Tracking changes in the urban landscape

Collaboration between Ed Glaeser, Cesar Hidalgo and fellow academics provides a superb resource on how the urban landscape is changing in a number of US cities.

StreetChange from the MIT Media Lab uses computer vision algorithms to examine millions of Google Street View images to measure how urban areas are changing. Their data provides evidence to support human capital agglomeration theory - the benefits to cities and their communities of increasing density of highly educated people.

"Neighborhoods that are densely populated by college-educated adults are more likely to experience physical improvements—an observation that is compatible with the economic literature linking human capital and local success."

Visit the StreetChange web site by clicking this link

Read Cesar Hidalgo's paper here

Here are some more links to the work on analysing urban improvement with the help of machine vision