Mapping Sydenham

[Tim Lund]

Contains National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right 2012
Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2012

It's possible this belongs in the Town Asylum, where being techie is encouraged, and if Admin wants to move it there, then that's fine by me. But I'm thinking of this as being more about what ordinary citizens can do with publicly available information about where they live. Lots of points to make and explain, so maybe easiest as bullet points. And yes, I have just worked out how to use BBCode to produce numbered / lettered lists

1. The software package is QGIS, open source, and free to download by anyone
2. The main data comes from the OpenStreetMap project. If you maximise this image, you'll be able to read the names of various OSM layers in panel at the left of the app window. That's why I left the panel in - to show how it works.
3. There is also a layer with some (distinctly out of date) data about brown field sites in London, from the GLA datastore. I really do not thing the Dolphin is a brownfield site appropriate for redevelopment
4. Another layer, also from the GLA datastore, contains precise ward boundaries. This data is Crown copyright, which is why I have put up that copyright notice. Just now I don't feel I have time to go into the issue of freeing up this data and the current consultation exercise about the privatisation of the Land Registry
5. Some of the OSM data is there because I put it there - e.g. the Dacres Wood Nature reserve - and if anyone exports from the OSM site as an XML file, they will see my name against it, as well as the name of the rather more skilled person who has helped me get this far in mapping Sydenham. A big thank you to Tom.
6. There is another STF poster who has contributed to this data, who I recognise from his alias, and in fact did most of the mapping of Mayow Park. It was through him that I made contact with Tom.
7. So, although some of the data is a bit random, thanks to being sourced from non professionals, so also is the professional data a bit unreliable, and as ordinary citizens, the power to improve things is in our hands.
8. I've also been told about some web applications which use OSM data to do do cool things such as pick out just certain features - my original interest was in areas in LB Bromley tagged as allotments. It's almost unimaginable what else might be possible. As you can tell, I am sooo excited about this
9. So, there's much more to this application and others I'm going to want to learn, but let's not kid ourselves that it's going to be easy to do anything we might want to do, or that an amateur such as me is going to be able, reliably, to produce professional standard maps. Beyond a certain point, things have to be paid for, but let's insist on professionals working in ways which allow the greatest possible involvement with ordinary citizens.
10. That's similar to the point I made about insisting Arup publish data used in modelling traffic for the Crystal Palace proposal.

[JRobinson]

so you've shown us a nice map that you've created, and a list of bullet points - but what exactly is the point?

is it just for information or are you expecting people/us to do something with this?

what's your motive Tim?
Where do you see this going?

As you know I'm a GIS proffessional - if you'd like some assitance with anything like this, you just need to ask, and I'll see what help I can give you in any spare time that I have. Within reason of course.

[Tim Lund]

JRobinson - I didn't actually know you were a GIS pro as such, although I'd clocked that you quite a lot more about this sort of stuff than me, so I should probably have realised.

Motive? Well, in the first instance sharing my sense of excitement about the technology itself, but then also sharing my curiosity about how it shifts the boundaries between professionals and amateurs / citizens. Talk about open and 'big' data is cheap, but seeing how something can actually be done with it helps keep it grounded.

Where is it going? Well, I have some ideas - I think you know one of them would be to produce the coolest ever tree map of a local park in London. That's probably the most focused I have at the moment, because I'm fairly sure it's achievable. But it really is more about learning what is possible, and if anyone else thinks there's something else more interesting and achievable, then let's hear it

I'll be in touch ...