The eight English core cities outside London often work together on issues that affect them. One thing I've been looking at recently on some work in Sheffield is how the core cities compare in terms of patterns of deprivation. So, I've mapped and compared them below. Red areas are amongst the 10% most deprived in England and the darkest blue areas are amongst the 10% least deprived in England. The maps are at different scales but the point here is just to provide a quick visual comparison of cities in this map matrix view.
I'm currently finishing off a piece of work relating to spatial patterns of labour market deprivation in Scotland so I thought I'd share a couple of findings about the contrasting cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow*. I've been using data from the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (2009) employment deprivation domain, which gives a jobless rate for each small area (Data Zone). The official explanation is that it is 'involuntary exclusion from the labour force' and it includes things like unemployment claimants and incapacity benefit claimants.
I've been looking at the data within the context of local labour markets and have done some comparisons between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The data are now a bit old (from 2008) but what's really interesting are the numbers... In Glasgow, the total population of Data Zones where the jobless rate was 25% or more was a little over 170,000 (more than the population of Dundee) and areas with a rate of 33% or more contained just over 51,000 people (more than the population of Perth). By contrast, the figures for Edinburgh were just under 25,000 and just under 11,000 respectively. Even when you take into account the difference in population (about 600,000 for Glasgow vs. 450,000 for Edinburgh) that's a big difference! I know this contrast isn't particularly surprising but the numbers did surprise me a bit.
*I've added Aberdeen and Dundee because David Manley suggested it. A good idea!
My experiments in mapping deprivation continue... I should really have done something on Wales before now but to make up for it I've done a 3D annotated map, a Google fusion table version with Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2005 and 2008 data (also embedded below), plus a new version of a fusion table map with a drop-down menu for choosing local authority areas. For both the google map versions you can find out about each area just by clicking on it.
Click here for a full size version, and here's the shortened URL http://goo.gl/GYnIF
Finally, here's a screenshot of the page with the drop-down menu for selecting local authorities. You can click here, or click on the image below to go to the separate web page for this one...
Rather than leave my English Indices of Deprivation fusion table work on a single blog page, I thought I'd take a minute or two to put it on a separate web page with its own address. A screenshot of the result is shown below. I've just used blogger for this and added a floating key so that no matter where you zoom or pan you can remember the colour scheme. The colour scheme is based on quintiles (i.e. 20% most deprived, 40% most deprived and so on). Click the image below to go to the web page. It's very basic!
The 2010 US Census was conducted in April 2010 and already the results are looking very interesting. By the end of 2010 there was a new total population figure for the US, indicating a growth of 9.7% between 2000 and 2010. The total population on the twenty third US Census day was 308,745,538. This is just over double the total population from 1950. For a more up to date population estimate, you can check the US population clock from the US Census Bureau. Because I'm interested in all this, I've produce a graphic which shows population density and some population data for the lower 48 states, at county level. A couple of nuggets here: Los Angeles county has nearly 10 million people and Loving County (Texas) has only 82 people. All other counties lie somewhere in between...
When I started this blog I wasn't really sure if anyone would ever look at it but as it turns out people somehow find it and some lost souls even return more than once! Even more surprisingly (for me) is that people often get in touch with me because of it, which is really good because I like to make contact with like-minded researchers and share ideas in this way. Google Analytics allows you to keep track of the number of visitors and the country of origin so I thought I'd highlight the usefulness of that and also post some charts of the visits to my blog...
Here's a chart showing visits per day since I started blogging (as usual, click images to enlarge)
This is a Google Analytics map showing visits per country (still work to do in Africa!)
Most blog visits in the USA come from California
The point of this post is threefold. 1 - to highlight the magical properties of Google Analytics. It really is brilliant. 2 - to demonstrate that blogging does help connect like-minded people and make collaboration possible. 3 - to write about something other than deprivation!
P.S. There will be more on deprivation in the near future...
The results of the 2011 Census will not be released for a while yet and in the case of migration and commuting data it usually takes about two or three years before we get our hands on it. I've recently been looking at commuting patterns at district level in the UK from the 2001 data in anticipation of studying changes when the 2011 data are released and have put together this short animation. You can play the animation and also use the slider on the time line to control the speed yourself... (it may take a moment or two to load)
I've just selected 18 different districts from across the UK and looked at the range of commuting origins. A couple of points to note here. I've only included flows over ten in order to cut out some of the 'noise' associated with very low flow numbers. Also, for Belfast, the commuting data is split into Belfast North, South, East and West so that one looks a little different.
A few points of note. City of London and Westminster have the highest inflows in the UK, at over 300,000 and 400,000 respectively. I've chosen a sample of places just to give reasonable geographical coverage. What I aim to look at in the relatively near future is commuting and deprivation together, but this is a slow-burner...
Here's the image file for City of London, just as an example. Click the image to see it in full size.
This blog featured data, maps and stories related to my research between 2008 and 2015. I've decided to move on to other things, but I'll leave all content as it is now in case anyone is interested. The focus was normally on things to do with cities, GIS and spatial data analysis. If you want to use any of the material on here just ask, as I'm generally okay with it.
