Assorted Links

1. Luc Anselin and team join University of Chicago  with new Center for Spatial Data Science (ht Kyle Walker)
   
   
2. Skydiver makes parachute-free jump from 25,000 feet (~7,600 metres) and survives!
   
   
3. The Discipline of Philosophy Visualized with Mapping Software: See All of the Complex Networks
   
   
4. Free CAD files of more than 200 major world cities (ht Fabio Storino)
   
   
5. Keep these pictures away from your hipster friend 
   
   
6. A map maker bot that automatically generates maps based on data of the Census American Community Survey
   
   
7. Portugal runs for four days straight on renewable energy alone via Idalina Baptista
   
   
8. Analyzing 22 milion bike rides in the NYC Bike Share System in R

The cost of every Olympics Games since 1960

Paul Kirby points out to a new working paper by Bent Flyvbjerg and colleagues where they make a systematic analyses of the costs and cost overruns for every Olympic Games between 1960 and 2016.

Flyvbjerg, B., Budzier, A., & Stewart, A. (2016). The Oxford Olympics Study 2016: Cost and Cost Overrun at the Games. Available at SSRN 2804554.

Some of the main findings highlighted by the authors:

1. Average actual outturn cost for Summer Games is USD 5.2 billion (2015 level), and USD 3.1 billion for Winter Games
2. The most expensive Summer Olympic games in history was London 2012, which cost $15 billion. The cheapest one was in Tokyo in 1964, for a grand total of only $280 million.
3. Olympics have the highest average cost overrun of any type of megaproject, at 156 percent in real terms.
4. Fourth, and finally, the Rio 2016 Games, at a cost of USD 4.6 billion, appear to be on track to reverse the high expenditures of London 2012 and Sochi 2014 and deliver a Summer Games at the median cost for such Games. The cost overrun for Rio – at 51 percent in real terms, or USD 1.6 billion – is the same as the median cost overrun for other Games since 1999.

By the way, Flyvbjerg has given a interesting interview at EconTalk. Highly recommended.

click on the image to enlarge it

Differences across cycling policies in one image

A map of cycle routes. Look me in the eye, tell me again why [insert excuse] and not politics defines cycling levels pic.twitter.com/1Rg5yqFvww

— Robert Weetman (@RobertWeetman) 1 June 2016

Residential mobility and social polarisation in Barcelona

A new study by Toni brings an interesting analysis on residential mobility and social polarisation in Barcelona.

López-Gay, A. (2016) “Barcelona’s got talent: migration, residential change and socioeconomic polarisation”, Perspectives Demogràfiques, num. 3, pp. 1-4.

"The data show that Barcelona has considerable power of attraction for a highly-qualified youthful population, but little power when it comes to distributing this population homogeneously among its neighbourhoods. The central part of the city is more attractive for the well-qualified population which is arriving, while hardly any of the less-educated population is moving into these neighbourhoods. Moreover, the internal residential mobility of the Barcelona inhabitants tends to perpetuate pre-existing socioeconomic differences in the city [...] . The combination of these dynamics is, then, contributing towards the process of socioeconomic polarisation in the city of Barcelona."

Assorted Links

1. Jack Caldwell has passed away
   
   
   
   
2. Urban development and air pollution: evidence from a global panel of cities
   
   
   
   
3. The easiest way to simplify your shape file , making it look like a child's drawing (ht Leo Monasterio)
   
   
   
   
4. Fertility rate plummets in India via MR
   
   
   
   
5. Is this the oldest-ever 3D map of transit ridership? 
   
   
   
   
6. Hypnotizing frozen soap bubbles
   
   
   
   
7. Garry Kasparov talking about the The limits of human performance and artificial intelligence
   
   
   
   
8. Great infographic showing Language Families 

Urban Picture

A dazzling photo of São Paulo, by the Brazilian photographer Claudio Edinger.

Active transportation in Brazil

alert of shameless self-promotion 

"Approximately a third of men and women actively commute to work in Brazil, similar to European countries such as France (34.9%) and Holland (37.9%), and below the rates found in China (46.1%)."

This is from a paper I have recently published with colleagues. The paper has been published in both English and Portuguese. Details below.

Sá, T. H. de, Pereira, R. H. M., Duran, A. C., & Monteiro, C. A. (2016). Socioeconomic and regional differences in active transportation in Brazil. Revista de Saúde Pública, 50. doi:10.1590/S1518-8787.2016050006126

Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: To present national estimates regarding walking or cycling for commuting in Brazil and in 10 metropolitan regions.
METHODS: By using data from the Health section of 2008’s Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílio (Brazil’s National Household Sample Survey), we estimated how often employed people walk or cycle to work, disaggregating our results by sex, age range, education level, household monthly income per capita, urban or rural address, metropolitan regions, and macro-regions in Brazil. Furthermore, we estimated the distribution of this same frequency according to quintiles of household monthly income per capita in each metropolitan region of the country.
RESULTS: A third of the employed men and women walk or cycle from home to work in Brazil. For both sexes, this share decreases as income and education levels rise, and it is higher among younger individuals, especially among those living in rural areas and in the Northeast region of the country. Depending on the metropolitan region, the practice of active transportation is two to five times more frequent among low-income individuals than among high-income individuals.
CONCLUSIONS: Walking or cycling to work in Brazil is most frequent among low-income individuals and the ones living in less economically developed areas. Active transportation evaluation in Brazil provides important information for public health and urban mobility policy-making

Urban Picture

Construction site of the light rail in the port area of Rio. At least someone is smiling despite all the problems with the Olympic Games.

credit: Rafael Pereira