Category: visualisation

World City Population Map Update with the New World Urbanization Prospects 2025

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The interactive map of world city populations – https://luminocity3d.org/WorldCity/ – has been updated with the newest release of the UN World Urbanization Prospects (WUP), the leading dataset for understanding global urban dynamics. The new UN WUP 2025 release supersedes the 2018 version. It’s a major revision with updated demographic data a new harmonised methodology for … Continue reading World City Population Map Update with the New World Urbanization Prospects 2025 →

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comparative urbanism, global cities, mapping, Maps, Population Change, spatial analysis, visualisation

Visualisation Projects by CASA Urban Spatial Science Students

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Each year CASA master’s students demonstrate their spatial data visualisation skills with a group project. The theme this year was ‘Urban Futures’, and students have produced some very impressive and diverse work, experimenting with a range of visualisation tools and techniques. Click on the images below to visit the project websites. Urban Resilience ProjectsTwo groups … Continue reading Visualisation Projects by CASA Urban Spatial Science Students →

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CASA, mapping, sustainability, teaching, visualisation

World Population Density Map Update with GHSL 2023

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The European Union JRC recently released a new 2023 update of the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) data. This update has greatly improved the GHSL data, with a 10m scale built-up area dataset of the entire globe which has been used to create a 100m scale global population density layer. The level of detail for … Continue reading World Population Density Map Update with GHSL 2023 →

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City Planning, comparative urbanism, density, global cities, mapping, sustainability, Transport, urban form, visualisation, web mapping

Global Visualisation Websites from CASA MSc students

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Each year MSc students at CASA demonstrate their visualisation skills with a group project. The theme this year was ‘Global to Local’, and the class of 2022 has produced some particularly excellent work, experimenting with a range of visualisation tools and techniques. Sustainability VisualisationsSeveral groups interpreted the main theme in terms of sustainability and climate … Continue reading Global Visualisation Websites from CASA MSc students →

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CASA, global cities, mapping, sustainability, teaching, visualisation

Imagination and Collaboration

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In 2018 Oliver Uberti and I had the honour of receiving the Corlis Benefideo Award for Imaginative Cartography. What follows is an adaptation of our acceptance speech from the 2018 NACIS Annual Meeting in Norfolk, Virginia. To read the article in Cartographic Perspectives and for referencing information click here. IMAGINATION Oliver: Good evening. In preparing…

The post Imagination and Collaboration appeared first on James Cheshire.

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Articles, award, Collaboration, Maps, nacis, visualisation

Failure is part of the visualization process

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It can be hugely frustrating and even debilitating at those times when you feel unable to wrangle the data you need to create the graphic you had in mind. But failure is an important part of the creative process.

The post Failure is part of the visualization process appeared first on James Cheshire.

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atlas of the invisible, creative process, dealing with falure, Resources, visualisation

Next slide please: what’s wrong with the UK government’s coronavirus charts

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“If you can’t convince them, confuse them.” If you watched the UK government’s COVID-19 briefing to announce and England-wide lockdown, you might have been reminded of this quote by Harry S Truman. Following slide after slide of maps and charts, there was growing frustration about the way nationally important statistics were being presented to the…

The post Next slide please: what’s wrong with the UK government’s coronavirus charts appeared first on James Cheshire.

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Resources, visualisation

Why eye-catching graphics are vital for getting to grips with climate change

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The power of maps lies in their ability to show us simultaneously that as global average temperatures rise, local conditions threaten to become ever more extreme. We now need to better harness that power to inspire action.

The post Why eye-catching graphics are vital for getting to grips with climate change appeared first on James Cheshire.

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climate change, visualisation, warming stripes

How the Victorians Mapped London’s Cholera

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It is, of course, John Snow who is credited with using maps to demonstrate that the clusters of deaths from cholera in London’s Soho during London’s 1854 outbreak were caused by contaminated water. This marked a major shift in thinking away from the disease being transmitted through dirty air: the more widely accepted theory at […]

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Cholera, Farr, John Snow, london, Maps, Slideshow, victorian london, visualisation

London’s Population Profile in 1935

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The graphic below shows the population of London across a number of transects overlain on the city’s underlying terrain. It was produced by Ordnance Survey in 1935 and is one of the few early examples I’ve seen of the organisation producing “data visualisations” alongside their famous maps (they do a lot more of this now […]

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dataviz, london, ordnance survey, population, Resources, transect, visualisation

Map Projections

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I’ve just discovered this really lovely graphic detailing a number of different map projections. It’s taken from the opening pages of the “Oxford Advanced Atlas” (Bartholomew, 1936) and features well-known projections such as the Mercator and Mollweide, through to the more obscure Van der Grinten, and the heart shaped Bonne. It even features the gores required […]

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bonne, Map projections, Mercator, Resources, visualisation

Joy Division, Population Surfaces and Pioneering Electronic Cartography

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There has been a resurgence of interest in data visualizations inspired by Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album cover. These so-called “Joy Plots” are easier to create thanks to the development of the “ggjoy” R package and also some nice code posted using D3. I produced a global population map (details here) using a similar technique in 2013 and since […]

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animation use, electronic cartography, harvard lab, joy plots, Maps, population, Resources, spatial analysis, visualisation

Population Lines: How and Why I Created It

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Thanks to the power of Reddit the “Population Lines” print (buy here) I created back in 2013 has attracted a huge amount of interest in the past week or so (a Europe only version made by Henrik Lindberg made the Reddit front page). There’s been lots of subsequent discussion about it’s inspiration, effectiveness as a form of […]

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Featured Maps, ggplot2, lines latitude, map, population, population lines, R, Resources, spatial analysis, stats, visualisation

Mapping 5,000 Years of City Growth

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I recently stumbled upon a great dataset. It’s the first to provide comprehensive data for world city sizes as far back as 3700BC. The authors (Meredith Reba, Femke Reitsma & Karen Seto) write: How were cities distributed globally in the past? How many people lived in these cities? How did cities influence their local and regional […]

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ggplot2, historic population, map, mapping, R, R spatial, spatial analysis, stats, visualisation

Big Data and Design: More Baboon, Less Unicorn

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I recently had the pleasure of giving a Creative Mornings talk. Each month there is a new theme that the presenters need to refer to – mine was “fantasy” so I chose to open with one of my favourite fantasy creatures: the unicorn. It’s a talk about the creative process behind Oliver Uberti and I’s […]

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baboon, Big Data, Resources, unicorn, Video, visualisation, where the animals go

My Year in Maps

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Lots happened in 2016 to keep cartographers busy…here are some of my highlights (in no particular order).   Maps and the 20th Century: Drawing the Line at the British Library is an absolutely extraordinary exhibition at the British Library. The breadth and quality of maps on display is amazing. (Inspired by the exhibition, I am giving a […]

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2016 in maps, Data Visualisation, Maps, Slideshow, visualisation

Global Urban Constellations

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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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comparative urbanism, density, global cities, interactive mapping, urban form, visualisation

World Population Density Interactive Map

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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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comparative urbanism, density, global, global cities, interactive mapping, sustainability, urban form, visualisation

7 Deadly Sins of (Academic) Data Visualisation

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I was recently asked to deliver a days training on scientific data visualisation. I spent a while scanning through papers to pull out what I see as the “7 deadly sins” of academic data visualisation (there are probably many more) . These sins are rooted in a lack of time and training, an underestimation of the importance […]

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best practice, Data Visualisation, mapping, Resources, sins, visualisation

Mapping (historic) tracks in ggplot2

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This tutorial was first published in “Geocomputation a Practical Primer“. Here is a more complex example showing how to produce a map of 18th Century Shipping flows. The data have been obtained from the CLIWOC project and they represent a sample of digitised ships’ logs from the 18th Century. We are using a very small […]

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R, R spatial, Resources, rmaps, rstats, spatial analysis, visualisation

Datashine: Mapping the UK Population

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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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datashine, future research leaders, Research, spatial analysis, visualisation

Environment & Planning Featured Graphic: World City Populations Time-Series Map

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The World City Populations Interactive Map is now available as a static map, and has been published as a Featured Graphic in Environment and Planning A. The EPA article includes details on the UN World Urbanization Prospects data, and the methods used to create the map. For a high resolution version of the static map, click below-

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global cities, mapping, Publications, visualisation

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

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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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CASA, comparative urbanism, interactive mapping, mapping, Open Data, visualisation, web mapping
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