The geography of Manhattan distorted by travel-times

The figure below was created by Stefan Musch from Gradient Metrics (hat tip Jean Legrand). The figure was created using R and ggplot2 based on travel-time estimates from Google Maps API. There is a bit more info about the creation process in this post and perhaps Stefan will share his code at some point.... please? :)

Echoing the comments of others on Twitter.  The figure does a great job illustrating how it is much harder to cross Manhattan from east to west than from north to south. Finally,  it would be great to see how this shape has changed over the last decades using historical travel time estimates.

credit: Stefan Musch (Gradient Metrics)

Visualizing space-time networks

I've said this on Twitter before but I should say it here as well. Craig Taylor and the Ito World team have some of the best data visualizations of geospatial data related to cities and transport networks.

Just a few days ago, Craig tweeted some of his latest work with neat visualizations of drive-time network for catchment area analysis. Here is a video comparing different cities in the UK and a brief explanation on how to read the dataviz.

"30 minute drive time analysis from major UK cities visualised as 3d coral geometry. 

The thickness of artery is proportional to the number of networks connected to it indicating busier routes. The falloff in height is linked to the proximity to the centre. 

Corals aren’t normalised in scale as the purpose of this is visualising the form and pattern the networks create. Animation is a boomerang motion scaling from 0 to 30 min and back again. Congestion/traffic not accounted for."

click at the bottom of the video to watch it in full screen and high definition

Yep, there are some obvious parallels here with Time Geography and in particular with the representation of space-time prisms. The static version of the space-time trees gives a sharper visualization of the data.

The space-time tree, or 3d coral geometry as Craig said.

and the inverted original dataviz, "the drive time web"

Assorted Links

1. Horizonless maps of New York City and Paris, by Peter Richardson (Github repo)
   
   
2. Stunning videos:Flying by Jupiter  and Mars
   
   
3. How to Make the World’s Smallest Cup of Coffee
   
   
4. Deriving Hägerstrand's space-time visualisations from mobility isochrones, by Sebastian Meier
   
   
5. A collaborative collection of Origin-Destination (flow) maps, started by RJ Andrews
   
   
6. Beautiful photographs: 'The North American Indian' 1904-1924
   
   
7. Shrinking cities: the rise and fall of global urban populations – mapped
   
   
8. Subway Maps Compared to Their Actual Geography, by Peter Dovak

via GIPHY

Assorted Links

1. Uber suspends testing of self-driving cars after crash last frieday. Uber's SUV had the right of way and bears no blame
   
   
2. Dr. Mae C. Jemison was the 1st African American woman to travel in space, in 1992.
   
   
3. Harvey Miller's entry on Time geography andspace–time prism for the new International Encyclopedia of Geography. Harvey is also on Twitter
   
   
4.  paper: Network theory may explain the vulnerability of medieval human settlements to the Black Death pandemic
   
   
5. Chronological map of Edinburgh showing expansion of the City from earliest days via Phil Taylor
   
   
6. 15% of the entire housing stock of Florence historic centre is on AirBnB. David Wachsmuth also has a coming paper analyzing Airbnb’s impact on housing and gentrification in New York
   
   
7. Where workers will be needed in the Asia, and where they could come from
   
   
8. In 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois created these beautiful data visualizations for the Paris Exposition Universelle to show the economic and social progress of African Americans since emancipation (via Michal Migurski)

credit: W.E.B. Du Bois

Assorted links

1. Combining satellite imagery and machine learning to predict poverty
   
   
2. Bill Rankin's new work on Mapping Slavery Against US Incarceration
   
   
3. A Review of Temporal Visualizations based on Generalized Space-Time Cube Operation
   
   
4. Charles Darwin was born on this day 208 years ago. All of Darwin's published works are available here.
   
   
5. An extensive list of good blogs and websites on urban- and transport-related topics. ht Kyle Zheng
   
   
6. A 15-min video giving an interesting summary of the largest US health insurance experiment in history - ht Carl Schmertmann
   
   
7. There is an app to crowdsource data on shootings in Rio. Great project by Cecilia Olliveira in face of harsh reality
   
   
8. Can you name a city just by looking at its streets?
   
   
9. Inequality Is Killing The American Dream

Visualizing the space-time geography of flow data

Till Nagel and Christopher Pietsch have created an art installation that allows one to visualize and compare the spaces of flow created by bike-sharing systems in New York City, Berlin, and London. The name of the project is city flow, a comparative visualization environment of urban bike mobility. They have recently published a paper (co-authored with Marian Dörk) with more technical information about their project.

These guys are doing a fabulous work with design, and I believe they're really pushing the boundary of data visualization in urban and transport studies with new tools to visualize the space-time geography of flow data. 

Take a look at how easy it gets to explore trajectories of cyclists in space and time with their tool.

cf. city flows - Edge Bundling Studies from Christopher Pietsch on Vimeo.

Measuring exposure to air pollution using mobile phone data

Tijs Neutens and colleagues have a new paper where they use mobile phone data to assess people's exposure to air pollution in Belgium in high spatio-temporal resolution. Some of you might be interested (via GAUMAS).

Dewulf, B., et al. (2016). Dynamic assessment of exposure to air pollution using mobile phone data. International journal of health geographics, 15(1), 1.

image credit: Dewulf, et al. (2016)