Everything is Connected

One of the things I said I'd be blogging about is urban issues and things to do with urban life, specifically as they relate to planning. However, I thought it would be good to do a quick post on the topic of connections and how it's really impossible to fully separate the urban from the non-urban or rural. This is a topic which a colleague of mine, Andreas Schulze Bäing explored in his PhD thesis and one which I do research on, but without so much focus on the rural dimensions. I'm also aware that I come from an area that is not exactly an exemplar urban area (the Highlands of Scotland), even though I've lived all my adult life in cities (Glasgow, Columbus (Ohio), Liverpool). So, if you're from a rural area like this...

... it doesn't mean that cities are irrelevant. In fact, given that they are now seen as the drivers of economic growth in many advanced industrial economies, we really should be aware of how things are connected. When you look at the major migration patterns in the UK, these kinds of connections are more obvious.


When you look at the patterns in even more detail, in this 3D image I created for migration patterns in the North West of England (high in-migration areas in red, out-migration areas in blue), we start to get a better understanding of the ways in which cities import people (mainly students and young people). However, they do export families who generally tend to rely on urban areas for a living but don't want to live there... But that's another matter.



So, everything is connected to everything else. This is exactly what Waldo Tobler's First Law of Geography states and I am a firm believer in it. Nothing should be studied in isolation (especially in planning) and that's why much of my work includes a spatially dynamic element. The relative importance of this connectivity may vary, but it is invariably important. We need to see the big picture if we are to understand what's going on in our own back yard, so to speak.

From Data to Knowledge using Google Maps?

About time for another post I think. This time about things I'm doing with data which I turn into useable information in the hope that it can generate new knowledge. Well, that's the basic idea. Specifically, I've been playing around with google mashup editor, kml and kmz files, and Index of Multiple Deprivation data for 2007. What I've been trying to do is work my way round methods to display IMD data on google maps so that anyone can view it, understand it and maybe even remember it.

One of the main problems with using IMD data is that it means using lots of polygons and when you try to load them in google maps they render very slowly and sometime you get a script error in your browser (IE and FF). This is something to do with the way it all works 'under the hood' but I've been trying to investigate ways to make rendering polygons quicker... We'll see. Here's an example I created quickly with google mashup editor for an area in North Liverpool:

http://jrf-googlemaps-test.googlemashups.com/ - see how polygons load slowly


I've been reading and listening and watching online and it seems once you get beyond about 100 polygons everything goes awry. The solution would appear to be image/tile overlays but then this has some limitations that go against what I'm trying to achieve (query clickability, for example). I know people at CASA have used similar approach with their Gmap creator (I've used this and it works very well) and I can understand why but I just wonder if there is another way...


Since I'm on the subject of CASA, everyone with an interest in GIS/spatial analysis should go and see MapTube. This is really part of a much wider project about spatial literacy - which I am all for! I've said enough today. Will try a less technical post next time.

How Many People Live in Manchester?

A quick post on a common urban theme. Answering the question of how many people live in a city is very tricky. Do you use the political boundaries of the local authority? Do you use the extent of the urban area? Do you use some other definition? In a completely unscientific experiment, I've developed a different approach - and it turns out that the populations I come up with are not that different to those given for the city-regions of the places on my list.

Here's what I did... I took the eight core cities in England, plus London and chose the main central train stations in each of them as the central location (e.g. Lime Street in Liverpool). Then I used a bit of GIS wizardry to calculate the population within a 15 mile radius of said stations (statistically significant distance determined after much spatial analysis... and a bit off the top of my head). Here's the results (using ancient 2001 Census data):

Obviously, these figures differ a lot from the local political entities with the same names (e.g. Manchester the district has about 430,000 people). Even though I've used a fairly arbitrary technique, the populations are a much better reflection of the urban population than others often cite. So, let's compare the figures. On Census day in 2001 London had 7,172,091 people, Birmingham city-region had 2,693, 917, Manchester city-region had 2,482,328 and the other cities on the list show similarities to the 15 mile figure. What does this tell us? Not much really, except that if we use a 15 mile buffer from central train stations we get a good approximation of city-region populations for the major English cities. Here's how it looked on the map:

My Rules of Screencasting

Others have written about how to do screencasts most effectively. Like I said in a previous post, much of it is very useful. I just thought I'd add my own rules that I use when creating screencasts just in case anyone is interested.

1. If it's worth screencasting it's worth sounding interested in it. Try to be enthusiastic without speaking too fast. (I may be guilty from time to time here)

2. Make sure you record the screen at sensible size. I use a window size of 800x600 and I get it to this size by using a great little app called sizer (see below).

3. Always record in Flash for movies of the highest quality and easy distribution over the web.

4. Use a good microphone - I use a Logitech USB mic and the sound is crisp and crackle-free. (My earlier efforts were not so good!)

5. Go easy on the 'special effects'! Don't use the George Mallory approach. Works great for mountains but not for screen capture software.

6. Plan but don't script. Know what you're going to do but not necessarily exactly what you are going to say. (And don't worry about little mistakes - they keep it human - if you are one)

7. Work towards a standard format that your viewers recognise and trust. I find this helps comprehension and makes learning easier.

That's all for now. There's loads of other things I could have included but they are the ones that I think are most important.

Cities are Back?

Just a quick post today regarding the issue of whether British 'cities are back'. Since the report of the Urban Task Force in 1999 and the much-cited 'urban renaissance' cities have been back on the agenda but in a more positive light than in the past. People now seem to want to live in them again, city-centre living has been given a new lease of life and huge amounts of public and private cash have been spent doing them up. However, is all of this a good thing? I would say that overall it is but I just wonder how sustainable it is. What are the implications if it all goes wrong and investors and people flood out of the cities once more? What if people don't really want to live in the shadow of tower blocks forever. What if it is not really a renaissance?

I took this picture in Glasgow in July 2004. Contrast between 1960's tower blocks at Red Road and 2000's new builds. Quite striking I think. An illustration of how urban policy plays out in reality. We'll have to wait and see how the urban renaissance pans out but for now I suppose we ought to wish it all the best and keep track of how things go.

Screencast Update

I've had a lot of positive feedback about my new screencasting project that I'm developing within Blackboard, the University of Manchester's virtual learning environment (VLE) of choice. A visitor from the US who is really involved in GIS education recently had the chance to see what I was doing and was particularly interested, and closer to home people also seem pretty enthusiastic. Obviously the VLE stuff is locked away from public view and it's not finished yet anyway, but here's an idea of how it will look to students:


In total so far I've completed about 30 screencasts but I aim to produce well over 100 for this project and now that I've got my production methods sorted out and streamlined I will start producing a lot more content over the summer. I'm going to continue to produce content that relates directly to different classes taught here at the University by me or by other teaching staff but I'm also going to do some stand-alone material that students can use as and when they want/need to. I don't like to script the screencasts because it can be a bit boring that way but I do have a plan that I stick to. There's a lot of advice out there but I think it's best to do what I know works after testing on students over a period time, although I do try to take on board what other more experienced developers have learned.

Finally, I think it's about time time that screencasting (or whatever you want to call it) should really be a lot bigger than it is. The technology is not new and everyone knows it can be done so why is it not ubiquitous? Before I sign off, I came across an interesting blog by a prolific screencaster last week - it's called Demo Girl and it's good reading.

GIS Screencasts

A quick post about my ongoing work with screencasting and geographical information system (GIS) software. Screencasts are video demonstrations of computer activity. Since teaching GIS is a very hands-on thing, screencasting is an excellent way to reinforce and enhance learning. I don't just use screencasting for GIS though; I also use it to demonstrate any kind of software or even for showing how to download material from the internet for different modules I teach at the University of Manchester. Here's a small animated gif showing the kind of thing I'm talking about:

Software like ArcGIS can be quite intimidating to new students with no experience of GIS so I find that the screencast approach is particularly effective. I'd like to think it will be much more widely used in higher education and in the teaching of GIS in particular within the next few years. The software is not difficult to learn (I use Camtasia Studio 5 but there are lots of other good tools out there - see this). That's all for now!