A City is More than a Place in Space...

it is a drama in time--Patrick Geddes

I like questions. Specifically, I like considering them, turning them about, and eventually addressing them with a well thought out response. Not to bore you but the backstory to writing a technical book includes much proposal writing. Even if the book is their idea everything requires a proposal. The book? Yup. The accompanying video course? You bet. And even the titles and code embedded in the course. Yup and Yup.

The toughest one for me was a concise answer to, “Why geospatial?”

Data quality is messy and inconsistent. Geographic data amplifies this. For example,

“If your map is 80% good, then the other 20% will mislead. Or worse, if everyone manages to complete 80% of each of their journeys, you will have a generally unhappy user base—Will Cadell, Forbes Technology Council.

There is something tangible about place and GIS delivers. Uh oh. New term. What is this GIS I speak of? A geographic information system or GIS is actually a framework or system that connects data to a map. I am being vague here because of the nuance that is albeit interesting but not the point of this post. The term geospatial—at least to me—points to the output or streams of product created by GIS. Basically, someone else creates the technology and creates the product (GIS). Geospatial folks stream the product to our workflows and apply it to whatever we are attempting to visualize.

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon is real. Or at least my interpretation of it. You know when you learn something and then suddenly it is absolutely everywhere? That is the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon or Frequency Bias. This applies to my work as a geospatial analyst. The intricacies of location are everywhere.

Dawoud Bey is an American photographer recently introduced (his works) to me by art historian Amy Herman. We are familiar with the text based words and history of the Underground Railroad. But if you are like me, there is no visual representation that comes to mind. Perhaps you imagine the portraits of Harriet Tubman described in an earlier post …scorn injustice to other selves. But there is no physical iron and steel representation—we recognize the figurative assembly of the word, “railroad”.” We are imagining a story in the absence of place.