Facility and route optimization on road network graphs can solve countless problems across many industries. However, these solvers often require expensive software to set up and run them, or expensive, rate-limited travel-time matrix APIs. The spopt-r R package offers a solution.

The Huff model is the classic algorithm in retail spatial analysis - and you can now use it in R. Predict: - Which store a customer is likely to visit - Sales potential per location - How new stores reshape the competitive landscape Learn more: walker-data.com/spop...

I've been waiting to read something like this for a long time. Thanks, @transportist.org !

Diagonal panning video from a very detailed shaded map of Szczecin, Poland. The full map is 20000 x 20000 pixels with 0.5 m resolution and is available at https://shadedmaps.github.io Data source: https://www.geoportal.gov.pl [Head Office of Geodesy and Cartogr...

New in the R mapgl package: static maps! I developed mapgl to bring my favorite interactive mapping libraries to R. But - interactive maps are by definition hard to share in non-interactive formats. I'm rolling out a couple new functions I'm already finding useful:

Come to @cascadiarevolting.bsky.social and take my Intro to Rust + Extendr workshop ORRRR contribute to base R your call! I'll only be offended if you don't come! /s #rstats

Paris has just elected another bike-friendly mayor! After Anne Hidalgo transformed the city, her PS-colleague Emmanuel Grégoire takes over, beating former right-wing minister Rachida Dati by a large margin.

Which brings me to my research! What we show in this paper is that AI’s ability to produce expert-looking content at zero cost *raises* the demand for experts who can help you tell apart real from fake. 7/ filipecampante.org/wp-content/u...

This is why I'm so excited about my new R/Python package, {freestiler}. I connect to a 146M row @duckdb.org database; generate vector tiles for 2.8 million jobs in CO from a query; serve the tiles and visualize on a @maplibre.org map. All in seconds! Get started: walker-data.com/freestiler

Recomendado por várias pessoas, esse texto na NYTMag sobre a nova era dos agentes de IA é muito bom. Ele (e algumas conversas entre ddjs) me ajudou a pensar sobre o papel dos agentes de IA numa pesquisa acadêmica de humanidades digitais. (reflexões pessoais abaixo) www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/m...

A couple of weeks ago, @harvardsalata.bsky.social convened a conference on Urban Mobility and Climate Change, bringing together leading experts addressing a wide range of challenges at the intersection of transportation and climate change +

We revised our Skyscraper Revolution paper github.com/Ahlfeldt/DPs... Added indirect inference to estimate the QoL effect of density by matching causal reduced-form estimates in the model => more realistic counterfactuals. Quick read @voxeu.org: cepr.org/voxeu/column... @bsoeberlin.bsky.social

New in the spopt-r #rstats package: route optimization. Solve the classic Traveling Salesman Problem for a single driver or optimize a fleet by solving the Vehicle Routing Problem. Written in Rust so they solve fast. Read the vignette which covers r5r integration: walker-data.com/spop...

I had (kinda jokingly?) wondered if there was a Skill that helps write Skills... and there is! From the Anthropic Skills marketplace: github.com/anthropics/s...

#rstats users will be pleased to know that you can now read anything sf can piped directly into SedonaDB via GDAL's @arrow.apache.org integration. This makes the SedonaDB R package considerably more useful!

A dot map of Minneapolis, MN's population by race, created using data from the 2020 US Census. 🔵 = White, 🟢 = Black, 🟠 = Hispanic, 🔴 = Asian, 🟤 = Native American/Other, 🟣 = Multiracial Explore the map: https://www.censusdots.com/race/minneapolis-mn-demographics?src=bluesky

Announcing {freestiler}: a high-performance vector tiling engine for R and Python. Generate vector tiles for your maps directly from R/Python spatial data, @duckdb queries, and local spatial files. Check out the docs here: walker-data.com/free... Some highlights:

The Trays, the most beautiful open office space I've seen. At the Harvard Graduate School of Design GSD

We're kicking off March with two data-driven talks, from 🏙️ cities to ⚾ baseball. 𝗥𝗮𝗳𝗮𝗲𝗹 𝗛. 𝗠. 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗶𝗿𝗮 explores spatial accessibility and equitable urban policy. 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝘁𝘁 𝗣𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 applies modern stats to baseball, from pitch models to MLB pickoff strategy and bat-tracking data. tinyurl.com/mpr87m6t

As of 2025, this analysis of privacy policies indicates that every major AI company uses your private conversations to train their models by default. Every prompt, file, photo, personal detail: all of it feeds directly into model training. arxiv.org/pdf/2509.05382

The Urban Mobility and Climate Change Conference is just around the corner (March 5 and 6). You can either attend the conference in person, or watch it live online. See registration info and full program here www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/cid/...

We live in a magical time for #dataviz. This map is just a static html page served on GitHub pages 🤯 It uses the incredible {pmtiles} #rstats package by @kylewalker.bsky.social to quickly filter through ~21M rows of data hosted on Cloudflare vehicletrends.github.io/hhi-map/

Seeking causality in transport research

We use 30 year averages to show climatology (average weather conditions). During the 20th century the UK climatology followed a path around a confined box. With #globalwarming and #climatechange they have escaped out the box. This #dataviz shows UK rainfall and temperature.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

Pedestrian Observations: Against Free Buses pedestrianobservations.com/2026/02/19/a...

Me aventurei na rede ao lado de fazer um react desmentindo o Kim Kataguiri. Essa galera vive de espalhar mentiras e absurdos. Quem quiser prestigiar. De um oi por lá também! www.instagram.com/p/DU8ISXEjuht/

Great piece from @dsquareddigest.bsky.social, which touches on one of the big theories for why English-speaking countries do especially badly at housebuilding: Adversarial and litigious common law systems (Anglo) vs judge-led civil law systems elsewhere. samf.substack.com/p/build-the-...

@Eurostat published a #map showing accessibility to healthcare and education services in Europe: link.europa.eu/TMxdbb Explore the map: link.europa.eu/QWbyBX #gis #cartography #gischat #demography @ec.europa.eu @nosservicespublics.bsky.social

#r5rgui v0.2 for r5r (@urbandemog.bsky.social) New: - compare routes and transport modes - compare networks! (e.g. OSM vs official streets Trafikverket.se) - query speed - custom basemaps (via `mapgl` @kylewalker.bsky.social ) Still in one line of code! www.ekotov.pro/r5rgui/ #rstats #gischat

Network map of Bluesky users flowingdata.com/2026/02/11/n...

Very intesting-looking new literature review article on how to define minimum levels of necessary mobility doi.org/10.1016/j.er...

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the current pace of change in technology. A useful counterpoint: There are STILL organizations using ArcMap for their GIS even though ArcGIS Pro has been out for over a decade. Technology moves fast; capacity for adoption, not always.

This looks super cool

Spatial patterns of access-density mismatch reveal infrastructure gaps and strategic opportunities for new housing

📃 "Navigating the urban fringe: Socially embedded adaptation of informal transportation amid Bogotá’s urban gondola investment" ✍️ M. A. Santana Palacios 🔍 What are the dominant social dimensions that shape adaptation of informal #transportation to urban change? 📖 buff.ly/Hl9xdyF

🚨 kuzco is now on CRAN 🚨 cran.r-project.org/web/packages...

Amazing chart, it tells so many different things. but overall, it suggests that raising female education reduces fertility more sharply when labour markets and social welfare systems provide less support for motherhood. Paper: link.springer.com/content/pdf/..., via @johnholbein1.bsky.social

Publicada hoje a primeira pesquisa científica e independente sobre as Motofaixas de SP! Nunes transformou a ideia fraca em marketing político muito antes dela ser comprovada. A pesquisa mostrou que elas aumentam a velocidade e com isso o risco de mortes, e aumentaram as mortes no trânsito!

It's 2024 5-year American Community Survey release day! The ACS is the best resource for small-area analysis of US demographics. In R, use tidycensus and mapgl to dive into the data right now. Copy-paste the code below for an interactive income map with a legend filter:

41 miles of new subway for the cost of free buses. Here’s an audacious, expansive plan to expand the subway’s reach & catalyze housing to attack the affordability crisis. An incredible effort from NYU Marron team. Excited for this to be out in the world: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/n...

We deserve to live until we are old. substack.com/home/post/p-... #publichealth #demography #epidemiology #healthpolicy

👏 Congratulations to political philosopher Nancy Fraser, the Spring 2026 Senior Loeb Scholar! Senior Loeb Scholars spend time on campus, during which time they present a public lecture and engage directly with GSD students, faculty, staff, researchers, and Loeb Fellows. https://hgsd.us/4a0NN7g

If you’re in Boston in early March, don’t miss the Urban Mobility and Climate Change Conference. More info and registration available here: www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/cid/... I’ll be speaking on urban form and sustainable mobility, alongside a stellar lineup of speakers addressing ....

a phd

This is how quickly Ai-assisted code is being adopted on GitHub repositories. In just four years , the share of Ai-generated code in the US goes from negligible to aprox 30% by the end of 2024 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Really cool paper by Frank Neffke et al in @science.org

Vignette: solving facility location problems with realistic travel-times. Use the r5 routing engine to generate a travel-time cost matrix from OSM data, then optimize facility locations with a lightning-fast Rust backend in spopt-r. Learn how: walker-data.com/spop...

Isso é maravilhoso