Urban Demographics

Time Lapse + Tilt Shift + Rio's carnaval

2012-02-27T16:49:00.000-03:00

If you like either Rio de Janeiro, Tilt shift footage, Carnival or Timelapse videos, this is a must watch!

[via Viral Video]

Simulations from the Early Days

2012-02-26T13:05:00.000-03:00

Michel Batty has gathered some really interesting Early Animations of Urban Models.

One of these videos shows Jack Dangermond (co-founder of Esri) and Allan Schmidt* talking about the 'Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis'. (more videos on GIS history here.)

*Allan Schmidt was responsible for what is probably the earliest "movie" of urban expansion. A SYMAP time lapse movie depicting growth of Lansing, MI 1850-1965.

If you are unpatient to see it, skip to 3:17 or just click here.

AfriPop Project

2012-02-22T22:01:00.006-02:00

AfriPop: demography aims of producing detailed and freely-available population distribution maps for the whole of Africa . It provides "detailed gridded spatial population datasets showing age composition by 5-year groupings and gender." (via devcondata).

obs. I have just added this project to our Online Databases List on the right.

Population Density

[image credit: AfriPop]

Soundtrack: Fela

Carnival Break !

2012-02-18T13:25:00.001-02:00

[Image Credit: Tudo ao mesmo tempo agora]

A few Links on Labor Force and Labor Market

2012-02-17T13:10:00.000-02:00

Urban Picture

2012-02-16T18:29:00.000-02:00

Brasília from above (Beautiful microchip appearance. It is not really functional though ...)

[Image Credit: emBrasília]

soundtrack: Ray

The servant "problem" in Brazil

2012-02-14T21:51:00.001-02:00

Gaping income inequalities; limited education for the masses; a long tradition of domestic service: Brazil at the turn of the 21st century bore striking similarities to 1880s Britain. But in the past decade Brazil’s professional classes have burgeoned and a lower-middle class—25m new consumers—has sprung into being. Most Brazilian children now go to secondary school and the country’s north-east, long its poorest region, has become its fastest-growing

[...]

In the past four years the workforce in São Paulo’s metropolitan area rose by 11% and average wages by 8%. But the number of domestics fell by 4%—and their wages rose by 21%.

[...]

Britain has passed through the servant problem that Brazil is now experiencing. So what can Britain tell Brazil of life on the other side? That service does not die, but is reborn in a different form.

So, basically, it is not a problem. People with more education are an important part of what makes a developed country. And it implies more expensive labour force. (via LMonasterio)

[image credit: The Economist]

Amsterdam's Frozen Canals

2012-02-14T14:35:00.000-02:00

This is the kind of event that happens only once in a lifetime. Beautiful urban scene.

(via Viral Video)

obs. If you are more of a night person, you might prefer this one.

The Naked City public lecture

2012-02-13T14:12:00.000-02:00

Renowned sociologist Sharon Zukin discussed her latest book at LSE "The Naked City: the death and life of authentic urban places"

Looking for a taxi in Manhattan

2012-02-12T23:06:00.000-02:00

Another good tip if you are looking for a taxi in Manhattan (ht Bernardo Furtado)

Taxi! from Juan Francisco Saldarriaga on Vimeo.

Urban Picture

2012-02-11T11:25:00.000-02:00

The city as an egg by Cedric Price (via per square mile)

Assorted Links

2012-02-11T10:59:00.001-02:00

Soundtrack: Além do que se vê

Birth rate plummets in Brazil

2012-02-09T20:48:00.001-02:00

A good article by The Washington Post on Brazil's Fertility Decline (via Ricardo Ojima)

excerpt: "The country’s fertility rate has fallen from 6.15 children per woman in 1960 to less than 1.9 today. That is a lower rate than in any other Latin American country except Cuba, which has state-sponsored family planning and legalized abortion. It is also lower than the rate for the United States, which at 2 per woman is just enough for the population to replace itself."

When I was a kid, people used to joke saying that some poor families would have more children because they didn't have television at home. Apparently some take this argument fairly seriously !

Image Credit: The Washington Post

Soundtrack: Tulipa Ruiz e Criolo

Visualizing Migration III

2012-02-08T20:36:00.000-02:00

Even Westvang did this amazing short animation showing the patterns of 300.000 Norwegians moving house. He did it by cross-referencing 8 million tax records from 2006 and 2007 to track changes in postal codes.

This kind of dataset is rarely available for other countries (via information aesthetics). In Norway it is made public every year!*

Deluge from even westvang on Vimeo.

*obs. Now you might be thinking "....mmm. I should have used Norway data in my PhD. Dammit"

!Related posts!

Why some city streets are more crowded than others

2012-02-07T20:00:00.000-02:00

The Economist Magazine has written two interesting articles on 'Crowd Dynamics' over the last two months (here and here). Very informative about the contribution of space syntax to urban planning.

By the way, some presentations from SSS8 are now available (HT Valerio Medeiros)

[image credit: The Economist]

Too much

2012-02-07T18:46:00.000-02:00

R mapping

2012-02-03T18:02:00.000-02:00

It is possible to make some very cool maps in R !
~~dammit ! I'm too lazy to learn it~~

[Image credit: Spatial Analysis]

Soundtrack: Chet

Assorted Links

2012-02-03T15:53:00.000-02:00

Dubai from above (Some say nothing lasts forever... I would say Dubai won't last for long)
Cenarios for the Chinese Urbanization by mckinsey (via Manu Fernández)
Convenient page of data sources from the Washington Post (via Gelman)
The future as seen from the past (that was close!)
An Animated Argument For Congestion Pricing by Lewis Lehe (via David Levinson)
How Long Do Marriages Last?

Chart Of The Day

2012-02-01T13:30:00.000-02:00

Note that Brazil had experienced one of the fastest urbanization rates in the world during the second half of the 20th century. More here.

Source: The Economist

Soundtrack: Mistério do Planeta

Replay: Counterintuitive trues about urban transport

2012-01-30T18:41:00.000-02:00

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.

Assorted Links

2012-01-27T18:51:00.000-02:00

The economics of skyscrapers
Mapping Scientific Collaboration, inspired by the Facebook worldwide friendships mapped which in turn was supplemented by 'Filling in the black holes of the Facebook friendship map')
Picasso’s Light Paint (1949)
The Power of Comparison: Just How Big Is It? Try the BBC tool.
Compare crime rates in different England cities
More than 27 million online house hunters each month use the real estate search site Trulia. And they show you where people have been searching for homes in the USA since 2007.

Soundtrack: Retrato para iaia

Lectureship in Demography at Unicamp (Brazil)

2012-01-26T19:29:00.001-02:00

Another opportunity that might be of interest for some of you: now in Brazil at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the Population Studies Centre (NEPO).

Lecturer position in Demographic Theory and Methods at Unicamp/Nepo*

(Salary: about U$4,600 per month)

obs. Thank Ricardo Ojima for the tip!

*Again, It's written in Portuguese only.... unfortunately that's the price we pay for being Brazil.

The creation of Municipalities in Brazil

2012-01-25T20:00:00.000-02:00

The creation of municipalities in Brazil from 1872 to 2010 (written in Portuguese only…sorry...). Thanks Ernesto and Leo for the tip. How to overcome this issue for historical analysis? One possible answer is here.

Total creation of Municipalities in Brazil - 1872/2010
[Click on the chart to enlarge the image]

Total creation of Municipalities in Brazil by State - 1872/2010

[Click on the chart to enlarge the image]

(Source: IBGE)

Soundtrack: It's Automatic

Москва TimeLapse

2012-01-25T10:21:00.000-02:00

Москва (Moscow) TimeLapse (via uhull)

Lectureship in urban sociology at the LSE

2012-01-23T22:40:00.002-02:00

Some of you might be interested in this opportunity:

Lecturer position in Urban Sociology at LSE.

(Salary: from £40,634 to £47,047 p.a. incl.)

Or maybe in this one: studentships within the field of urban and regional studies from FURS (Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies) - applications must be received by 31 January each year... so hurry up!