media140

There are 2 posts tagged media140 (this is page 1 of 1).

CartoDB workshop in Barcelona

Last Monday I attended a workshop about CartoDB, organized by Media140 (with whom I’ve also collaborated: 1 and 2) and presented by Sergio Álvarez.

CartoDB is a powerful and open source geospatial data management and visualization tool. It does everything Google Fusion Tables does, and more. If you’re comfortable with SQL queries and CSS (CartoDB uses Carto, a stylesheet language from Mapbox similar to CSS), you can get amazing results, including hexagonal density grids, or editable and interactive maps. They have more case examples in the gallery, and you can find many more examples online.

In the workshop we learned how to do the basic stuff: upload different kinds of data, visualize them, merge them and tinker a bit with the SQL queries and Carto stylings. We did two maps during the workshop: Spanish unemployment by provinces and life-expectancy rates by country:

I had a CartoDB account way before the workshop but I never got around to try it. I don’t know why, but I thought it was harder to use than Google Fusion Tables, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover how easy it was to work with it. Now I’m looking forward to see how can I use CartoDB in my projects.

Barcelona: income by neighborhood

Red hues: Below average
Green: Around average
Blue hues: Above average

I see a trend around the Diagonal. Urbanism influenced wealth distribution around the city, or the other way around? What has been the impact of gentrification (Olympic Games, Fórum, 22@) in Vila Olímpica, Diagonal Mar, and Parc i Llacuna del Poblenou?

This map is going to be one of the exercises I’ll teach at a data visualization workshop organized by Media140, on November 7th, at Vilaweb, in Barcelona.