Creating Multiple Concentric Ring Buffers in PostGIS

Whenever possible I recently try to get all my GIS work done in QGIS. Most of the time this is no problem at all. Sometimes it makes things even easier, such as when you’re trying to work with your geospatial data in a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database (good luck trying that in ArcGIS!). But sometimes you come across a task that is just so exotic that nobody has ever come across it. Or at least nobody wrote about coming across it…

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Using Tokyo

In the introduction to the UN HABITAT report State of the World’s Cities 2012/2013: Prosperity of Cities it is written:

“As the world moves into the urban age, the dynamism and intense vitality of cities become even more prominent. A fresh future is taking shape, with urban areas around the world becoming not just the dominant form of habitat for humankind, but also the engine-rooms of human development as a whole. This ongoing evolution can be seen as yet another assertion, albeit on a larger scale, of the time-honoured role of cities as centres of prosperity. In the 21st as in much earlier centuries, people congregate in cities to realize aspirations and dreams, fulfil needs and turn ideas into realities.”
(United Nations 2012, v)

I could not agree more, and this is one of the reasons that I was captivated by cities from an early age, long before I started my academic career – or even had an idea of what an academic career is, for that matter. Cities interest me, cities fascinate me, and cities defined me. Having lived in Munich, Frankfurt, and Tokyo, and having visited many other amazing specimen worldwide has definitely had an impact on me and taught me many things. Studying cities is never boring and continues to surprise and astonish me on a regular basis.

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Upcoming Event: 2014 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG)

Readers of my blog know that I have been attending the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) for the past two years. While these meetings took place in some of the largest and most international cities in the USA (New York in 2012 and Los Angeles in 2013), the AAG decided to hold the 2014 meeting in Tampa, FL. There’s nothing wrong with this – I love Florida and it should be nice and warm there in early April – but I can’t help but be a little afraid that the city will be more or less overrun by geographers over the course of the conference week. Also, there seem to be mostly two types of accommodation in Tampa: either luxury hotels that break my budget (even at the “discounted conference rate” of USD 199 per night in select hotels) or shady motels far away from the conference venue…

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Setting up QGIS 2 on MacOS X 10.9 Mavericks

[UPDATE: Find informations about installing QGIS 2.4 in this newer article.]

After a hardware failure on my MacBook Pro’s hard disk in the end of last year (replaced for free within half a day at the Apple Store, thanks to my Apple Care Protection Plan) and an extended christmas and new year holiday I’m currently being struck down by a nasty cold and hence decided I have some spare time on my hands to give the latest Mac OS X version 10.9 “Mavericks” a try. It had been released in October, but I had been too busy to play around with it, so far. Obviously I’m not going to screw up my main production machine, the iMac, but instead designated my old, trusted MacBook Pro to be the guinea-pig.

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GIS & Spatial Analysis – “My” magazine on FlipBoard

I have been maintaining it for quite a while now, but it was only today that I found out that it can also be accessed outside its native app on the web: “my” magazine on FlipBoard.

GIS & Spatial Analysis - Flipboard

I called it GIS & Spatial Analysis, and that’s exactly what its contents is all about: I “flip” (that’s the FlipBoard lingo for sharing) everything in here I deem interesting and newsworthy from the world of digital maps, spatial data and spatial analysis. Sometimes it’s rather scientific contents, sometimes it’s just interesting or even going to make you smile. If you’re a map and GIS geek like me, that is…

Obviously it’s for free – so go ahead enjoy! The native app is available for iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle Fire and NOOK – also for free.