How do you draw a map of 100,000 places, of more than a million flows of people, of changes over time and space, of different kinds of spaces, surfaces and volumes, from human travel time to landscapes of hopes, fears, migration, manufacturing and mortality? How do you turn the millions of numbers concerning some of the most important moments of our lives into images that allow us to appreciate the aggregate while still remembering the detail?The visualization of spatial social structure means, literally, making visible the geographical patterns to the way our lives have come to be socially organised, seeing the geography in society. To a statistical readership visualization implies using data. More widely defined it implies freeing our imaginations.The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure introduces the reader to new ways of thinking about how to look at social statistics, particularly those about people in places. The author presents a unique combination of statistical focus and understanding of social structures and innovations in visualization, describing the rationale for, and development of, a new way of visualizing information in geographical research. These methods are illustrated through extensive full colour graphics; revealing mistakes, techniques and discoveries which present a picture of a changing political and social geography. More complex aspects on the surface of social landscapes are revealed with sculptured symbols allowing us to see the relationships between the wood and the trees of social structure. Today's software can be so flexible that these techniques can now be emulated without coding.This book centres on a particular place and time; 1980s Britain, and a particular set of records; routine social statistics. A great deal of information about the 80s' social geography of Britain is contained within databases such as the population censuses, surveys and administrative data. Following the release of the 2011 census, now is a good time to look back at the past to introduce many new visualization techniques that could be used by future researchers.

List of figures xiList of text boxes xxiPreface xxiiiIntroduction: Human cartography xxxv1 Envisioning information 11.1 Visual thinking 11.2 Pictures over time 41.3 Beyond illustration 111.4 Texture and colour 131.5 Perspective and detail 161.6 Pattern and illusion 201.7 From mind to mind 242 People, spaces and places 312.1 Which people? 312.2 Why study places? 342.3 What are spaces? 402.4 Drawing lines 412.5 Picturing points 502.6 Population space 522.7 Adding time 563 Artificial reality 593.1 Imagining reality 593.2 Abstract spaces 603.3 Area cartograms 663.4 The nature of space 693.5 Producing illusions 773.6 Population space 813.7 Stretching spacetime 854 Honeycomb structure 954.1 Viewing society 954.2 Who the people are 974.3 Disparate origins 1064.4 Lost opportunities 1094.5 Work, industry and home 1144.6 How people vote 1204.7 The social landscape 1235 Transforming the mosaic 1315.1 Still images of change 1315.2 Forming the structure 1325.3 Structure transformed 1365.4 Variable employment 1385.5 House price inflation 1435.6 Reshaping votes 1485.7 Erosion and deposition 1596 Cobweb of flows 1676.1 What flow is 1676.2 What flows there are 1686.3 Unravelling the tangles 1716.4 Drawing the vortices 1776.5 Commuting chaos 1846.6 Migration networks 1856.7 A space of flows 1947 On the surface 1997.1 2D vision, 3D world 1997.2 Surface definition 2027.3 Depth cues 2097.4 Landscape painting 2107.5 Surface geometry 2137.6 Travel time surface 2207.7 Surface value 2228 The wood and the trees 2258.1 Sculptured characters 2258.2 Circles, pies and rings 2278.3 Bars and pyramids 2308.4 Flocks of arrows 2378.5 Trees and castles 2388.6 Crowds of faces 2398.7 Information overload 2439 Volume visualization 2519.1 The third dimension 2519.2 Spaces, times and places 2529.3 Spacetime continuum 2599.4 Three-dimensional graphs 2629.5 Flows through time 2759.6 Volume rendering 2799.7 Interactive visualization 28010 Conclusion: Another geography 283Endnote 297Acknowledgements 299Appendix: Drawing faces 301References 305Author Index 317Subject Index 321Note. The original thesis from which this book was derived had afurther six appendices and a larger bibliography. Some can be foundat dannydorling.org.Appendix A: Circular Cartogram AlgorithmAppendix B: Parliamentary Constituencies 1955-1987ContinuityAppendix C: Parliamentary Constituencies 1955-1987ResultsAppendix D: Average Housing Price by Constituency1983-1989Appendix E: Scottish Ward to Postcode Sector Look-up TableAppendix F: Local Government Wards, 1981 and 1987