Replay: UN Demographic Manuals On-line

Here is the link for the classical manuals and guides of demographic methods and techniques issued by the United Nations a long time ago. It presents a series of 23 manuals organized by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat.

Replay: World Population Distribution Map

Tired with those traditional World Population Distribution Maps ?

Bill Rankin came up with this creative way to understand population distribution in our planet!

ps. it got me thinking about Global Warming and sea levels, desertification, etc.

Replay: What exactly is a Ph.D.?

Here is a very precise explanation (by Professor Matt Might) in a graphic way.
obs. This post is a replay from a 2010 post.

Replay: Parking Rates Worldwide

Colliers International (a big real estate company)  did an international survey on the cost of car parking. The results are presented in the chart below, which shows the monthly parking rates. (via The Drunkeynesian)

What caught my attention:

• Prices that are too low (in my almighty opinion of course): Bangkok , Delhi, Jakarta,Mumbai, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, Seoul, São Paulo, San Diego, Santiago, Beijing, Mexico City, Istanbul and Atlanta.
  
  
• Prices that are too high: _________(?).

Monthly Parking Rates Worldwide* (USD)
[Click on the chart to enlarge the image]

*Monthly unreserved median rates.

Replay: Counterintuitive trues about urban transport

Enrique Peñalosa (former mayor of Bogotá) presented a pleasant lecture at LSE titled: “Politics, Power, Cities”. Listen 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.

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."

Replay: How expensive is your city (iPod) ?

A 'replay post' in honor to Steve Jobs (1955-2011):

[image credit: Uhull S.A.]

How expensive is your city (iPod) ?  

The most expensive and richest cities in the world measured by the iPod index ! "And what the Hell is that?" you might ask. It's something similar to the "Big Mac Index" (but stupid).

"The newly introduced iPod index measure how long an employee would have to work to be able to afford the Apple MP3 player." Here.