The exhibition, Red Lines Housing Crisis Learning Center at the Queens Museum of Art (through Sept 23) is a large scale installation by Damon Rich, founder of the Center for Urban Pedagogy. The New York times reported on the exhibition’s extraordinary centerpiece, an intricate conversion of the museum’s most famous work, the Panorama of the City of New York , to depict the location of foreclosures in the five-borough area. The Panorama is a 9335 sq. foot scale model (1 inch = 100 ft) of Manhattan and all five boroughs made in 1964 for the World’s Fair, and updated in 1992. On top of this 3-D “map”, Damon and his young helpers placed bright pink plastic triangles representing blocks where 3 or more foreclosures have taken place. The result shows the concentration of foreclosures in areas where the non-white population is highest.
According to the Times: ”Hundreds of these pink stigmata cover Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, East New York and Canarsie in Brooklyn like an invading army. In Queens most markers are camped out in Ozone Park and Cambria Heights, as well as in parts of Jamaica and Corona. As for Manhattan, there are precisely two.”
The neighborhoods with high foreclosures, according to the Times, are the same areas where the disastrous practice of “redlining” denied credit to African-American and Latino families until it was made illegal in the 1970’s. The data used in creating the exhibition was also used by NY Times staff to create a great interactive map which allows you to see the growth of foreclosures across the area, and at the block level, since 2005. Frightening!
The Henry Hudson 400 website has a dazzling new map mash-up. Using a “layering system” thirty-two historical maps and Henry’s four routes can be displayed on top of Google Maps, with variable transparency. Places and events related to this year’s celebration can be “turned in” revealing a wealth of historical information. There is even an opportunity for the public to add information to the map. The clever and rich map application was created by Cartosoft , a Portland-based neo-geo company with some great applications for new age mapmakers. The Hudson 400-year celebration is picking up steam (has wind in its sails). In September a fleet of traditional Dutch flat bottom boats (botters) will sail up the Hudson from New York to Albany. I’m going to try to hitch a ride.
When will it appear in Amsterdam? The Google Street View Trike was revealed in late May, and after a test-run in Rome (pictured), the trike will be put to use in the UK. Google-UK asked googleites for suggestions on where to ride the trike first, places such as monuments and castles. The final vote takes place on this web page. In the States, U Penn seems to be the first campus to snag the trike.
An article in the New York Times today discusses the use of a GIS spatial analysis technique referred to as ”cluster analysis” for an unusual application. Researchers Elizabeth Currid of USC and Sarah Williams of Columbia University’s Spatial Information Design Lab presented their conclusions at a meeting of the Association of American Geographers recently. The researchers geocoded 300,000 photos and 6000 events from the Getty Imges database. With this data set, the Global Moran’s I statistic was used to find hotspots in New York and LA. The conclusions may not be so very surprising, but the use of photo media is interesting. This type of social research is likely to show up more often as people begin to mine data from geocoded images (e.g. Picasaweb and Flickr) or geotagged Tweets.
The study was partly inspired the work of Richard Florida who developed the concept of the “creative class” and created a stir with Amsterdam planners at a 2003 conference titled “Creativity and the City”.
The NY Times published this Imigration Explorer interactive map with some fascinating information about immigration in the US since 1880, a great example of using Flash for visualization of data over time. You can view populations by country of origin as well, through time, though unfortunately not Dutch settlers. Note all the Russians in Alaska! (Of course a small number, but significant percentage.) The map was made with data from Social Explorer, which looks like an interesting service, though their pricing is not clear.
NYT seems to have their own flash developers, like Matthew Bloch, who studied at the University of Wisconsin - Madison (go Badgers!). Matthew, with Prof. Mark Harrower of Colorbrewer fame, also developed Mapshaper, an online service for simplifying shape files. I can use this! Note: the map on the right is extreme… many usable gradations exist between the two. (This is really for GIS techies.)
Published October 15, 2008
in News.
This sweet Flash Datamapper application from the IMF allows you to look at world economic projections through 2013. The snapshot here shows the “current account” for each country, essentially exports minus imports. The timeline shows China continuing to soar and the US, after a dip, holding steady, still in negative territory. All of this data and much more is available for download from the IMF site here.
Big news on May 28th when Google released a Plug-inwhich makes it possible to view Google Earth, including 3-D buildings and KML files in a browser window, without downloading the full version. Very much excitement about this, and there will certainly be some great applications very quickly. Exploring this topic, an interesting application for US boaters surfaced. EarthNC is a low-cost application/service which allow the user to add all kinds of water charts for US coastal and inland waters to Google Earth — online or offline. It looks amazing (though I don’t have any charting know-how), and appears to have been enthusiastically received. Hope to hear back from them about whether a Dutch / European version is on the way.
This same developer (EarthNC) has just released an online converter which allows you to create Google Earth Plug-in code with your own KML files or MyMaps URLs, which can then be embedded in your website. TakeItWithMe for Embedded Earth is in “Beta” form, but works handily. Demo here soon.
AMFORA is the Dutch acronym for Alternative Multifunctional Underground Space Amsterdam. At a meeting of the Enlightened Underground international conference on Jan 29, the engineering firm, Strukton, revealed a plan for building a new Amsterdam, under the canals. Together with the architectural firm, Zwarts & Jansma, they released a concept book (PDF, 16mb) illustrating this underground future. The plan would reduce traffic in the city, providing underground parking, park-and-ride facilities, shops, entertainment, and sports facilities.
There would be a positive impact on the environment, health, and quality of life with the crowded canal-side roads transformed into broad foot (and bike) paths. Somehow, a by-product of the process would be cleaner canals, clean enough to swim in. This is truly an ”adaptation” scenario for global warming, as the land of Hans Brinker, turns into the costa del sol of the future. The project images are wonderful, the idea is fantasmagoric.
An article in Nature Magazine this month discusses realistic options for harvesting energy from the desert in Africa. On the same day as the Nature article, Google announced RE<C, an initiative to look for renewable energy (”Google Green”?). They are working with companies to explore new technology… one such company is eSolar Inc.
At the same time, yesterday the Club of Rome sponsored a presentation by the president of Jordan in Brussels. The White Paper is here. At least one Dutch company is active in this area, Free Energy International. In coming days we will explore this area further and summarize investigations.
Huge fires are raging in California, fanned by strong winds yesterday. Looking for maps online… and there’s not too much available if you wanted to know which way to run. Of course, you’re probably not sitting at your computer, but more likely talking to the competent guy with the orange hard hat who is patrolling the neighborhood and has up to the minute routing information. Disaster response is still a tricky application for GIS. Getting the correct information is the hard part. All those California GIS guys are ready to go, but probably waiting for a phone call or a shape file.
The helpful Google fire map above was created by KPBS Online, Sandiego TV/Radio station, presumably including information from listeners calling in. (Interesting how the fire stops conveniently at the Mexican border.) The static map (right) was made with ESRI software by the OES (Office of Emergency Services), displayed on their website. Interesting, and shocking, but not to helpful to the locals.
The exhibition, Red Lines Housing Crisis Learning Center at the Queens Museum of Art (through Sept 23) is a large scale installation by Damon Rich, founder of the Center for Urban Pedagogy. The New York times reported on the exhibition’s extraordinary centerpiece, an intricate conversion of the museum’s most famous work, the Panorama of the City of New York , to depict the location of foreclosures in the five-borough area. The Panorama is a 9335 sq. foot scale model (1 inch = 100 ft) of Manhattan and all five boroughs made in 1964 for the World’s Fair, and updated in 1992. On top of this 3-D “map”, Damon and his young helpers placed bright pink plastic triangles representing blocks where 3 or more foreclosures have taken place. The result shows the concentration of foreclosures in areas where the non-white population is highest. 
The neighborhoods with high foreclosures, according to the Times, are the same areas where the disastrous practice of “redlining” denied credit to African-American and Latino families until it was made illegal in the 1970’s. The data used in creating the exhibition was also used by NY Times staff to create a great interactive map which allows you to see the growth of foreclosures across the area, and at the block level, since 2005. Frightening!
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