Fundamentals of Spatial Database Management

Developments in urban science, the rise of ‘big data’, and the widespread embrace of the open data movement are coalescing into new opportunities for planners to develop varied representations of urban environments requiring large quantities of data. At the same time, urban archives are more available than ever before. This poses challenges to planners: to be more contextual, even as naive empiricism becomes ever-more-tempting; to be more historical, even as the present demands ever more of our attention. Technically, it also implies that planners will benefit from a familiarity with formal spatial databases and query languages, including SQL.

Data produced and distributed in a vacuum is worthless, and worse: it might lead us to think that evidence can be divorced from its place and context. As such, we will strive to produce contextually-rich datasets that are responsive to the needs of local stakeholders. These will vary year-to-year.