The role of learning in citizen science and the impact of participation inequality

From August to December I was hosted at the Centre for Research and interdisciplinarity in Paris. This short term research fellowship had a focus on learning and citizen science. The recording below is from a seminar in November 2019, titled “the role of learning in citizen science and the impact of participation inequality”. The talk … Continue reading The role of learning in citizen science and the impact of participation inequality

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EU-Citizen.Science project kick-off meeting

The EU-Citizen.Science is a new project that is part of a family of citizen science projects that are funded through the Science with and for Society (SwafS) stream of the Horizon 2020 programme. The project started in January and will run for 3 years. It is coordinated by the Natural History Museum of Berlin (the … Continue reading EU-Citizen.Science project kick-off meeting

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The Full Stack: Tools & Processes for Urban Data Scientists

Recently, I was asked to give talks at both UCL’s CASA and the ETH Future Cities Lab in Singapore for students and staff new to ‘urban data science’ and the sorts of workflows involved in collecting, processing, analysing, and reporting on … Continue reading 

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Datashine: Mapping the UK Population

All the DataShine websites (except DataShine Election) are derived from a common codebase and use the OpenLayers 3 mapping platform to display a full-window slippy map, with user controls and key overlaid. DataShine Census DataShine ScotlandCommissioned by the National Records of Scotland. DataShine Commute DataShine Scotland Commute. Commissioned by the National Records of Scotland. DataShine Region […]

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Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street

The book ‘Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street‘ is launched today. It’s open access and free for you to download and read. The book is edited by Laura Vaughan, who led two research projects in which I was involved as co-investigator. First, ‘Towards Successful Suburban Town Centres‘ (2006-2009) and then ‘Adaptable … Continue reading Suburban Urbanities: Suburbs and the Life of the High Street

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History of Telephony: Funded PhD Award with King’s College London, BT and the Science Museum Group

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded doctoral student to join King’s College London, BT Archives, and the Science Museum Group in late September 2015 or early January 2016 to investigate the impact of the telephone landline network on British society … Continue reading 

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The iPad Video Wall

I am happy to report that the iPad Video wall has grown up from a prototype to a fully fledged finished project. If you have been following the blog then you would have saw the prototype video of the wall’s proof of concept and watched a single movie playing over all 8 iPads. Well I’ve […]

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How many social scientists does it take to transform a lightbulb?

I was invited to contribute to a round-table meeting to discuss Computational and Transformational Social Science which took place at the University of Oxford on Monday 18th February.  In the background papers for the meeting I learned that the International Panel for the Review of the e-Science Programme, commissioned by the UK Research Councils in …
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Telefonica (02) plans to explore Big Data

Telecommunication companies are sitting on a gold mine. With the prevalence of mobile devices in our every day life, for example reports from Google IO are that 400 million Android devices have been activated at a rate of 1,000,000 activations per day, the data that we generate as a collective group is phenomenal. Phone companies […]

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Big Data Problems have been around longer than you think

The Strata Conference is in town and one presentation that caught my eye was titled The Great Railway Caper: Big Data in 1955. John Graham-Cumming from CloudFlare gives a great overview on why some Big Data problems have been around since the early days of computing when computer filled entire rooms. Back in 1955 the […]

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GRIT: ‘geospatial restructuring of industrial trade’

Alison Heppenstall, Gordon Mitchell, Malcolm Sawyer (LUBS) and I have been awarded an 18 month grant by the ESRC through their secondary data analysis initiative. Titled ‘Geospatial Restructuring of Industrial Trade’ (GRIT), the motivation for the grant came from a deceptively simple question: what happens to the spatial economy when the costs of moving goods …
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Research – The Study of Housing Renewal for Neighbourhood Regeneration in Ansan

Image by Networking City/ Cover page of the research paper

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
After 6 months efforts, the research paper ‘The Study of Housing Renewal for Neighbourhood Regeneration in Ansan’ was submitted to Centre for Creating Livable Village in Ansan, one of famous local NGO in South Korea, by this blog. The aim of the research is to understand the history of urban development of Ansan, a satellite city of Seoul, to identify the city’s characteristics by comparison with other cities in Korea, to investigate the present conditions of four low-rise housing areas through a field research and provide a planning guideline of neighbourhood regeneration for the NGO and the city government.
Image is taken from Naver/ The collision between high-rise apartments and low-rise housings

 


Ansan is a city in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea and a part of the Seoul Metropolitan Area. Originally, it was a small town on the coast of Yellow Sea until 1960’s. In 1970’s, Korean national government decided to develop it for the industrial city that contained small polluted factories. The small town was rapidly changed its shape as the first modern designed city (it means grid system) in Korea and lots of people have moved to the city for jobs and economic benefits since 1980’s.


At one time, Ansan was a symbol of successful economic achievement of Korea, however, now the city is facing a hard time that the numbers of closed factory are increasing and inextricable social problems related to the declining industry such as unstable employment, low income family, high residential mobility, poor residential environment and weak community networks.

Even though many researchers have been interested in this city, there was no challenge to clarify the relationship between the urban development process of Ansan and its impact on the change of residential areas. Also, there is no appropriate strategy to reorganize old, high dense, low-rise housing areas that the residents cannot support money for the redevelopment by high-rise apartments which has been the main development tool in Korea.
 
 
Image by Networking City/ The area and population of five cities

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Image by Networking City/ The population structures of five cities

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Therefore, Centre for Creating Livable Village, an independent organization for improving environment of residential areas based on local governments’ support, as a leading local NGO, set up a plan with young researchers to foster practical framework and in-detail analysis rather than grandiloquent words. The research paper is the first outcome of the plan.

 

Image by Networking City/ The diagram of urban programme in Ansan















Image by Networking City/ The diagram of housing development process in Ansan





















The research is composed of six chapters; Introduction, The characteristics of urban development and the change of housing areas in Ansan, The comparative analysis of urban characteristics between Ansan and four neighbour cities, The case study of four low-rise housing areas in Ansan, The strategy for neighbourhood regeneration and Conclusion.

Image by Networking City/ The diagram of house that people live in basement in Bono-dong (One of low-rise housing area in Ansan)

 

Image by Networking City/ The street view of Seonbu-dong (One of low-rise housing area in Ansan)

 
It will be used as a policy reference for the NGO and the Ansan city government, and hope it could be a tangible steppingstone for the future regeneration plan of the city.
 

 

Continue reading »

Research – The Study of Housing Renewal for Neighbourhood Regeneration in Ansan

Image by Networking City/ Cover page of the research paper

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
After 6 months efforts, the research paper ‘The Study of Housing Renewal for Neighbourhood Regeneration in Ansan’ was submitted to Centre for Creating Livable Village in Ansan, one of famous local NGO in South Korea, by this blog. The aim of the research is to understand the history of urban development of Ansan, a satellite city of Seoul, to identify the city’s characteristics by comparison with other cities in Korea, to investigate the present conditions of four low-rise housing areas through a field research and provide a planning guideline of neighbourhood regeneration for the NGO and the city government.
Image is taken from Naver/ The collision between high-rise apartments and low-rise housings

 


Ansan is a city in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea and a part of the Seoul Metropolitan Area. Originally, it was a small town on the coast of Yellow Sea until 1960’s. In 1970’s, Korean national government decided to develop it for the industrial city that contained small polluted factories. The small town was rapidly changed its shape as the first modern designed city (it means grid system) in Korea and lots of people have moved to the city for jobs and economic benefits since 1980’s.


At one time, Ansan was a symbol of successful economic achievement of Korea, however, now the city is facing a hard time that the numbers of closed factory are increasing and inextricable social problems related to the declining industry such as unstable employment, low income family, high residential mobility, poor residential environment and weak community networks.

Even though many researchers have been interested in this city, there was no challenge to clarify the relationship between the urban development process of Ansan and its impact on the change of residential areas. Also, there is no appropriate strategy to reorganize old, high dense, low-rise housing areas that the residents cannot support money for the redevelopment by high-rise apartments which has been the main development tool in Korea.
 
 
Image by Networking City/ The area and population of five cities

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Image by Networking City/ The population structures of five cities

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Therefore, Centre for Creating Livable Village, an independent organization for improving environment of residential areas based on local governments’ support, as a leading local NGO, set up a plan with young researchers to foster practical framework and in-detail analysis rather than grandiloquent words. The research paper is the first outcome of the plan.

 

Image by Networking City/ The diagram of urban programme in Ansan















Image by Networking City/ The diagram of housing development process in Ansan





















The research is composed of six chapters; Introduction, The characteristics of urban development and the change of housing areas in Ansan, The comparative analysis of urban characteristics between Ansan and four neighbour cities, The case study of four low-rise housing areas in Ansan, The strategy for neighbourhood regeneration and Conclusion.

Image by Networking City/ The diagram of house that people live in basement in Bono-dong (One of low-rise housing area in Ansan)

 

Image by Networking City/ The street view of Seonbu-dong (One of low-rise housing area in Ansan)

 
It will be used as a policy reference for the NGO and the Ansan city government, and hope it could be a tangible steppingstone for the future regeneration plan of the city.
 

 

Continue reading »

Flexible Modelling Framework

Work is starting this week at the Centre for Spatial Analysis and Policy (CSAP) in Leeds on preparing the Flexible Modelling Framework (FMF) for release under an open source licence.  The FMF so far includes the following capabilities: microsimulation (using simulated annealing); spatial interaction modelling and agent-based modelling.  The idea behind the framework is to …
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TALISMAN at the Research Methods Festival

I recently attended the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) 5th Research Methods Festival. Researchers from the Talisman project presented in a few different sessions, presenting cutting edge work on methods for collecting data (with a focus on new crowd-sourced data) as well as methods for spatial modelling, simulation and policy analysis. All of the … Read more

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