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Geography. Environment. Urbanism. And other stuff.
Browsing All Posts filed under »Data and statistics«
Is a map always the best way to display geographic data?
As you might have guessed, the short answer is, not always. Like all data visualization questions, the answer to this one depends almost entirely on what it is that you’re trying to show. As an example, take this map I created of New Bedford, Massachusetts. It gives us a pretty unambiguous picture of two things: […]
Research blogging: Depopulation can be murder
October 1, 2012
Lately I’ve been doing some research for a book proposal on abandoned places and the processes behind massive and rapid depopulation. It’s a topic I’ve been interested in for a while – in fact, I would have written my Ph.D. dissertation on the subject if I had thought of it earlier (I came up with […]
So Walmart kills local businesses … um, didn’t we already know this?
September 20, 2012
Stories of local, mom & pop businesses going under in the wake of a newly-opened Walmart are old hat by now. But even so, all those anecdotes – numerous though they may be – lack a certain amount of concrete-ness (which is why the plural of anecdote is not data). But no longer. Now we […]
Making cities comparable
September 5, 2012
When the definition of “city” – at least on an administrative level – varies so widely from country to country, how can you draw any meaningful comparisons on topics like density, health, and wealth between cities in different parts of the world? A new paper posted on LSE Cities takes a stab at at addressing […]
Both sides get it wrong
July 5, 2012
You may have read something about how, according to Census data from 2011, cities in the US are growing at a faster rate than the suburbs. Kaid Benfield‘s post on the subject is pretty representative of what popped up on dozens of urbanist blogs. But hold on a minute. According to a number of other […]
Where are the suburbs, really?
June 22, 2012
Where do you draw the line between urban and suburban? For most of us, it’s kind of an “I know it when I see it” situation. We have certain characteristics that we look for to tell us when we’ve left the city and crossed over into the ‘burbs. Low densities? Detached, single-family homes? Big front […]
Oakland is a suburb now
April 25, 2012
I just read Wendell Cox’s post in New Geography, in which he performs a bit of fumbling with data in an effort to demonstrate that Americans’ tastes in where they live are not in fact changing, and that anyone who says otherwise is just a big liberal central planner who wants to make us all […]
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October 29, 2012
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