolution, in Color
   
   
3. Spain is the elevator capital of the world. ht Matt Phillips
4. Transport costs and inequalities in vaccine coverage in Africa
   
   
5. Heads Up: UC Berkeley seeks applications for faculty positions in Transportation Planning and in Housing and Urban Development
   
   
6. Vertical ballet
   
   
7. Sad pictures of the rapid deterioration of Detroit, captured by Google Street View
   
   
8. A camera filter that makes it possible to see carbon emissions, literally

FLIR: The Invisible Made Visible from Oceanic Preservation Society on Vimeo.

Comparing population densities in the US

A great interactive map comparing population densities in the US, by Ben Blatt.

Related Links:

• Population distribution in European capitals
• Urban Density Patterns in 9 Global Cities
• The footprint of the world’s largest metros

World Median Ages, and a few papers and links on population aging

Simran Khosla designed this nice map to compare median age across the globe. You may see it in more details in each continent, here. Simran has also done a similar map comparing Life Expectancy at Birth.

click on the image to enlarge it

[image credit: Simran Khosla via Urban Geographies]

And a few papers and links on population aging.

1. Map of the Day: Where Seniors Are Moving to in the US
2. Is low fertility really a problem? Population aging, dependency, and consumption (ht Bernardo Queiroz)
3. The pace of aging: Intrinsic time scales in demography
4. Handbook of Sociology of Aging 
5. Population Change among the Elderly: International Patterns 
6. The dependence burdens of aging babyboomers: a cross-national view

Global Ph.D.s Gender Gap (2010)

Scientific American has recently published an interesting chart showing the gender gap in Ph.D.s across different countries. It's amazing how the distribution varies so much between different fields of study. You should check the interactive version here.

Spatial income inequality in Brazil, 1872–2000

Reis, E. (2014). Spatial income inequality in Brazil, 1872–2000. Economia,15(2), 119-140. 

*Thanks Leo Monasterio for the tip.


Abstract:

The paper provides historical perspectives on spatial economic inequalities in Brazil making use of a database on Brazilian municipalities from 1872 to 2000. A suit of maps and graphs describe the geographic factors shaping the historical development of the Brazilian economy highlighting the role of transport costs and its consequences for the spatial dynamics of income per capita and labor productivity. The remaining of the paper estimates econometric models of growth convergence for municipal income per capita and labor productivity. From 1920 onwards analyses are refined, firstly, by disaggregating the models for urban and rural activities; secondly, by assuming spatial correlation among variables of the model; and, thirdly, by enlarging the model to take account of the long run determinants of spatial growth convergence. Empirical results endorse the historical preeminence of geographic factors – in particular accessibility and transport conditions – as opposed to institutional conditions. The conclusion summarizes the results and proposes research extensions.

DeadLine, personal note

Always keep it in mind and you won't need to kill yourself for it.

[image credit: by Don Motta]

My working soundtrack:

Urban Picture

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

[image credit: Antonello]

Soundtrack:

Assorted links

1. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded for locating brain’s GPS (via Anastasios Noulas)
   
   
2. Japan's Shinkansen bullet train marks 50th anniversary
   
   
3. AC/DC + Bee Gees mashup
   
   
4. 3 PostDoc positions at the Center for Metropolitan Studies in Sao Paulo (USP/Brazil)
   
   
5. Historical Slang Terms For Having Sex since 1351
   
   
6. Confronting Urban Planning & Design with Complexity: round table with M. Weinstock, M. Batty & Gert de Roo
   
   
7. The 2014 Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist
   
   
8. Germany removes University Fees

[image credit:? ]

Monitoring Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Space

NASA's recently launched Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite is capable of detecting the enhanced levels of carbon dioxide over the world's largest cities and is beginning to study LA in coordination with the Megacities team.

This part of a larger project by NASA to develop robust methods for assessing carbon emissions in the world’s largest cities, including Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Paris. Click here to read more about the Megacities Carbon Project.

[image credit: Megacities Carbon Project]

São Paulo from above (and its parking reform)

If you're interested in parking policies and urban planning, check this post by Paul Barter on the parking reform that is going on in São Paulo.

Even if you're not interested in this topic, I'm sure you'll like this picture (which I saw in Paul's post).

Greater São Paulo from above

[image credit: NASA/Paolo Nespoli]

Soundtrack for the weekend:

Brazilian Elections

Big day for Brazil tomorrow with the elections. It's hard to say we don't have a solid democracy.

How to make your pie chart less terrible

The team at Darkhorse Analytics have already shared a nice tip for how to make tables less terrible. Now it is time to 'improve' your pie charts!