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Glasgow Under Construction


Following a post about the emerging Berlin skyline a number of other views of cities ( London , Historical New York ) have been put online using the fantastic OSM Buildings tool.

I have wanted to enable better views of Glasgow and the current construction and planning. There is an existing Urban Model which is kept in a proprietary and licensed format. It would be ideal if under the banner of the Open Data initiative this was released either directly to the Open Street Map project or via api as has been done in cities like New York .

My contribution is this interactive map , showing planned, recently constructed and some speculative models that i could find.There is a tutorial to add buildings or play with ideas.

( NB just leaving these links to what other cities who have real open data policies can do . Data should "Default To Open" )

As is the nature of these planned buildings visualisation in context is not generally available. To this end i have been trying to make the model creation easier. It would be an interesting step forward if architects submitted obj or GeoJSON models as part of the planning process.

Luckily as part of the process site layouts are submitted. Usually very helpfully in pdf format.
Importing into Inkscape gives you this;

Buildings and any other features of interest can be separated and cleaned up.Repositioning to make the GIS translations simpler is trivial with align tools.


Export to DXF and making use of the GDAL tools, and ogr2ogr in particular, generate an appropriate file.
I "gently coerce" the output file GeoJSON to the correct polygon format and add some data needed by OSMBuildings.
This is then read into geojson.io to allow further editing and referencing to use in display.NB A polygon, rather than just point, move would be a big help in geojson.io

HELP !
Here is where my lack of proper GIS knowledge shows, there is a choice of coordinate system that i am missing or not choosing correctly. The model is shearing in the transform as i try to geolocate the model. I need a simple translate in a normal cartesian rectangular frame, so unfortunately the model is distorted just now. This should be an easy fix for someone who knows what they are doing.
Here is what i am currently doing, the srs coord frames are what needs changing, or something in the sql needs to specify a coord frame; ( geojson.io needs WGS84 )

ogr2ogr -f "GeoJSON" -overwrite "$oFileName".geojson -s_srs EPSG:4326 -t_srs EPSG:4326 "$bname".shp -dialect sqlite
-sql "SELECT ShiftCoords(ScaleCoords(ShiftCoords( geometry,-X(Centroid(GEOMETRY)),
-Y(Centroid(GEOMETRY))),$scale),$long+(X(Centroid(GEOMETRY))*$scale),$lat+(Y(Centroid(GEOMETRY))*$scale)) FROM $bname"
( edited to change srs to 4326 )
NB if i leave centred at 0,0 the images are straight and right angled so it is the shiftCoords and/or the srs coord frames not the other manipulations that are doing the shear. Could it just be rounding/precision issue ?
ie

Linking the geojson model in to the Glasgow model gives this;
( Live Map View )

A good step forward but not the complete tool by any means. Too many workarounds , it may actually be easier to rework the openSCAD export extension in Inkscape but that would then limit use to only inkscape users. Fixes in gdal 2.0+ make the polygon creation simpler. A better way to calculate rescale value and specifying the geolocate origin as well

Rio Cafe

Rio Cafe
27 Hyndland Street, Glasgow
14th November 2015

All change.
Rio Cafe, Glasgow

Raised area gone which is nice as it was always cramped and awkward. Minor quibble; Could have extended the seats i was in to make a corner seat like the opposite booth. Now you could be sat with your head at someones backside in the window seats.

Similar view from January 2015
Rio Cafe, Glasgow


Big Rio sign has gone
Rio Cafe, Glasgow

Previously
Rio Cafe, Glasgow

Doghouse Brewdog

Doghouse Merchant City
99 Hutcheson St, Glasgow, G1 1SN
4th November 2015
Doghouse,Brewdog,Glasgow
The second Brewdog bar opened in Glasgow over the Halloween weekend. Much larger than the original it has a different menu and includes a distinct bottle shop.
It is probably most like Drygate with the benefit of it being more easily walkable from other places that people would want to visit.A bit table deficient and feels a bit sparse due to the sheer size of it.

Rio Cafe

Rio Cafe
27 Hyndland Street, Glasgow
31st October 2015

Rio Cafe, Glasgow
As the Rio closes for 10 days for a refurb, a snapshot from Oct 31st of the old look

Rio Cafe, Glasgow

( The next week as the internal work continues. Photos on facebook show it has been gutted. It will be interesting to see the changes )
Rio Cafe, Glasgow