Assorted Links

1. Brazil’s Changing Religious Landscape
   
   
2. A map of the African population density (via Demotrends)
   
   
3. A view of Earth from the dark side of Saturn
   
   
4. Transport is Mostly a Real Estate Problem, by Alain Bertaud
   
   
5. Emigration Chart-of-the-Day
   
   
6. Stratospheric land prices in London
   
   
7. In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters
   
   
8. Emergency landings, by Dietmar Eckell
   
   
9. Top 10% Institutions and Economists in the Field of:
• Urban & Real Estate Economics
• Economic Geography

The Urban Observatory

The founders of ESRI and TED have created a new project called The Urban Observatory (I saw this via
Ariel Schwartz). It's an interactive platform that allows you to visualize and compare many world cities regarding some of their key statistics (population density, urban footprint, land use, senior population etc).

One strong point of this project is to use standardized comparative data. Besides, the platform is very easy to use. It's a great way to spend your time  if you have any  playing with maps. But that's it. The data displayed on the website are not available for download, at least up until now. Moreover, it looks there are still some MAUP issues to be addressed by the project team. I'm sure these limitations will be overcome as the project develops further.

Howsoever, it is a great initiative. You should take a look.

Music for the weekend

I can't stop listening to this guy. The whole thing is amazing but I suggest you skip to 8:31

Quote of the Day

Somebody Else’s Problem (SEP):

"An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.... The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye. [...] it relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain."

(Douglas Adams in his novel Life, the Universe and Everything)

The same is true for scientific discoveries.

Urban Picture

NY by Jeff Weston

Manhattan 1964, by Evelyn Hofer (via @BeschlossDC)

China's policies for the aging population

The Oxford Chinese Economy Programme (OXCEP) promoted a series of workshops on June 2013. Here is the presentation by Prof. Zhao Yaohui (China Center for Economic Research at Peking University) on Chinese policies for the aging population.

Related Link:

• Policies against poverty (Prof. Li Shi - Director of the China Institute for the Study of Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University)

IPUMS-International and Brazilian census microdata

Imagine what research questions you could answer if you had in your personal computer the census microdata of several countries around the world. I am talking about over 211 census from over 68 countries  - for some countries, every census round since 1960 is available. This is made possible thanks to the IPUMS-International project. 

They do this huge effort "to inventory, preserve, harmonize, and disseminate census microdata from around the world. The project has collected the world's largest archive of publicly available census samples. The data are coded and documented consistently across countries and over time to facillitate comparative research. IPUMS-International makes these data available to qualified researchers free of charge through a web dissemination system"

By the way, Robert McCaa alerted me that the 2010 sample of the census of Brazil is now available for download at IPUMS website. Enjoy it !

Related Links:

• How we should answer Brazilian census questionnaire
• Brazil Shapefiles for download
• IPUMS Country Report: Brazil
• Interactive - Brazilian Census 2010: basic results by census tract
• Last month, Prof. Toni Lopez taught us a workshop on IPUMS here at Ipea. Thanks again Toni!

Assorted links on Demography, Inequality and Economic Growth

1. How Europe's changing population will impact on income inequality
   
   
2. The distributional impact of population aging
   
   
3. Population Aging and the Growth of Income and Consumption Tax Revenue
   
   
4. Book - Population Aging and the Generational Economy: A Global Perspective
   
   
5. Long-term fiscal sustainability in major economies
   
   
6. Gini estimations for almost any country and a historical analysis of global income inequality (via Leo Monasterio)
   
   
7. World Income Inequality Database
   
   
8. Penn World Table Version 8.0 - a database with information on relative levels of income, output, inputs and productivity, covering 167 countries between 1950 and 2011. Not bad! (via Drunkeynesian)

The Most-Cited Articles from Urban Studies

A list with the most-cited articles as of July 1, 2013 published in Urban Studies

1. Social Cohesion, Social Capital and the Neighbourhood
2. Industrial Clusters: Complexes, Agglomeration and/or Social Networks?
3. Clusters from the Inside and Out: Local Dynamics and Global Linkages
4. The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis: What Has the Evidence Shown?
5. Is the Journey to Work Explained by Urban Structure?
6. Governance Innovation and the Citizen: The Janus Face of Governance-beyond-the-State
7. Social Polarisation in Global Cities: Theory and Evidence
8. Unravelling the Process of 'Partnership' in Urban Regeneration Policy
9. Creative Cities and Economic Development
10. Spatial Mismatch or Automobile Mismatch? An Examination of Race, Residence and Commuting in US Metropolitan Areas
11. ...

Message of the Day

[via Shoot The Shit]