off-topic: Anthropologists

by Gary Larson via Beware of Images

London in figures and Fertility Crisis

The Economist's daily chart addressing London's demographic trends.*


* By the way, they have also published this article talking about the relation between recession and fertility in  Europe. Yes, economic uncertainty can be quite bad for fertility.

Quote of the day

"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life" (I. Kant).

obs. Now go get yourself organized !

Soundtrack for the weekend:

Urban Network Analysis toolbox

A neat video introducing the Urban Network Analysis toolbox created by the City Form Research Group. at MIT.

The toolbox is distributed as free and open-source plugin-in for ArcGIS. Here you will find a demo presentantion and a link for downloading it ! (via RC21)

Urban Network Analysis from City Form Lab on Vimeo.

Waiting for the Subway

[Image Credit: New Yorker]

UpComing Events

On your marks. Set. And ....

• PAA 2013 - call for papers open until September 21, 2012
  
  
• IUSSP 2013 - call for papers open until October 15, 2012
  
  
• ALAP 2012 - Conference program now available
  
  
• ABEP 2012 - Selected papers to be announced by August 24, 2012
  
  
• WCTR 2013 - Full papers must be submitted by October 31, 2012
  
  
• Migration in a Changing World. To be broadcasted on November 5-9th 2012
  
  
• Sorry for not including other events.

Assorted Links

1. National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest 2012
2. Luis Bettencourt on the Science of Cities
3. Suburban Sprawl and its Causal Effect on Basketball Skills
4. Declining Migration within the US (HT Leo) more here
5. Aerial Photos of U.S. Correctional Facilities
6. Beyond 7 Billion
7. The Price of faith
8. Which nations consume the most water?
9. A World Map of Heavy Metal Density

Metal Bands per 100,00 people

How food shapes our cities

Carolyn Steel is the author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (a book which goes to my never-ending wishlist.).

Peer effect

The importance of peer effect.


via Uhull SA

• Related Link: Fuzzy Logic explained

Residential Location and Retirement Age

The new issue of Urban Studies is out and this paper caught my attention. It might interest some of you as well!

The Effect of Residential Location on Retirement Age: Theory and Some Evidence on Male Behaviour in the US by Jorge González Chapela

Abstract: Retirement age choice is introduced into a conventional model of residential location to show that the retirement age of workers who do not move after retirement can be influenced by the urban variation of leisure and housing prices. A retirement demand equation that incorporates commuting characteristics is estimated on a sample of US urban male owners interviewed by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. It is found that commuters retire around two years earlier than comparable home-based workers, although the evidence provides no support for this gap to be the result of differences in leisure or housing prices across both groups.

Extra links:

• disussion paper on commuting costs and labor force retirement.
• paper The Determinants of Male´s Retirement in Urban Brazil (+book)