Archives for posts with tag: London

Are minor points of interest poisonous?

September 9, 2010 //
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Coverage of “points of interest” in OpenStreetMap is a point of pride for many mappers. Our maps have much richer detail than commercial competitors, they provide endless handy data for mashups, and as a consequence have been a big focus of mapping party efforts in London.

But should we really be so keen? I’m not so comfortable for two reasons.

First, how up-to-date is our data? I’ve recently re-surveyed my local area in minute detail and found several takeaways, shops and banks that have closed down or changed hands. I’ve also discovered that we have very poor coverage of cycle parking in Southwark following two years of massive expansion by the council.

How likely is it that these are being regularly checked and updated? I suspect “not very likely at all”, and have therefore decided to delete all my points of interest in my local area that I’m not confident anyone will update. I mostly deleted minor shops, especially those like hairdressers that change a lot and that aren’t very important to know about. I’ve left all the amenities like banks, post offices, cycle parking and pubs.

My second concern is that the completeness and up-to-dateness will vary according to the number of active and nutty OpenStreetMappers in the area. And that tends to translate to affluent areas.

In their useful paper on the “completeness” of OpenStreetMap, Muki Haklay and Claire Ellul issue this rather stark warning:

“The large number of contributors for applications such as OSM or Google Map Maker might convey the false impression that [they] represent a real democratisation of geographical information collection, whereas the reality is that these many voices are coming from the more affluent and naturally empowered sections of society. This cacophony is likely to be silencing the voices of the marginalised and excluded even further.”

As I have auto-traced buildings in deprived parts of Southwark from Ordnance Survey StreetView tiles and sporadic re-surveying, I have noticed the very patchy and thin coverage of points of interest in those areas. Probably half the churches and schools are marked with nodes (no ways describing sites and building, though I’ve tried to draw them in) whilst the rest are missing entirely; occasionally there is a smattering of takeaways and convenience stores.

A comparison of allotments with an open dataset from the Greater London Authority reveals a similar pattern (previewed above). Most of those we have missed are in deprived areas. I’ll be revealing more work on completing our allotment coverage soon, courtesy of some help from friends and contacts in various local/regional government departments.

Muki and Claire suggest public agencies should step in to improve coverage in deprived areas, but that requires a high level of committment to OSM from those agencies. Currently we are in the very early stages on this front in the UK.

Given all of this, I would be interested to hear what other OpenStreetMap contributors and followers think. Should we bother with minor points of interest like hairdressers and takeaways until public agencies step in? Is it better to leave them out to avoid a database full of out-of-date information that only increases inequalities of coverage?

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Low carbon power in Open Street Map

August 28, 2010 //
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Low carbon power in OpenStreetMapMy latest experimentation in environmental maps has been launched on the Peckham Power web site. It grabs the set of energy generators in London (updated every hour from OpenStreetMap) and plots low/zero carbon generators on the map with icons and information to tell you what sort of technology each one uses. The idea is to, eventually, impress people who didn’t realise just how much of this exists in London already.

In developing the code that creates the clickable points, I realised that the OpenStreetMap tagging schema doesn’t cope with the many different types of technologies very well. So I am currently taking a detailed proposal through the wiki process to rationalise and expand the “power=generator” feature – comments welcome! It will go to a vote in a couple of weeks.

As Oliver Kühn has pointed out, data contributors aren’t always aware of the needs of data consumers. The very sparse coverage of energy generators in OpenStreetMap is a case in point; the cluster pictured in this post was a result of a little stroll I took with a friend and Peckham Power founder Anna Plodowski. But across London there are only a few generators visible, out of hundreds or thousands that must exist. I hope this map might spur others to contribute more data.

I am also talking with contacts in the Greater London Authority and Southwark Council about getting data they hold into the public domain, to be imported into OpenStreetMap. Public bodies, and organisations like housing associations, must hold lots of data on their own kit without complex data protection issues that would stop installation companies contributing their data.

In time, it might become an interesting point of collaboration with government and third sector groups, as currently nobody holds any data indicating the extent of low and zero carbon energy generators in London!

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Ken vs. Oona – anything new?

July 11, 2010 //
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Being a Green, I’m not following Labour’s hustings for their Mayor of London candidate too closely. But being a realistic left-of-centre Green, I’m hoping that either Ken or Oona get elected into City Hall in 2012.

Oona King hasn’t impressed me much so far. Her candidacy seems very light on detail, her policy pronouncements full of nice language but no specifics. As Martin Hoscik writes, Ken Livingstone is simply rehearsing his 2008 manifesto, with a few innovations (such as borrowing affordable housing money on the bond market) that are basically unfolding behind the scenes in City Hall already.

But on the BBC Politics Show on Sunday, King did get one impressive point in. Livingstone is basically gearing up for a re-run of the 1980s, when he battled with Thatcher from the GLC. He wants to fight, fight, fight every cut (transcript here). But as King pointed out, once the Mayor gets a cut-down grant she/he can’t do very much about it.

In the face of cuts beyond our control we need to innovate (whilst of course speaking out against the cuts and making them very uncomfortable for Lib Dem and Conservative MPs in London). King cited the example of co-operative home ownership, something I have recently worked on with Jenny Jones. I have also written in the past about opportunities for local communities to regenerate their area without waiting, cap in hand, for big chunks of government funding.

Given that Livingstone has jumped on the bond market bandwagon to raise money for affordable homes I hope he will use the next two years to take up other innovations, as King suggested. I also hope Oona King puts some substance behind her slightly vague but insightful suggestions.

A campaign of positive ideas for London’s very varied communities would be much more interesting, and beneficial to London, than two years of simply attacking the coalition Government’s disastrous budget.

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Are the new new Right in this together?

June 19, 2010 //
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February feels a distant memory. Back then, the Conservative Party released a report called Labour’s Two Nations, attacking Labour’s 13 year record on inequality. Britain had become (they suggested) a society of low taxation on the rich and high marginal rates on the poor; under Labour, risky personal lending inflating a housing fantasy replaced prudent saving and improving housing affordability.

So do the Conservatives now care deeply about inequality? Darren Johnson put the London Assembly Conservatives to the test this week, proposing that the Mayor of London implement Cameron’s policy of a maximum 20:1 pay ratio in the Greater London Authority group.

Here’s the response of the Conservatives:

In case you’re fooled into thinking that Darren and the Greens are ignoring the low paid, read Darren’s arguments in The Guardian. If we’re all in this together, shouldn’t government bodies ensure that the lowest paid receive a living wage whilst preventing spiralling pay at the top of the scale?

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Priced out of buying a home?

June 8, 2010 //
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Jenny Jones has produced a new report and this accompanying video, explaining why the Government and Mayor of London’s approach to affordable housing is fundamentally broken.

It’s something that a growing number of people know, whether you’ve been priced out or you know someone who has by decades of massive house price rises. It is most severe in London and fancy rural communities, but is a growing problem across the country.

I’m pretty proud of the work Jenny and I did on it!

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Boris the culture commie?

February 22, 2010 //
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Are free photos evil? I’m going to stick my neck out and defend the Greater London Authority for setting up a Flickr group where Londoners can submit photos to be used on the GLA web site. A few photographers are upset that anyone can now get decent photos for free from citizens who donate them. Shocker. These photographers want the GLA to use our taxes to pay them for their hard work.

I’m sorry, but that’s just plain ridiculous. Should we condemn the GLA for using free software for their web site, instead of paying for a proprietary content management system? Dearie me. Look, the web has changed many creative industries and bust the business models of those few who were charging for stuff that lots of us will happily share quite freely. Get over it.

This storm-in-a-lens-pouch has been picked up by the venerable Boris Watch and the Telegraph, who both seem to sympathise with the photographers. They echo the photographers and conflate this issue with the way that the police and the More London security guards act stupidly towards photographers, as though this has anything to do with the GLA (a different organisation) inviting its 7.56 million citizens to contribute their lovely photos to the GLA web site.

The great collection of photos in the group – including a few of mine – suggest that most people are quite happy donating their work.

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The cost of housing doubles in London

January 20, 2010 //
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Halifax have published a great little fact sheet on some key housing trends over the last 50 years. The most dramatic is that the cost of buying a home has risen 273% above incomes over that period, with the sharpest rise during the 2000s when they rose by 63%.

This is the increasing cost of housing adjusted for increases in income; or adjusting for inflation to state rises in real terms, for economists. Imagine if food or heating bills rose that quickly compared to incomes!

Whilst the property-owning journalists hail this rise in house prices, more and more people are squeezed out of the market, or forced to sacrifice huge chunks of their salary to repay mortgages.

Jenny Jones published a report on the housing crisis in London recently. She shows that over the past decade the cost of buying a home doubled in London, well above the national rise of 63%. This makes the misleading boasts of our Tory Mayor – as he fails to even meet his own modest housing targets – all the more sickening.

Unless we double the number of homes we build, which is pretty unlikely, or we make a radical shift away from home ownership, this trend is set to continue for another decade. But our Labour government and this Tory Mayor are both  committed to mostly building homes we have to buy, with a very small minority available for affordable rent, almost no land being held by communities to keep it affordable, and pretty much no support for alternative models like co-operatives.

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God bless you, lucky home owners

December 22, 2009 //
5

You don’t often see national newspapers celebrating a drop in house prices, despite the fact that they rose twice as fast as average incomes in the past decade. It’s much like the coverage of any strike that might affect a journalist’s holidays plans.

Most journalists and commentators are wealthy middle class home owners, so they are heavily invested in maintaining this trend of above-income-inflation house price rises. There are two main reasons for this trend: first, house building supply never came close to meeting demand; second, cheap credit created a bubble that massively over-inflated the value of homes.

Here in London, households with incomes up to an incredible £74,000 are soon to become eligible for “affordable housing”, which you can buy up bit by bit. Us paupers on a mere £74k are no longer able to buy a home otherwise.

In the past year this trend has very slightly eased, with falling demand matching a slight recovery of housing building numbers after the recession kicked them off a cliff. That’s Labour’s reaction to the recession – not a Green fiscal stimulus, but at least not cuts followed by a depression. Still, this slight reversal doesn’t please Geoffrey Dicks, chief economist of Novus Capital Markets, who warned in The Times that recent trends are “exacerbating an emerging supply-demand imbalance”. Cripes!

But just before you got too upset, Dicks evokes Tiny Tim to cheer on the possible return of above-income-inflation house price rises. God bless us, every one! Perhaps after being adopted by Scrooge, Tim would have reason to cheer on the rise of grossly unfair home ownership.

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Should we laugh at the BNP?

December 10, 2009 //
3

Jim Jepps praises Peter Cranie for not taking up the BBC’s airtime offer to debate climate change with Nick Griffin. Quite right too. After watching this excellent explanation of the UAE “climategate” emails, well trailed as a “controversy” in the media, I was beginning to wonder if the BBC wasn’t about to go back to it’s old damaging balance position. It hasn’t exactly won the public’s affection over its stance on giving the BNP disproportionate time on news bulletins and Question Time.

But what do you do if you must share a platform with the BNP?

The London Assembly gives me regular access to the BNP’s “mr chips” Assembly member Richard Barnbrook. Word is, by the way, that he only ever eats plates of chips in the cafeteria, which might explain a few things. This week he tried to deny climate change by helpfully pointing out that there aren’t any cows on Mars. He can barely get through a question without confusing himself; statistics are his favourite form of masochism. A quick search for his name on the GLA web site is good for at least half an hour of entertainment, if you’re bored.

Of course this all means he’s also very bad at getting anything done. If you can’t formulate a really cutting question, or trick the Mayor into giving a commitment, you’re not going to get anywhere. And that’s not all. Aside from overt racism and xenophobia, Barnbrook purports to defend the working class. This would be why he denounced 10:10 as a “stealth tax on the poor”.

But if you really care about elderly people not being able to heat their homes, wouldn’t you support a campaign that wants better insulation? If you want families on low incomes to have access to cheap, quality food wouldn’t you worry about climate change pushing up food costs? Isn’t low cost public transport pretty handy for people on low incomes?

The consensus seems to be that if you must share a platform with the BNP, you either try to ignore them (as Boris Johnson affects to do), or your laugh at them (as most London Assembly members seem to do).

All jolly fun, but I wonder if any of those potential BNP voters – the type who aren’t particularly racist but just feel let down on housing or crime by Labour – if they ever see this. What would they think? What does it achieve? How can we make clear that Richard Barnbrook is (a) completely useless at pushing his agenda and (b) not very good at standing up for the people who vote for him? How can politicians who must share a platform get this message out effectively?

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Getting a home we can afford

October 14, 2009 //
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Dave Hill writes in his Guardian blog about Boris Johnson’s housing plans for London. What could be more important to Londoners than housing that is affordable for all, of a decent quality, energy efficient and in the place they want to live? He has done great work on this topic, but he misses some basic facts and figures that expose just what Boris’ priorities are.

SH_MK_compare

All the evidence shows that London needs a mix of new social, intermediate and market (private) housing that is evenly spread around the city – much like this photo, which I took in south Camberwell. The most pressing need is for social housing, and to end “segregation by tenure”, where your income determines which ghettoised community you can live in. Thankfully my patch is pretty integrated, but go down into Dulwich or up to Elephant & Castle and you quickly enter predominantly rich and poor areas.

But Boris’ plans only deliver around half the needed social housing in the next ten years. His  Strategic Housing Market Assessment, partly based on central government research, says we need roughly 18,200 new affordable homes every year, and that 80% of these should be social housing. But Boris’ Housing Strategy and his London Plan set targets for only 13,200 new affordable homes, of which only 60% will be social. Market and intermediate housing for middle class and rich people will exceed targets, whilst social housing falls disastrously short. We won’t even meet growing demand, let alone deal with the backlog of families in overcrowded homes, B&Bs and temporary accommodation.

That’s not all. Alongside the lack of supply, parts of London suffer from terrible segregation by income. Rich people live in one area, poor people in another. Dave Hill has exposed the contemporary vanguard of this old Tory policy in Hammersmith and Fulham. Boris has removed the requirement to build affordable housing into every new development, and his London Plan only recommends that more private housing is built in predominantly social housing areas. No word on building social housing in wealthy areas.

Until Boris delivers a strategy that meets the demands thrown up by his own analysis, London is just going to keep getting less affordable for the average Londoner.

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