Hello! š
Itās been a while! 2023 was an interesting and busy year. A lot happened, so for the yearās last issue Iād like to look back into 10 of my favorite trends of the year. Here goes:
ā ļø Geospatial Innovations: cloud-native and new file formats
2023 was a year with full of cool new developments in GIS, especially for doing spatial analysis at scale. Moving beyond being constrained by huge raster or vector files or computation limitations, many companies are pushing for cloud-native solutions for doing geospatial work. CARTO is leading this movement with its spatial analytics platform.
Thereās much more! According to Element 84 Geospatial Technology Radar 2023, lists tools like H3.js (Uberās indexing system) or Hugging Face (platform for machine learning modeling) as examples of latest advancements in the field.
Some new products Iām watching going into 2024: the new GeoParquet file format and its cloud capabilities, Apple breaking into spatial computing with its Vision Pro headset, and how AI will enhance mapping. Which brings me into:
š¤ AI and Mapping
What can AI do for maps? One of the interesting ideas from 2023 is having the a map that answers questions. It can be hard to find exactly what you want in a map, be it a simple text search, a new landmark or new suggestions for where to go next. Well, imagine if the map was instead able to talk to you, answer your questions and guide your understanding of what is it showing. Something to watch for in 2024!
šŗ Open-source and useful technical tools
This year, thereās been so much good work that allows us to do better analysis. Iāve enjoyed learning more about a ton of open-source technical tools that seem to have spun out at the same time as the other geospatial advancements. Among my faves: pydeck, for quick image rendering in Jupyter Notebooks, Leafmap, for quick interactions and geospatial analysis in Python, Pandana for network analysis.
For some more notebook-development tasks, check out nbdev, a nifty tool that allows you to build packages out of your Jupyter Notebooks.
š And even more data!
2023 brought us ā¦. data. One of the most important examples was the new Overture Maps Foundation dataset. This dataset incorporates many sources, starting from its founding members (Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and tomtom) to various open data sources.
Openly available global datasets with sufficient granularity have been hard to come by, so Overtureās work has brought a lot of excitement to doing geospatial work. Other cool catalogs I came across: Google Earth Engine and AWS Open Geospatial Data.
š Data governance
With all this ubiquitousness of data, one of the main questions to answer has always been āhow do we govern the data, think about its uses and set up the infrastructure so that it is helpful and fair?ā How do we ensure that products we put out are useful, complete and actually helping folks?
In 2023, there have been a couple of companies that are working on exactly these questions. Source Cooperative is making sharing geospatial data easy and thinking critically about what ādata opennessā means.
PLACE is building a ācollective goodsā model for sharing geospatial data, working with governments and the public to solve issues of missing map data.
š©āš» Civic Tech & Public Interest Technology
As I've written about before, I spent the summer in NYC working at the Department of City Planning as a Data Engineering Fellow. This fellowship was organized by Coding It Forward, a non-profit whose mission is bringing early- career tech folks into government. I had a great experience, learned more about the work of government and the role that tech plays in policy, and was exposed to so many cool people doing very inspiring work.
For instance I learned about 18F, an in-house consultancy at the GSA working on delivering tech projects to other government offices, like working with the Department of Treasury to implement the Digital Transparency and Accountability Act or understanding how to do better research in the federal government. USDS (US Digital Services) also has a similar role within the fed, helping implement policies and work through technical challenges in a human-centric way. Checkout their work building COVID-19 vaccine finder tools.
As Iāve moved through this space, Iāve met a ton of people with great advice on how to approach working at the intersection of technology and policy. Chris Kuang (US Digital Corps co-founder) is one of them: read his āBreaking into civic techā guide.
š§° Urban Planning: tools to understand policy
Policy decisions are often fragmented and they span a huge timeframe, often taking years and even decades to complete. If each local government across the world is working on many projects, how do we make sense of all of them? Are there ways to understand and keep track of this work? This year, Iāve been collecting some policy-based tools that do just that: using interaction and intuitive design, they show you the effects of new policy. Check out some examples:
Exclusionary Zoning by the Eviction Lab: in which parts of the US are zoning laws more exclusionary?
Zoning Changes in Pudget Sound: how many housing units could be built using different policies in the Seattle Metro area?
Spatial Equity Data Tool: are libraries, polling places, other amenities distributed equitably across the US?
š Some Reads
One of my personal highlights of the year has been finding so many new people working with geospatial, urban planning and data. Hereās a compilation of some of the best books and newsletters Iāve come across:
Books:
āMapping Society: the spatial dimensions of social cartographyā by Laura Vaughan
āRecoding Americaā by Jennifer Pahlka
āA Civic Technologistās Practice Guideā by Cyd Harrell
Newsletters:
Map Happenings by James Killick
American Inequality by Jeremy Ney
Sustainability by the numbers by Hannah Ritchie
š Some Podcasts
GBH āThe Big Digā: the story of the Big Dig, the Boston central artery megaproject. Spanning 50 years, with some great story-telling, I loved this series for its take on the controversial and complex legacy of the Big Dig and the lessons we can draw from it today.
Minds Behind Maps: Mapping conversations with cool people working in geospatial-related fields. The host Maxime is a great interviewer, and his guests always have intriguing insights to share about their work.
UCLA Housing Voice: podcast hosted by two UCLA Urban Planning professors discussing important housing policy papers and their implications. Tune in for informative episodes on homelessness (part 1 and 2) .
DUSP Planning Ideas that Matter: the MIT Urban Science podcast, where DUSP people are invited to share their research on planning. Check out Gabriella Caroliniās episode on urban infrastructure.
The Mapscaping Podcast: a great geospatial podcast focused on technical tools and new products coming up in the area. One of my faves: 100 billion points everyday.
āļø And lastly, what Iāve been up to
This year, I actually managed to uphold my new year resolutions and complete a handful of personal projects. Me and Harsh worked on The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, which is our attempt at capturing all of our collected recommendations and encouraging others to collaborate on it as well. I also worked on a project analyzing street names in Tirana , which involved a lot of hand-labeling and some unexpected finds.
That sums it up!
Thanks for reading newsletter this year, and see you soon!