12 data maps that sum up London. Image copyright James Cheshire/Oliver Uberti A new collection of data maps of London reveals a city heaving with information. A quick quiz question for you. How many football pitches could fit inside the Greater London boundary? Well, 220,000 of them would fill the space between Cockfosters and Croydon, Heathrow and Hornchurch. That statistic is just one of thousands of facts and figures contained in a new book about London, which according to its creators is the most data-heavy capital of the world. Geographer Dr James Cheshire and visual designer Oliver Uberti say their book - London: The Information Capital - is not an atlas, but instead a series of data portraits. Scroll down to take a look at a few of their colourful and imaginative maps and infographics.
Ethnicity From greys and blues to autumnal shades of yellow and red, this colourful dotted map of Greater London shows 2011 Census information - which found that fewer than 45% of Londoners consider themselves "White British". Passports. Six amazing infographics reveal what London’s really like. (Click on the image to make it bigger) A few fun facts for you stats fans: residents in Enfield are way happier than those in Hammersmith, Clapham is a great place to pull, and Islington (with a birth rate that’s way below average) is a great place to live if you want to avoid babies. We love a good infographic, and James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti’s book ‘The Information Capital’ has some fantastic ones brimming full of great London stats. First up is the bright swirly image above which tells us that in 2012 Londoners watched nearly twice as many theatre performances as music gigs, and for every 100,000 of us we watched just 35 dance shows.
(Click on the image to make it bigger) Now for the serious stuff, this is a life or death situation. The recorded number of deaths in Tower Hamlets, Islington, Barking and Dagenham are way above average. In Barking and Dagenham the above-average birth rates balance this out but birth rates in Islington and Tower Hamlets are below average. By Laura Sagar. A Beginner’s Guide To South London’s Cultural Gems. First in a two-part miniseries picking out a few starting points on either side of the river. The old stereotypes about south London — a cultural black hole where cab drivers would never venture — are thankfully long in the past.
Yet the attractions of the Surrey Side still elude some of those from north of the Thames. In fact, according to a survey by museum group CultureLine, 54 per cent of north Londoners never go south for either work or play. For those who have yet to make the journey in search of cultural fulfilment, or indeed for those who are new to London, here’s a beginner’s guide to the charms of the south. Bankside Even the most hardened north Londoner knows Tate Modern, one of Britain’s top three tourist attractions. Continuing their work with architect Herzog + de Meuron, the Tate trustees have commissioned a new building to extend the space. Southbank Bermondsey and Rotherhithe White Cube. Greenwich National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Further south More, you say…? By Rob Kidd. The great 1928 flood of London. 15 February 2014Last updated at 19:25 ET By Jon Kelly BBC News Magazine In 1928 the Thames flooded much of central London, with fatal consequences.
It was the last time the heart of the UK's capital has been under water. How did the city cope and what has changed? It was after midnight when the river burst its banks. Most Londoners slept as the floodwaters gushed into some of the nation's grandest buildings and subsumed many of city's narrowest slum streets under 4ft of water. The Houses of Parliament, the Tate Gallery and the Tower of London were all swamped. So too, tragically, were many of the crowded basement dwellings into which the city's poorest families were crammed. The date was 7 January 1928. A modern observer would not find the aftermath entirely unfamiliar, however. The 1928 flood saw 14 people killed The river poured over embankments at Southwark, Lambeth, Temple Pier and the Houses of Parliament, where Old Palace Yard and Westminster Hall were quickly flooded.
Disused Tube Stations Mapped – London Underground’s Ghost Stations | Randomly London. Early Road Pricing: London’s Lost Turnpikes | View from the Mirror. Since 2003, the road network of central London has been subject to the ‘Congestion Charge’; a £10 fee which drivers must cough up if they wish to brave the capital’s chaotic streets (thankfully, as a London cabbie, my taxi is mercifully exempt from the charge). The idea of making people pay to use London’s roads is far from new. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the capital operated an extensive system of toll gates known as ‘turnpikes’ which were responsible for monitoring horse-drawn traffic and imposing substantial charges upon any traveller wishing to make use of the route ahead.
A diagram of London’s turnpike network from 1790 (image: mapco.net) Please click to enlarge. Just like today, certain lucky users were exempt from the charge- namely mail coaches, soldiers, funeral processions, parsons on parish business, prison carts and of course, members of the royal family. The former toll-keeper’s house (on right) at Hampstead turnpike, opposite the Spaniards Inn. City Road Turnpike. Tired of London, Tired of Life. Vanished London - Architecture. 1895 – Rotherhithe Town Hall, London Architect: Murray & Foster Accepted design for Rotherhithe Town Hall, View from Neptune Street and Lower Road. After Rotherhithe Council merged with the old Bermondsey Borough Council in 1905, it cease to be... 1896 – Carlton Hotel, Pall Mall, London Architect: C.J. Phipps The Her Majesty’s Theatre adjacent, which still stands, is only indicated in these elevations.
The architect was Charles John Phipps also, and the entire site was designed as an architectural... 1898 – St. Architect: Alfred Saxon Snell A major phase of new building took place in 1897-1901 at the St. 1905 – The Scala Theatre, Charlotte Street, London Architect: Frank T. 1919 – Sanctuary Buildings, Great Smith St., London Architect: C.J. 1920 – Avon India Rubber Co., Euston Rd., London Architect: Robert Angell From The Building News, September 3 1920: “The building is a new London depot for the Avon India Rubber Company. 1920 – London County Westminster & Parr’s Bank, Brondesbury, London. BoringLovechild : @bablu121 here's the man with... Unreal City Audio. Thelondonphile | Exploring London's museums, heritage, architecture + culture. The view from the top of the Shard: London panorama of sights and sounds – interactive | Art and design.
London: A Year in Maps. Mapping London editors James and Ollie look back at some of the many maps produced each year in London to highlight the highs and lows of London life. As you can see there was more to 2011 than riots and Royal Weddings: hand drawn maps have never been so popular, nor have those showing transport and people’s use of social media. So before we head into 2012, take a moment to enjoy 2011′s cartographic delights. January: Congestion Charge Shrinkage The Mayor of London removed the Congestion Charge’s Western Extension (WEZ), shrinking the zone back to its original area east of Park Lane. Map Copyright: Transport for London February: Tweets in London UCL CASA researchers Steven Gray and Oliver O’Brien produced a heatmap of London, based on geolocated Twitter data, collected through February.
Contains data from Twitter, OpenStreetMap and Ordnance Survey Open Data (Boundary-Line). March: Anti-Cuts March Bonus Map: The Index of Multiple Deprivation 2010 was published in March. June: Wimbledon. London Names. Olympic London deserted: it's a great time to be a tourist in the capital | UK news. On the back of Jay Osborne's pink-roofed ice-cream van, there is a familiar sign that reads: "Mind that child. " Today, the warning seems a bit redundant. Here, outside London's Natural History Museum, the third most popular museum in the country, there aren't many children to mind. Nor are there many adults. Reports of it being a ghost town are a slight exaggeration, but for a sunny August morning in the middle of the school holidays, the museums of South Kensington are unnervingly quiet. "The tourists are well down," says Osborne, who has been selling ice cream for 40 years.
Osborne's is a familiar complaint this week. According to trade association estimates, attendance at traditional tourist attractions this week is down by 30% on the same period last year, restaurants by 40%, and black cab usage by a similar figure. "It's absolutely empty," marvels Natasha Reynolds, sitting at the only occupied table in the cafe outside the Natural History Museum. It's true. It's a popular theory.
Nothing 'mindless' about rioters. Civil disturbances never have a single, simple meaning. When the Bastille was being stormed the thieves of Paris doubtless took advantage of the mayhem to rob houses and waylay unlucky revolutionaries. Sometimes the thieves were revolutionaries. Sometimes the revolutionaries were thieves. And it is reckless to start making confident claims about events that are spread across the country and that have many different elements. We can dispense with some mistakes, though. More broadly, any breakdown of civil order is inescapably political. The fierce conflict remains ahead The profusion of images that modern technology generates makes it even more difficult to impose a single meaning on a complex event. There are signs too that technology is allowing individuals to intervene in the process by which meaning is assigned to social events.
In London today people were on the streets tidying up the damage. So there is no single meaning in what is happening in London and elsewhere. London riots - third night. London riots / UK riots: verified areas. There is a context to London's riots that can't be ignored | Nina Power. Police in riot gear in Enfield, north London, on Sunday night. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures.
The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The UK riots: the psychology of looting | Zoe Williams. The first day after London started burning, I spoke to Claire Fox, radical leftwinger and resident of Wood Green. On Sunday morning, apparently, people had been not just looting H&M, but trying things on first.
By Monday night, Debenhams in Clapham Junction was empty, and in a cheeky touch, the streets were thronging with people carrying Debenhams bags. Four hours before, I had still thought this was just a north London thing. Fox said the riots seemed nihilistic, they didn't seem to be politically motivated, nor did they have any sense of community or social solidarity. 'I remember the buzz of mob mayhem from 1981' The unifying factor that fuels and drives such unrest is excitement, fun, teenage kicks, writes Kevin Sampson I think it's just about possible that you could see your actions refashioned into a noble cause if you were stealing the staples: bread, milk. Of course, the difference is that, in a prison, liberty has already been lost.
Hugh Orde: Now is not the time for police to use water cannon and baton rounds. One of the greatest strengths of British policing is that operational decision-making is conducted not by politicians, but by professional chief police officers who have spent their whole career in policing. While David Cameron today referred to some of the more extreme measures available to us, they are not new, and responsibility for their deployment remains entirely a matter for chief officers. There can be no confusion here at all; it is a fact that we cannot be ordered to police in a certain way but we will be held robustly accountable for what we choose to do or not do.
As one of only two officers in the country to have ordered the use of water cannon and baton rounds in public-order policing, my professional judgment is it would be the wrong tactic, in the wrong circumstances at this moment. Both require an extremely precise situation. Utilising baton rounds, an even more severe tactic, is fundamentally to protect life.
Damn it or fear it, the forbidden truth is an insurrection in Britain. Damn it or fear it, the forbidden truth is an insurrection in Britain 18 August 2011 On a warm spring day, strolling in south London, I heard demanding voices behind me. A police van disgorged a posse of six or more, who waved me aside. They surrounded a young black man who, like me, was ambling along. They appropriated him; they rifled his pockets, looked in his shoes, inspected his teeth. Their thuggery affirmed, they let him go with the barked warning there would be a next time. For the young at the bottom of the pyramid of wealth and patronage and poverty that is modern Britain, mostly the black, the marginalised and resentful, the envious and hopeless, there is never surprise. Such is the truth of David Cameron's "sick society", notably its sickest, most criminal, most feral "pocket": the square mile of the City of London where, with political approval, the banks and super-rich have trashed the British economy and the lives of millions.
Armstrong: "Mr. Armstrong: "Mr. Wrong Answers in Britain. An Open Letter to David Cameron’s Parents « Nathaniel Tapley. Image via Wikipedia Dear Mr & Mrs Cameron, Why did you never take the time to teach your child basic morality? As a young man, he was in a gang that regularly smashed up private property. We know that you were absent parents who left your child to be brought up by a school rather than taking responsibility for his behaviour yourselves. Even worse, your neglect led him to fall in with a bad crowd. There’s Michael Gove, whose wet-lipped rage was palpable on Newsnight last night.
Or Hazel Blears, who was interviewed in full bristling peahen mode for almost all of last night. But, of course, this is different. Unless you’re Gerald Kaufman, who broke parliamentary rules to get £8,000 worth of 40-inch, flat screen, Bang and Olufsen TV out of the taxpayer. Or Ed Vaizey, who got £2,000 in antique furniture ‘delivered to the wrong address’. Fortunately, we have the Met Police to look after us. Of course, Mr and Mrs Cameron, your son is right. Oh yes, and then there’s the expenses thing. Like this: Hidden London: 10 of the city’s lesser known delights. London has more than its fair share of must-see sights and instantly recognisable landmarks, but hidden down the side streets and tucked away in urban backwaters is a scattered collection of equally fascinating, lesser known icons.
Throw off the crowds and get to know an unfamiliar but intriguing side to London with our top ten. Dennis Severs’ House In this entrancing Georgian house, visitors find themselves in the home of a family of Huguenot silk weavers who, leaving half-eaten meals and candlelit rooms strewn with possessions, remain audibly just beyond reach. ‘Silent Night’ tours on Monday evenings are enchanting. Where: 18 Folgate St E1Underground: Liverpool StWebsite Brixton Windmill A glorious sight, this superbly-restored windmill is an eye-catching reminder that much of town is a mosaic of once pastoral villages. Where: West end of Blenheim Gardens, off Brixton Hill SW2Underground: BrixtonWebsite Horniman Museum Where: 100 London Rd SE23Overground: Forest HillWebsite Michelin House.