Dataviz by Sunlight

wbezdata:

Data Dive: Which comes first? Closed schools or blighted neighborhoods?
As Chicago closes public schools, a question arises: Do school closings contribute to a community’s downward spiral — or are they a symptom?

Data Dive: Which comes first? Closed schools or blighted neighborhoods?

As Chicago closes public schools, a question arises: Do school closings contribute to a community’s downward spiral — or are they a symptom?

ViziCities development diary #1: One month in

Just over a month ago I announced ViziCities, the latest project from Pete Smart and myself. We’re not quite ready to release it yet but make sure you sign up for the beta to be the first to use it. In the meantime, let me fill you in on what we’ve been up to this past month.

AIA College of Fellows Awards 2013 Latrobe Prize for “The City of 7 Billion”

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) College of Fellows has awarded Bimal Mendis and Joyce Hsiang of the Yale School of Architecture and Plan B Architecture & Urbanism, LLC the 2013 Latrobe Prize of $100,000 for their proposal, “The City of 7 Billion.

sunlightcities:

As we started thinking about how to approach cities across the US, we had to think about where to focus our effort and attention. Should we focus on a few key, well-known cities who set the strongest examples of developing transparency and open data reforms? Should we narrow down the list to only the biggest, say, 10 cities, or break them into categories by size?

It turns out that most U.S. cities are far smaller than you might think. More than 80 percent of U.S. cities have fewer than 10,000 people. The scope and kinds of data housed in these cities might be vastly different from the data in a metropolis like Los Angeles, with its more than 3 million people in the city limits alone.

18 New Ways of Visualizing A City

The way we visualize and compare cities says much about our understanding of how they work. As part of our ongoing exploration of “what makes a city,” we wanted to survey how people are using data to describe the political, geographical and social realities cities face.

This interactive visualization by Forbes uses IRS tax statistics to track inbound and outbound migration by county and year.

vizualize:

Global Cities by Squint/Opera

Visualization of the Week: Urban metabolism

This week’s visualization comes from PhD candidates David Quinn and Daniel Wiesmann, who’ve built an interactive web-mapping tool that lets you explore the “urban metabolism” of major U.S. cities. The map includes data about cities’ and neighborhoods’ energy usage (kilowatt per hour per person) and material intensity (kilo per person) patterns. You can also view population density.

thewonk:

This is an amazing advance. A smart phone app that will use people’s everyday movements and activities to track how people use cities (via Hacking the city for a greener future - CNN.com).

Planning Cities for People

ClimateWorks is a San Francisco based foundation whose mission is to support public policies that prevent dangerous climate change and promote global prosperity. This document, Planning Cities for People, was prepared for the Chinese government and contains 8 research-based recommendations that lead to prosperous, low-carbon urban areas. The document uses richly illustrated maps and diagrams to present examples of street-grids that promote walking, prioritize bicycle networks, create mixed-use neighborhoods and support high-quality transit

MIT’s Free Urban Planning Software Will Help Build The Cities Of The Future

If we are to improve the quality of life in our cities—27 of which are expected to have more than 10 million people by 2020—we will have to find a better way to build them. MIT’s new software will help.

The Urban Monitoring System: CCTV Draped on 3D Models

An Urban Sensation is a proposal from Dan Foster-Smith, a graduate from Designing Interactions at the Royal College of Arts. It is aimed at developing an open source infrastructure that would enable the virtual reconstruction of our sensory stimuli at any location. The infrastructure enables our sense of sight, sound and smell to be emulated. For the sense of sight live CCTV footage is overlain on a 3D model of the urban environment.

secretrepublic:

Visualizing density of international cities.

renascens:

Visualizing New York’s Density

How does New York City compare with the burgeoning supercities of the developing world?

Two interesting data visualizations from the new book “Living in the Endless City,” which examines the future of urban life, help put the largest U.S. city in perspective against its global counterparts. By 2050, the project notes, 75% of the world’s population is projected to live in cities, up from 53% today.

As crowded as conditions might feel during rush hour in Manhattan, the graphic below shows that populations in other cities — in particular Istanbul and Mumbai — are more densely packed. The most dense neighborhood in New York, the Upper East Side, houses only half as many people per square kilometer as Mumbai’s most crowded district does.

Likewise, a look at urban age distribution shows that the population of developed cities like New York and London may be younger than their surrounding rural areas, but is still far older than fast-growing cities in the developing world. Click here to take a closer look at the age breakdown.

Source: City Breaths

Visualizing all bike accidents in the San Francisco Bay area. From Information Aesthetics:

Who is mostly to blame for bicycle accidents: car drivers or bicyclists? The Bay Citizen’s Bike Accident Tracker 2.0 [baycitizen.org] gives access to 5 years worth of bicycle accident and collision data, which even includes information about the lighting and road conditions, the designated party at fault, or the type of parties involved (e.g. auto, bicyclist, etc.)

Great work from the Bay Citizen. The interactive offers many ways to explore the data.