Understanding cities with open source tools and open data
1 Preface
The disciplines of architecture and urban planning have long dominated the thinking around cities and urbanism. With every second person being an urban citizen and the ongoing super-linear increase in urban citizens since the 1960s, the challenges faced by cities can no longer be supported by a small number of professionals. Diversity of thought and approaches to identifying and managing urban challenges are the responsibility of everyday citizens. More of us need to transition from urbanite to urbanist.
It [urbanist] is not a formalized title, but it is one which is attainable by anyone who cares to look deeper into the inner workings of city dynamics.
- What the heck is an “urbanist”? [1]
Unfortunately, the interest and curiosity of the urbanite is not matched by ease of entry to urban analysis. Professionals have access to proprietary data and tools that are typically out of reach for non-professionals. This web-book and accompanying talk are aimed at bridging this gap with free and open source software (FOSS) and open data.
The simplest and most impactful urban analyses are data stories built around visualisations. Examples showcasing this approach are two incredible books on urban design: The Climax City (2019) [2] and Complexcity (2020) [3]. Both books present digital snapshots of the city with street view photographs, maps and figure-ground diagrams alongside an engaging narrative that dovetails with the visualisations. Any interested urbanist should be able to build the visualisations exemplified in these books with a foundational understanding of how to get and visualise urban data. It is my hope that this web-book provides a pathway to knowing what to learn and where to go to learn it.
The code for this web-book can be found on Github. Recordings and slides will be linked here when ready.