Global Urban Constellations

Geographers have long grappled with the complex and ever changing configurations of global urbanism. Many terms have been coined to describe new 20th and 21st century urban forms: conurbations (Geddes, 1915), multi-nuclei cities (Harris & Ultman, 1945), megalopolis (Gottman, 1961), world cities (Hall, 1966), desakota (McGee, 1991),  fractal cities (Batty & Longley, 1994), network cities (Batten, 1995), … Continue reading Global Urban Constellations

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World Population Density Interactive Map

A brilliant new dataset produced by the European Commission was recently released- the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL). This is the first time that detailed and comprehensive population density and built-up area for the world has been available as open data. As usual, my first thought was to make an interactive map, now online at- http://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/ … Continue reading World Population Density Interactive Map

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New Paper- Online Interactive Mapping: Applications and Techniques for Socio-Economic Research

I have a new paper published in Computers Environment and Urban Systems- Online interactive thematic mapping: applications and techniques for socio-economic research. The paper reviews workflows for creating online thematic maps, and describes how several leading interactive mapping sites were created. The paper is open access so you can download the pdf for free. The paper…

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Mapping the Global Urban Transformation

One of the best datasets for understanding the explosive growth of cities across the world in the last 75 years in the UN World Urbanisation Prospects research, which records individual city populations from 1950 to 2014, and includes predicted populations up to 2030. I have been meaning to create an interactive map of this fascinating data for…

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