SkyCycle – reincarnation of failed ideas or future-thinking solution?
Yet another ambitious proposal from Norman Foster has hit the press. This time its an elevated…
Continue reading »The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
Yet another ambitious proposal from Norman Foster has hit the press. This time its an elevated…
Continue reading »Yet another ambitious proposal from Norman Foster has hit the press. This time its an elevated…
Continue reading »As part of our exploration of how to facilitate empathy by allowing greater communication of emotion we have been putting together some prototypes which explore not textual representations of emotion. In the example here we have ‘hacked’ a candle so that we can change the colour of its flame. There […]
The post Visualising Empathy appeared first on CEDE.
Continue reading »As part of our exploration of how to facilitate empathy by allowing greater communication of emotion we have been putting together some prototypes which explore not textual representations of emotion. In the example here we have ‘hacked’ a candle so that we can change the colour of its flame. There […]
The post Visualising Empathy appeared first on CEDE.
Continue reading »This article is published in the January 2014 issue of Geographical Magazine – page 77.
In my opinion, a geography curriculum should require students to learn how to code, ensuring that they’re equipped for a changed job market that’s increasingly detached from geographic information systems (GIS) as they were originally conceived.
The ability to code relates to basic programming and database skills that enable students to manipulate large and small geographic data sets, and to analyse them in automated and transparent ways. Although it might seem odd for a geographer to want to learn programming languages, we only have to look at geography curriculums from the 1980s to realise that these skills used to be taught. For example, it wouldn’t have been unusual for an undergraduate geographer to learn how to programme a basic statistical model (for example, regression) from base principles in Fortran (a programming language popular at the time) as part of a methods course. But during the 1990s, the popularisation of graphical user interfaces in software design enabled many statistical, spatial analysis and mapping operations to be wrapped up within visual and menu-driven interfaces, which were designed to lower the barriers of entry for users of these techniques. Gradually, much GIS teaching has transformed into learning how these software systems operate, albeit within a framework of geographic information science (GISc) concerned with the social and ethical considerations of building representations from geographic data. Some Masters degrees in GISc still require students to code, but few undergraduate courses do so.
The good news is that it’s never been more exciting to be a geographer. Huge volumes of spatial data about how the world looks and functions are being collected and disseminated. However, translating such data safely into useful information is a complex task. During the past ten years, there has been an explosion in new platforms through which geographic data can be processed and visualised. For example, the advent of services such as Google Maps has made it easier for people to create geographical representations online. However, both the analysis of large volumes of data and the use of these new methods of representation or analysis do require some level of basic programming ability. Furthermore, many of these developments have not been led by geographers, and there is a real danger that our skill set will be seen as superfluous to these activities in the future without some level of intervention. Indeed, it’s a sobering experience to look through the pages of job advertisements for GIS-type roles in the UK and internationally. Whereas these might once have required knowledge of a particular software package, they increasingly look like advertisements for computer scientists, with expected skills and experience that wouldn’t traditionally be part of an undergraduate geography curriculum.
Many of the problems that GIS set out to address can now be addressed with mainstream software or shared online services that are, as such, much easier to use. If I want to determine the most efficient route between two locations, a simple website query can give a response within seconds, accounting for live traffic-volume data. If I want to view the distribution of a census attribute over a given area, there are multiple free services that offer street-level mapping. Such tasks used to be far more complex, involving specialist software and technical skills. There are now far fewer job advertisements for GIS technicians than there were ten years ago. Much traditional GIS-type analysis is now sufficiently non-technical that it requires little specialist skill, or has been automated through software services, with a subscription replacing the employment of a technician. The market has moved on!
Geographers shouldn’t become computer scientists; however, we need to reassert our role in the development and critique of existing and new GIS. For example, we need to ask questions such as which type of geographic representation might be most appropriate for a given dataset. Today’s geographers may be able to talk in general terms about such a question, but they need to be able to provide a more effective answer that encapsulates the technologies that are used for display. Understanding what is and isn’t possible in technical terms is as important as understanding the underlying cartographic principles. Such insights will be more available to a geographer who has learnt how to code.
Within the area of GIS, technological change has accelerated at an alarming rate in the past decade and geography curriculums need to ensure that they embrace these developments. This does, however, come with challenges. Academics must ensure that they are up to date with market developments and also that there’s sufficient capacity within the system to make up-skilling possible.Prospective geography undergraduates should also consider how the university curriculums have adapted to modern market conditions and whether they offer the opportunity to learn how to code.
Continue reading »This article is published in the January 2014 issue of Geographical Magazine – page 77.
In my opinion, a geography curriculum should require students to learn how to code, ensuring that they’re equipped for a changed job market that’s increasingly detached from geographic information systems (GIS) as they were originally conceived.
The ability to code relates to basic programming and database skills that enable students to manipulate large and small geographic data sets, and to analyse them in automated and transparent ways. Although it might seem odd for a geographer to want to learn programming languages, we only have to look at geography curriculums from the 1980s to realise that these skills used to be taught. For example, it wouldn’t have been unusual for an undergraduate geographer to learn how to programme a basic statistical model (for example, regression) from base principles in Fortran (a programming language popular at the time) as part of a methods course. But during the 1990s, the popularisation of graphical user interfaces in software design enabled many statistical, spatial analysis and mapping operations to be wrapped up within visual and menu-driven interfaces, which were designed to lower the barriers of entry for users of these techniques. Gradually, much GIS teaching has transformed into learning how these software systems operate, albeit within a framework of geographic information science (GISc) concerned with the social and ethical considerations of building representations from geographic data. Some Masters degrees in GISc still require students to code, but few undergraduate courses do so.
The good news is that it’s never been more exciting to be a geographer. Huge volumes of spatial data about how the world looks and functions are being collected and disseminated. However, translating such data safely into useful information is a complex task. During the past ten years, there has been an explosion in new platforms through which geographic data can be processed and visualised. For example, the advent of services such as Google Maps has made it easier for people to create geographical representations online. However, both the analysis of large volumes of data and the use of these new methods of representation or analysis do require some level of basic programming ability. Furthermore, many of these developments have not been led by geographers, and there is a real danger that our skill set will be seen as superfluous to these activities in the future without some level of intervention. Indeed, it’s a sobering experience to look through the pages of job advertisements for GIS-type roles in the UK and internationally. Whereas these might once have required knowledge of a particular software package, they increasingly look like advertisements for computer scientists, with expected skills and experience that wouldn’t traditionally be part of an undergraduate geography curriculum.
Many of the problems that GIS set out to address can now be addressed with mainstream software or shared online services that are, as such, much easier to use. If I want to determine the most efficient route between two locations, a simple website query can give a response within seconds, accounting for live traffic-volume data. If I want to view the distribution of a census attribute over a given area, there are multiple free services that offer street-level mapping. Such tasks used to be far more complex, involving specialist software and technical skills. There are now far fewer job advertisements for GIS technicians than there were ten years ago. Much traditional GIS-type analysis is now sufficiently non-technical that it requires little specialist skill, or has been automated through software services, with a subscription replacing the employment of a technician. The market has moved on!
Geographers shouldn’t become computer scientists; however, we need to reassert our role in the development and critique of existing and new GIS. For example, we need to ask questions such as which type of geographic representation might be most appropriate for a given dataset. Today’s geographers may be able to talk in general terms about such a question, but they need to be able to provide a more effective answer that encapsulates the technologies that are used for display. Understanding what is and isn’t possible in technical terms is as important as understanding the underlying cartographic principles. Such insights will be more available to a geographer who has learnt how to code.
Within the area of GIS, technological change has accelerated at an alarming rate in the past decade and geography curriculums need to ensure that they embrace these developments. This does, however, come with challenges. Academics must ensure that they are up to date with market developments and also that there’s sufficient capacity within the system to make up-skilling possible.Prospective geography undergraduates should also consider how the university curriculums have adapted to modern market conditions and whether they offer the opportunity to learn how to code.
Continue reading »Background
I have been a Wordpress user for a very long time, however, I feel the increased complexity of the system has resulted in feature bloat, and for me at least, creates a not especially intuitive user interface. There are many features of the …
Continue reading »Background
I have been a Wordpress user for a very long time, however, I feel the increased complexity of the system has resulted in feature bloat, and for me at least, creates a not especially intuitive user interface. There are many features of the …
Continue reading »Gargoyles atop Gonville & Caius College in Cambridge.
f9, 1/1600, -2ev, 200mm, © Gareth Simons
Continue reading »Gargoyles atop Gonville & Caius College in Cambridge.
f9, 1/1600, -2ev, 200mm, © Gareth Simons
Continue reading »Gargoyles atop Gonville & Caius College in Cambridge.
f9, 1/1600, -2ev, 200mm, © Gareth Simons
Continue reading »Gargoyles atop Gonville & Caius College in Cambridge.
f9, 1/1600, -2ev, 200mm, © Gareth Simons
Cambridge has its fair share of Gargoyles, and the specimens perched atop Gonville and Caius college are amongst my favourites.
Continue reading »In our collaboration with the Complexity Group at Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), we are involved in various simulations of development in Singapore. James Decraene, Chris Monterola, Gary Lee, Terence Hung, and myself have built a simple … Continue reading →
Continue reading »From 2011 to 2021 London’s population will grow by a million – the fastest rate of acceleration ever. We are going to hit nine million before New York, and approach ten million by 2030. With these demographic projections, we will … Continue reading →
Continue reading »Since my last blog post back in February 2013, I have written, submitted and defended (!) a PhD thesis, and moved jobs. It’s been a busy year, but hopefully 2014 will see a revisit of the heady days of 2012, where blog posts were fresh and a-plenty. In case you possibly want to talk to …
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Empathy is a complex psychological phenomenon; today there are as many researchers acknowledging discrepancies in the use of the term, as there are inconsistent definitions. Within both psychological science and lacklustre media articles, the word “empathy” has been generalised to allude to a whole host of related, but fundamentally separable, […]
The post Defining empathy appeared first on CEDE.
Continue reading »Empathy is a complex psychological phenomenon; today there are as many researchers acknowledging discrepancies in the use of the term, as there are inconsistent definitions. Within both psychological science and lacklustre media articles, the word “empathy” has been generalised to allude to a whole host of related, but fundamentally separable, […]
The post Defining empathy appeared first on CEDE.
Continue reading »Robert Moses with Battery Bridge model – Wikimedia Commons.
Robert Moses continues to get his…
Continue reading »Robert Moses with Battery Bridge model – Wikimedia Commons.
Robert Moses continues to get his…
Continue reading »Robert Moses with Battery Bridge model – Wikimedia Commons.
Robert Moses continues to get his…
Continue reading »Robert Moses with Battery Bridge model – Wikimedia Commons.
Robert Moses continues to get his…
Continue reading »The British Library has launched a portal to let people […]
Continue reading »The British Library has launched a portal to let people […]
Continue reading »On Feb 17th, Xiamen Shipbuilding delivered its 4th 300m AWB to the buyer, this unit had its keel-laying on Aug 15, 2013 and its launching on Dec 7, 2013.
The post 4th 300M AWB delivered by Xiamen Shipbuilding appeared first on Fujian Shipbuilding Tradi…
On Feb 17th, Xiamen Shipbuilding delivered its 4th 300m AWB to the buyer, this unit had its keel-laying on Aug 15, 2013 and its launching on Dec 7, 2013.
দেশী সেক্স
,The post 4th 300M AWB delivered by Xiamen Shipbuilding appeared first on Fujian Shipbu…
Many of us have been to theme parks and waited in long lines to get on a particular attraction (ride), which to some extent reduces the overall experience of going to a theme park (i.e. no-one really likes waiting). The question is what causes these li…
Continue reading »Many of us have been to theme parks and waited in long lines to get on a particular attraction (ride), which to some extent reduces the overall experience of going to a theme park (i.e. no-one really likes waiting). The question is what causes these li…
Continue reading »TweetThe PopGRG are delighted to issue our call for papers for the annual conference of the RGS-IBG, for sessions sponsored by the research group. The conference will take place on Wednesday 27th August to Friday 29th August, at the RGS-IBG in London. If you are interested in presenting a paper in one of these sessions, please […]
Continue reading »2013 has been quite a year for research – the Smart/Future Cities discussion has moved forward with a notable pace, new setups such as the Future Cities Catapult and the Smart London Report from the GLA are starting to drive the uptake. It has been a year of research around…
Screens in the Wild is a collaborative project initiated by researchers from the Space Group at University College London and the Mixed Reality Lab at University of Nottingham. It investigates how media screens located in urban space can be designed to benefit public life, rather than merely transmit commercial content….
IBM 5 in 5 – smart city induced utopia?
According to IBM’s 5 in 5 predictions:
“…cities can be hard unforgiving places to live…cities are tough, because they require us to live on their terms, but in five years the tables will turn. With cities ad…
Continue reading »IBM 5 in 5 – smart city induced utopia?
According to IBM’s 5 in 5 predictions:
“…cities can be hard unforgiving places to live…cities are tough, because they require us to live on their terms, but in five years the tables will turn. With cities adapting to our terms, with cloud-based social feedback, crowdsourcing, and predictive analytics, we’ll shape our cities to our evolving wants and needs, comings and goings, and late-night pizza hankerings. By engaging citizens, city leaders will be able to respond directly to our needs, and dynamically allocate resources…and pizza.”
There is an increasingly concerned chorus of critics objecting to the marketing language used by some proponents of “smart cities”, because they sense that corporate interests and government departments may well try to leverage the new technologies from the top-down, instead of the bottom-up approach preferred by an increasingly empowered citizenry.
There is a bit of truth mixed-in with the hype. For example, it is true that bottom-up crowdsourced information feedback allows the city to self-organise – to dynamically adapt to both new and old opportunities and challenges – and to develop a sort of self-regulating city ‘consciousness’. But a more nuanced view is necessary when it comes to forecasting the end of all evils due to the the implied top-down mastery of all things complex…
A more rounded perspective can be found in new books by Anthony Townsend and, from a scientific perspective, Mike Batty, with a solid review of both books available from the New Scientist.
Continue reading »IBM 5 in 5 – smart city induced utopia?
According to IBM’s 5 in 5 predictions:
“…cities can be hard unforgiving places to live…cities are tough, because they require us to live on their terms, but in five years the tables will turn. With cities adapting to our terms, with cloud-based social feedback, crowdsourcing, and predictive analytics, we’ll shape our cities to our evolving wants and needs, comings and goings, and late-night pizza hankerings. By engaging citizens, city leaders will be able to respond directly to our needs, and dynamically allocate resources…and pizza.”
There is an increasingly concerned chorus of critics objecting to the marketing language used by some proponents of “smart cities”, because they sense that corporate interests and government departments may well try to leverage the new technologies from the top-down, instead of the bottom-up approach preferred by an increasingly empowered citizenry.
There is a bit of truth mixed-in with the hype. For example, it is true that bottom-up crowdsourced information feedback allows the city to self-organise – to dynamically adapt to both new and old opportunities and challenges – and to develop a sort of self-regulating city ‘consciousness’. But a more nuanced view is necessary when it comes to forecasting the end of all evils due to the the implied top-down mastery of all things complex…
A more rounded perspective can be found in new books by Anthony Townsend and, from a scientific perspective, Mike Batty, with a solid review of both books available from the New Scientist.
Continue reading »IBM 5 in 5 – smart city induced utopia?
Apparently, we are rapidly approaching the dawn of a technologically induced utopia – a promised land of sorts – a (not so) new claim that all of our problems are rapidly becoming a thing of the past…because overcrowded busses and late pizza will be resolved by the smartening-up of cities.
According to IBM’s 5 in 5 predictions:
“…cities can be hard unforgiving places to live…cities are tough, because they require us to live on their terms, but in five years the tables will turn. With cities adapting to our terms, with cloud-based social feedback, crowdsourcing, and predictive analytics, we’ll shape our cities to our evolving wants and needs, comings and goings, and late-night pizza hankerings. By engaging citizens, city leaders will be able to respond directly to our needs, and dynamically allocate resources…and pizza.”
No wonder there is an increasingly concerned chorus of critics objecting to the marketing language used by some proponents of “smart cities”, because they sense that corporate interests and government departments may well try to leverage the new technologies from the top-down, instead of the bottom-up approach preferred by an increasingly empowered citizenry.
There is a bit of truth mixed-in with the hype. It is true that bottom-up crowdsourced information feedback allows the city to self-organise – to dynamically adapt to both new and old opportunities and challenges – and to develop a sort of self-regulating city ‘consciousness’. But a more nuanced view is necessary when it comes to forecasting the end of all evils due to the the implied top-down mastery of all things complex… and this due to the somewhat simplistic notion of government officials sitting behind giant screens in new control centres.
A more rounded perspective can be found in new books by Anthony Townsend and Mike Batty, with a solid review (of both books) available from the New Scientist.
Continue reading »Maybe I’ve been staring at agent based models running on Google Maps for too long, but it does look as though the map is infested with bugs which are crawling all over it. Have a look at the animation below: This is a Talisman deliverable, which we’ve called “ModelTube”, as the general idea is to …
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Steve Rayner on Path Dependence in Cities
An interesting presentation by Steve Rayner in which he discusses the significance of Path Dependence and “lock-in”.
Path dependence explains how the set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance i…
Continue reading »Steve Rayner on Path Dependence in Cities
An interesting presentation by Steve Rayner in which he discusses the significance of Path Dependence and “lock-in”.
Path dependence explains how the set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions one has made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant. (Wikipedia)
Steve explains that our cities are significantly impacted by past innovations and decisions…such as the location of streets, the invention of the car, and technologies like electric light, flushing toilets, and elevators.
Lock-in through path-dependence can end up causing cities and processes to work in ways that are no longer efficient or sensible. Some kind of mechanism is necessary to allow for flexibility or a radical break in order to escape from the status quo. This is largely what Steve’s Flexible City website is about.
A particularly amusing example in Steve’s presentation is that the size of the space shuttle’s rocket thrusters were determined by the width of a horse’s ass…see the video for details.
Continue reading »Steve Rayner on Path Dependence in Cities
An interesting presentation by Steve Rayner in which he discusses the significance of Path Dependence and “lock-in”.
Path dependence explains how the set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions one has made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant. (Wikipedia)
Steve explains that our cities are significantly impacted by past innovations and decisions…such as the location of streets, the invention of the car, and technologies like electric light, flushing toilets, and elevators.
Lock-in through path-dependence can end up causing cities and processes to work in ways that are no longer efficient or sensible. Some kind of mechanism is necessary to allow for flexibility or a radical break in order to escape from the status quo. This is largely what Steve’s Flexible City website is about.
A particularly amusing example in Steve’s presentation is that the size of the space shuttle’s rocket thrusters were determined by the width of a horse’s ass…see the video for details.
Continue reading »Steve Rayner on Path Dependence in Cities
An interesting presentation by Steve Rayner in which he discusses the significance of Path Dependence and “lock-in”.
Path dependence explains how the set of decisions one faces for any given circumstance is limited by the decisions one has made in the past, even though past circumstances may no longer be relevant. (Wikipedia)
Steve explains that our cities are significantly impacted by past innovations and decisions…such as the location of streets, the invention of the car, and technologies like electric light, flushing toilets, and elevators.
Lock-in through path-dependence can end up causing cities and processes to work in ways that are no longer efficient or sensible. Some kind of mechanism is necessary to allow for flexibility or a radical break in order to escape from the status quo. This is largely what Steve’s Flexible City website is about.
A particularly amusing example in Steve’s presentation is that the size of the space shuttle’s rocket thrusters were determined by the width of a horse’s ass…see the video for details.
Continue reading »This map is taken from an book “The Unification o […]
Continue reading »