Book description
How do you draw a map of 100,000 places, of more than a million flows
of people, of changes over time and space, of different kinds of
spaces, surfaces and volumes, from human travel time to landscapes of
hopes, fears, migration, manufacturing and mortality? How do you turn
the millions of numbers concerning some of the most important moments
of our lives into images that allow us to appreciate the aggregate
while still remembering the detail?
The visualization of spatial social structure means, literally,
making visible the geographical patterns to the way our lives have
come to be socially organised, seeing the geography in society. To a
statistical readership visualization implies using data. More widely
defined it implies freeing our imaginations.
The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure introduces the
reader to new ways of thinking about how to look at social statistics,
particularly those about people in places. The author presents a
unique combination of statistical focus and understanding of social
structures and innovations in visualization, describing the rationale
for, and development of, a new way of visualizing information in
geographical research. These methods are illustrated through extensive
full colour graphics; revealing mistakes, techniques and discoveries
which present a picture of a changing political and social geography.
More complex aspects on the surface of social landscapes are revealed
with sculptured symbols allowing us to see the relationships between
the wood and the trees of social structure. Today's software can be so
flexible that these techniques can now be emulated without coding.
This book centres on a particular place and time; 1980s Britain, and
a particular set of records; routine social statistics. A great deal
of information about the 80s' social geography of Britain is contained
within databases such as the population censuses, surveys and
administrative data. Following the release of the 2011 census, now is
a good time to look back at the past to introduce many new
visualization techniques that could be used by future researchers.
