Google Street View Video

A short post today about the Street View function in Google Maps. Recently, Inverness in the north of Scotland came online with this so I've been having a look around. The coverage is expanding all the time, but not into Germany (see map below).


Overall, I find it to be a really useful tool for teaching and learning in urban planning - and also very good for just having a look around new places and trying to spot people you know. I was curious to see if a video could be made from Street View, so I came up the the short clip below...

Red Road Flats, Glasgow

Since they're not going to be with us much longer, I'm writing a short post about the Red Road Flats in Glasgow - a group of eight high-rise social housing blocks in the north of the city. I used to live just over a mile away from them and it will be strange when they are gone since they have been such a feature of the city's skyline for more than 40 years. There's some really interesting material on the flats on this website, set up specially to document their demolition.

Just to be more precise about where they are, here's a Google streetview:


View Larger Map

There's also a series of Quicktime panoramas here (with further links on the right of this page). There's also a gritty/disturbing 2006 film of the same name which is set there. There are hundreds of other potential links, but the final one here is from a short BBC film of the area. The schedule for demolition is a little unclear, but the first block is supposed to be toppled in spring 2010.

Finally, I edited one of my very own Red Road photos (taken in 2005) to see what the skyline will look like from Petershill Road once they are all gone (the picture below is a small animated gif).

Obama's Urban Policy in 2009

I've blogged before about Barack Obama's urban policy approach in the US and recently came across a video by the National Journal Online which reviews his progress over the first year. He gets about 4 or 5 out of 10 according to most, and the video has some interesting comments from Adolfo Carrión.

GeoDa - for spatial data analysis

A quick post today on GeoDa - a piece of software for spatial data analysis, and also a centre for geospatial analysis and computation at Arizona State University. I've used the software for a few years and found it really useful, so thought I'd do a short post on it and a little video too, just to demonstrate what it looks like in action.

In the video I've not done any analysis or explored any of the capabilities with GeoDa, but rather just shown how the interface works and performed a couple of basic tasks, like adding a shapefile and making a basic choropleth map. The main thing I've used it for is measuring spatial autocorrelation in relation to deprivation in England but there are so many other uses and it is now very widely used (among spatial stats boffins at least!).

The version I'm demonstrating here isn't the only software that the GeoDa people produce - for a full list, see here. However, it is a very powerful tool for geospatial analysis and one that many researchers could not now do without...

Regeneration 2000-2009

Much has been written about regeneration in the UK over the past decade. A couple of days ago I saw a piece in the Guardian about 'regeneration in the noughties'. Interesting stuff - basically, it says that a decade of regeneration has resulted in nice looking city centres but not a lot else. In particular, it looks at the experience in Sheffield. (For Sheffield, the Sheffield blog is also quite interesting.)

I wrote a blog post about this general topic ages ago but it's useful to reflect on the past decade since the new one looks like it will be all about public spending cuts and not much shiny new regeneration.

A plan to save Detroit?

A recent article by Bruce Katz captured my attention today. It's entitled 'The Detroit Project: A Plan for Solving America's Greatest Urban Disaster' - strong words indeed. It's of interest to me for a few reasons: 1. urban policy is one of my main research areas; 2. it mentions Sheffield - where I live; 3. it uses European examples in a positive light; 4. it makes international comparisons; 5. my Grandparents used to live and work in Detroit (they were immigrants in the early 1930s); 6. I've been there and seen the city first-hand (see photos below).

The policy challenges faced in Detroit are huge. The population has halved since 1950, unemployment is at 28% and there are 1,220 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Despite all this, I found it a very enjoyable city to visit. Maybe that's because I've also lived in cities such as Glasgow and Liverpool and I like interesting places. Anyone who has driven along the lower dock road in Liverpool and West Fort Street in Detroit will understand. However, the claim that 'Europe is filled with cities that have risen from similarly miserable conditions' is, in my view, a bit over the top. Having said that, anyone who grew up in Liverpool in the 1980s would understand the comparison.

I do agree with the assertion that 'recovery requires at least a generation' - as Katz says.

Public Spending in the UK

The Guardian have been doing some interesting things with data over the past couple of years, including setting up their data store. One of the most interesting visualisations they have produced relates to public spending in the UK. The most recent version of this graphic (produced in conjunction with the Institute for Fiscal Studies), for 2008-09 reveals some interesting things...

• Total spending was £620.685 billion, up 7% on the previous year
  
• Department for Work and Pensions (state pensions, housing benefit, etc.) spending was £135.7 billion
• £94.552 billion was spent on the NHS
• Interest payments on debt were £24.1 billion
• 'Financial stability' measures (i.e. bailing out the banks) was £85.5 billion
• More money was spent bailing out LTSB and RBS (£36.9 billion) than on the Department for Communities and Local Government (£36.8 billion)
• DCLG spending for local and regional government was £25.4 billion

There's a fully fledged article on all this, and links to the downloadable pdf on the Guardian pages relating to this analysis. There's also a related flickr page for visualisations.