The data for the bikes is courtesy of Transport for London, with the Thames, parks and the underlying network being faithfully drawn by OpenStreetMap contributors.
Cities can be considered "flows of information, vehicles and people" (Sheller, 2007) transported along diverse urban networks. In the Flowprint of London below, the city's extensive bus network is used to sketch an animated portrait of the living city, its wonderful:
The system was developed by Anil Bawa-Cavia of CASA, another example of the kind of data that is currently being processed and visualised in the lab. Take a look at URBAGRAM for more insight into the work.
We are revisiting this earlier work due to a meeting today with regards creating visualisations of the London Underground. The work started out with the movie below of the traditional tube map. Created direct from a .pdf file via London Transports website it provided a 'quick and dirty' flythrough of the map:
We then looked at creating a geographical version with the aim to morph in 3D between the two.
Pictured below is the layout so far using Google Maps 'without the map'. Aimed at creating a 'plasticine' look to the routes the interactive image below illustrates a work in progress produced so we can easily identify the errors. Double click to zoom in and drag to pan:
There are a few errors here and there but it should only need a few tweaks to be near a complete version which can then be morphed and changed as needs be.
Thanks go to Simon Clarke who produced the original geographic tube map. Simon's site is currently under reconstruction in the meantime take a look at other London Underground diagrams.
