Case study:
Data City: Integration and visualisation of spatial and socio-economic
data in an urban context
Description
As cities become larger and more complex,
as the development of communications technology makes urban areas increasingly
inter-dependent and as information on urban areas multiplies exponentially,
cities become harder to comprehend and conceptualise. The inability to
conceptualise the new city affects not only professionals charged with
managing and giving form to urban areas, but also appears as a wider cultural
phenomenon that can be seen in fiction, such as Paul Auster's New York
Trilogy, and in films, such as Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.
One of the proposals on how to deal with
urban complexity and data overload is to represent the city in terms of
geographically sensitive data sets that describe its characteristics.
Data sets could describe the city's urban form, the socio-economic characteristics
of its population, etc. All data sets would be plotted in the model according
to the spatial location where the data originates.
The aim of the case study was to devise
an urban model capable of displaying large quantities of complex data
on the city in an easily understandable and interactive visual format.
We built a 3D model of part of the city that would show the physical fabric
and that can be overlaid with geographically-sensitive social and economic
information.
Fig. 1 Example of the urban model showing the urban fabric of the
Hillhead area in Glasgow
All information on the model was be placed
in layers which could be shown simultaneously, in selected groups or individually,
in order to discover significant relations amongst the different data
sets.
In practical terms, the socio-economic
data was to be mapped onto O.S. maps. The study related socio-economic
data obtained from various sources (e.g. census, Government agencies,
Local Authorities, University research institutes, etc.) to the location
in the city where it originated. Thus socio-economic data, which is usually
presented in abstract forms such as tables and graphs, could be understood
in relation to its spatial/geographic distribution and to the physical
characteristics of the city.
The model is a teaching tool through which
students of architecture and urban design can better comprehend the relationships
that exist between socio-economic trends and physical change in the city
and also a vehicle which could lead to a more holistic understanding of
the processes that promote physical change in the city, and thus to more
informed project proposals.
The role of the students was to help build
the model. Each student was given a specific task of building a partial
model with one data set. The models based on individual data sets were
then integrated into one larger model.
We chose the Hillhead area of the West
End of Glasgow because at the time we were engaged in a funded research
study whose aim was to describe the socio-economic characteristics of
the population of the area and relate them to the conditions of the urban
fabric, and because it is a socially diverse area with a variety of significant
problems.
