from Hacker News

Human data shows how we move in cities

by pveugen on 7/2/14, 1:02 PM with 35 comments

• by _mulder_ on 7/2/14, 2:20 PM

  Perhaps the decay times on the trails is too long, but I can't really detect any patterns here, other than that people seem to walk, run, cycle and drive down roads. After a few mins, all this seems to do is highlight the road structure of a city. A shorter trail decay would highlight the people commuting and show activity for transport type by time of day.

  Another interesting metric would be to adjust brightness based on length of journey.

• by blocktuw on 7/2/14, 4:40 PM

  Any chance at open sourcing the data? There are other cities that would be interesting to see that are not included in your sample. Are you interested in licensing out use of the data to 3rd parties? So much data!

• by swimfar on 7/2/14, 2:27 PM

  Strava, a run/bike tracking app, released something similar with their data.

  http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#3/-56.00000/50.00000/blue/bo...

• by viraptor on 7/2/14, 3:09 PM

  This reminded me of a fragment from Cryptonomicon about collecting history of elevation of people walking around the city and trying to reconstruct a street map from it. While an interesting exercise, we just carry precise position beacons with us these days.

• by Aldo_MX on 7/2/14, 6:02 PM

  I'm from Mexico City, and I'm genuinely surprised by the biking activity.

  Unfortunately, only in the touristic areas, and near the "Ecobici" routes, there are bike-exclusive lanes. On the other side, drivers feel entitled to use the streets exclusively, and they perceive bikers as a hindrance in their way.

  I wanted to commute by bike to my work, but at the end I gave up, because I didn't want to get hit by a car and risk my life like hardcore bikers do.

• by entropyie on 7/2/14, 2:04 PM

  At least in Dublin, it seems to confuse Biking with Sailing (see north of Dun Laoghaire pier)

  Otherwise very cool!

• by TallGuyShort on 7/2/14, 1:31 PM

  This is pretty cool, although it would be nice to see the different types of transportation across the same city. I see dramatic differences in the visualizations, sure, but they seem as dramatic as the differences in the layout and structure of these cities.

  While I'm giving feedback, I must say I had to pause and re-read this sentence many times: "Human helps people move almost twice as much in six weeks". As I'm not familiar with the app, I went straight to that sentence and was baffled about some person who helps people change their place of residence a lot more for 6 weeks, but a lot more... compared to what? Took a while to arrive at "An app named 'Human' helps get people to move around more than they otherwise would within six weeks of beginning usage".

• by neuralk on 7/2/14, 5:16 PM

  If you liked this, you may also enjoy Foursquare's visualization of checkins, which shows the pulse of the city and the change in human activities (and which areas are populated) as the day progresses:

  New York City http://vimeo.com/75413842

  San Francisco http://vimeo.com/75416817

  Tokyo http://vimeo.com/75404940

• by crisnoble on 7/2/14, 5:25 PM

  Does anyone know if there is an app that will produce a similar map, but that uses just your own data? I would love to have a map like that that shows where in my city I have been and that would encourage me to see more spots.

• by dalacv on 7/2/14, 4:04 PM

  Mexico City is not showing up as a leader in walking. I find that hard to believe.

• by bdg on 7/2/14, 5:24 PM

  I can't make a meaningful interpretation from this. It looks pretty, but what does it mean?

• by zahrathustra on 7/2/14, 6:47 PM

  Does anyone know the name of the music that's playing?