[ 1/31 ] 🧵 Time for yet another megathread of my favourite satellite pics. This time I have 123 images processed by me in 2025 *. Various dates, random places. Most of them were taken by Sentinel-2, some by S-3 and one or two by Landsat. *There's one more pic that isn't mine, but it's so good 😊

Spatial optimization has applications in nearly every field but it's underutilized. In 2026, I'm working on open source and lightning-fast tools to make spatial optimization accessible. Shown: interactively solving a "location-allocation" problem in an app with instant results.

These are 10 of my favourite #UrbanEconomics & #SpatialEconomics articles published in academic journals in 2025, continuing with a tradition started in 2018 (order is alphabetical by first author, no ranking implied):

When Are Impedance Choices Irrelevant? Equivalence Conditions for Hansen-Style Access Metrics

2025 was a massive year for me as an R developer. This past year I've branched out and focused on bringing interfaces to some of the most exciting geospatial technologies to the R community. Here's a summary:

space duck! no need to tell me more

Working with big spatial data in #rstats? #duckspatial 🦆

looking for a good overview/tutorial (text or video) on MCPs and code agents for #rstats / Positron (and maybe Claude Code) so I can see how that world is shaping up—any good ones out there?

Working with big spatial data sets in #rstats? You should try {duckspatial}. The dev version of #duckspatial (soon on CRAN) uses #duckdb to perform super fast and memory efficient spatial operations cidree.github.io/duckspatial/... In a benchmark against, {sf}....

My favorite #Python package to use is spopt, a library for spatial optimization. It helps you with: 📊 Facility location planning; 📊 Sales territory design; 📊 Maximizing market share; And much more! Check it out here: pysal.org/spopt/

🚀 Watch the Earth Change: New QGIS Plugin Creates Satellite Timelapse Animations in Seconds 🌍 A QGIS plugin for creating timelapse animations from satellite and aerial imagery using Google Earth Engine. Supports NAIP, Landsat, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-1, MODIS NDVI, and GOES weather satellite imagery.

Bivariate maps showing the relationships between Temperature and Precipitation. Made with Plot, based on a great tutorial by Fil: observablehq.com/@jo... Data from TerraClimate (1958-present). #cartography #maps #mapping #climate #dataviz #SciArt

How the magnitude of the causal effect of a policy (z) on the outcome variable varies over time (x) and distance to policy location (y) #dataporn

Absolutely brilliant!

How the magnitude of the causal effect of a policy (z) on the outcome variable varies over time (x) and distance to policy location (y) #dataporn

An astonishing percentage of Americans are open to car-free living. The problem isn't attitudes. The problem is the failure to invest in viable options. humantransit.org/2025/12/many...

Transcribed over 7,000 folios of eighteenth-century merchant letters with @leotranscribes.bsky.social. Now I just need to read them... 😅

neat. I notice somebody asked for a python version on the duckplyr github and they recommended ibis ibis-project.org/posts/ibis-d... which seems like it's probably the answer im looking for (!) (cc @urschrei.bsky.social , @jreades.bsky.social , @urbandemog.bsky.social )

How well do LLMs generate R code? skaltman-model-eval-app.share.connect.posit.cloud #rstats #llm

Which LLM writes the best R code? posit.co/blog/r-llm-e... Interestingly, GPT-5.2 underperformed OpenAI’s own older/legacy GPT-5, as well as Gemini 3 and all the Claude models. #Rstats

CfP special issue on "Decolonising Research in Transport Geography", in JTG. Please help us spread the word! Deadline 30 Sep 2026 More info www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu... Guest editors: Qiyang Liu, Peking Zihao An, U. Leeds Rafael H. M. Pereira, Ipea Zahara Batool, Leeds Tim Schwanen, Oxford

Our new study provides rare causal evidence about NYC’s speed camera program. We find large reductions in collisions (30%) and injuries (16%) near intersections with cameras. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... @astagoff.bsky.social ky.social @brendenbeck.bsky.social nbeck.bsky.social 🧪

📢#geocodebr v0.5.0 on CRAN. A maneira mais rápida de geolocalizar dados no Brasil, e de graça ;) ipeagit.github.io/geocodebr/ e.g. 10 milhões de endereços em 13 min em um pc médio com processador i5 e 16GB de RAM Essa versão é pelo menos 4x mais rápida e usa 8x menos memória do q a versão anterior

o ano é 2025, e você recebe pelo whatsapp mensagem de aniversário de clínica veterinária

🔊 More from our recent @nathumbehav.nature.com article from the Technical University of Denmark: Our study shows that behind the apparent complexity of human mobility lies a simple rule shaped by geography and distance. 🔗 www.dtu.dk/english/news... DOI: 10.1038/s41562-025-02282-7

🏢 What lies beneath China’s rapid urban expansion? 🔎 Ang Liu’s article in Economic Geography reveals how “fake equity” enables developers to mask liabilities, linking urban growth to deeper financial vulnerabilities. 🔗 Read more at doi.org/10.1080/0013... #EconomicGeography

Graças ao duckdb, a versão dev do geocodebr agora consegue geolocalizar 10 milhões de endereços em 5 minutos. 43 milhões em 21 minutos ipeagit.github.io/geocodebr/ #duckdb #geocodebr #rstats

131. Natural growth is the difference between crude birth and crude death rates. From the 1950s to the present, 8 countries (with 7mil+ population) had the fastest declines in natural growth: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, S. Korea, and Thailand. These are their stories.

But has he published an R package on CRAN ? #rstats ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

O Ministerio das Cidades criou ano pasado o Prêmio Bicicleta Brasil p/ reconhecer projetos que incentivem o uso da bicicleta e a melhoria das condições de mobilidade urbana. Esse ano, o Lab de Acesso a Oportunidades do @ipeaonline recebeu o prêmio de 1o lugar na categoria Concientização🥳

Excited to share that the 1st paper of my dissertation has been published! In this study, we developed and applied the novel JTEV framework in Columbus, OH. Thankful to Jeffrey Bielicki, Jeffrey Jacquet and my PhD advisor @huyentkle.bsky.social Link: authors.elsevier.com/c/1m7I87tZ6a...

Ever wondered what housing value proxy for sales prices to use? Long story (in our @cesifo.org DP) short: Assessed values are good for quantification of QSMs. List prices better for hedonic valuation using panel identification. www.ifo.de/en/cesifo/pu... @hans-koster.bsky.social

📣 Are you a PhD student in the quantitative social sciences interested in interdisciplnary research? Join us at the Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences (25 May-19 Jun 2026) at @tse-fr.eu. Apply by 15 Dec 2025 🎓🔍 👉 More info + application: www.tse-fr.eu/toulouse-sum...

👉 Our new paper uses daily mobility data to show that spatial isolation is much more common today among those living in advantaged neighborhoods than the converse. 👩🏻‍💻 Lots of massive data wrangling and careful assumptions about mobility data needed - but check it out here! doi.org/10.1177/0042...

New Nature Energy @nature.com study shows the UK can reach net zero faster, cheaper & with fewer risks by cutting energy demand. ECI’s Prof Christian Brand @profchristianbrand.bsky.social led the transport analysis in this unique gov–research collaboration. ➡️: www.eci.ox.ac.uk/news/less-en...

I would add WebGL-based visualization libraries (e.g. #deckgl and #mapgl). They are not exactly super new but they're really centraly in how spatial data science has changed over the past 10-ish years. ps. #GeoParquet, and #DuckDB + spatial ! would also be at the top of my list!

Glad to share this paper is now published "A family of accessibility measures derived from spatial interaction principles" journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... A delightful colab led by @soukhova.bsky.social !

I’m thrilled to share that my new book (Spatial Data Management with DuckDB) is now published! 🎉 At 430 pages, this book provides a practical, hands-on guide to scalable geospatial analytics and visualization using DuckDB. All code examples are open-source and freely available on GitHub.

Congratulations to my student, Maggie Ma, for publishing her first #rstats package {ggincerta} on CRAN 🥳 Spatial uncertainty visualisation (bivariate, pixel, exceedance, glyph), like {Vizumap}, but fully integrated with ggplot2 -- a much simpler API with all the advantages of the ggplot2 system.

A lot of education discourse is at root an inability to decide whether the purpose of our education system is to 1) teach material and measure learning 2) reward students who work hard 3) separate the smart kids (destined for smart guy jobs) from the dumb kids (destined to serve the smart guys)

📣 USF International Fellowships 2025 - apply now! This fully-funded program offers 3-9 month sabbatical research visits for urban scholars from the Global South. Read more & apply here: urbanstudiesfoundation.org/funding/inte... Deadline 16th July 2025

Oficina de acessibilidade espacial com #r5rstats no R hoje na #anpet2025 Material do curso aqui ipeagit.github.io/oficina_aces...

🚨📣 We have a new paper with Emmanouil Tranos & @levijohnwolf.bsky.social in the Journal of #Economic #Geography linking #internet speeds to #firm level #productivity benefits. There is a 2% productivity boost pulling slowest to fastest speeds across #UK LAs 👀👇 #geosky #econsky 📈📉 shorturl.at/NJ4rE

* Decoupling geographical constraints from human mobility * 🌍🚶 How much of our movement is about human choice and how much is constrained by geography and the spatial layout of locations? Our paper (out in Nature Human Behavior) gives you a practical way to tell: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

UK looking to implement VKT charge for EVs. Road pricing one EV at a time is coming, as long foretold.

Now this is how you detect whether an election was stolen. Humans choose rounder numbers. by @TheEconomist

Journals sending invitations asking people to review papers in 10 days. Thanks, but no.