I’ve been playing around with OpenHeatMap, the opensource mapping tool. I’m doing some research into infographic tools that present data in a geographic context, for a project that’s about to start… OpenHeatMap is easy-to-use and contains some great built-in geographic regions, thanks to a wide network of data suppliers. Downside is that you can’t edit/delete once you’ve created something (not that I can see), and that the outputs can’t be used as part of an app (again, could stand corrected on that). But for knocking something up quick to look at, its great.
Tomorrow I’m going to try GeoCommons as a comparison.
So onto what I’ve come up with – it’s a heat map of London’s boroughs showing the percentage of all businesses that were started recently – more specifically, what % of the total number of businesses were started in the two years leading up to when the study was done. This data is from March 2010 so it includes all new businesses that were formed in the period between March 2008 and March 2010, otherwise known as ‘the recession’.
Interesting that around a fifth of all businesses were started in this time – this could be individuals calling themselves companies for tax reasons, or because they are working in temporary capacities, or that companies are starting and closing all the time, or (hopefully) it could be real new economic activity? If its the latter, are the areas feeling a mini-boom from this?
The main ones that spring out are Tower Hamlets, Redbridge, Greenwich, Barking and Newham. This is likely to be because they are starting from a lower base… But encouraging to see from the point of view of 2012 and TechCityEast.
(info and commentary for illustrative purposes only, raw data from ONS)
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