Amsterdam Research

[derbycity]

I was wondering if anyone could tell me where a uni-lingual american could find GIS data on Amsterdam in regards to land use and population data such as age, income etc. I am doing some pre-research for a possible master of urban planning class in Amsterdam next spring and was hoping to put together some comparisons between Amsterdam and a similar North American city not yet determined such as Vancouver. I am using ArcGIS and would like to find some hopefully free (I am a poor graduate student) data layers to download and do some analysis. Thanks for any help.

[Ronald]

I was wondering if anyone could tell me where a uni-lingual american could find GIS data on Amsterdam in regards to land use and population data such as age, income etc. I am doing some pre-research for a possible master of urban planning class in Amsterdam next spring and was hoping to put together some comparisons between Amsterdam and a similar North American city not yet determined such as Vancouver. I am using ArcGIS and would like to find some hopefully free (I am a poor graduate student) data layers to download and do some analysis. Thanks for any help.

Hi there,

I'm sorry to reply this late. I only read your post now.

I am a first-year Human Geography and Urban & Regional Planning student in the Netherlands. I'm studying in Utrecht and not in Amsterdam.

I'm not familiar (yet) with the GIS system. I think that I would be able to help you with statistics about the population of Amsterdam, though. I know how to find some information on Amsterdam's population data and I could translate that into english, if you still need it because this thread is almost 2 months old.

If you're gonna compare any North American city to Amsterdam, what kind of comparisons would you like to make? I've been to the US and Canada this summer, and I've seen both Vancouver and Amsterdam. I've also seen American cities (Seattle and its area).

If you would like to make a comparison between Amsterdam and a more European-like American city, I'd suggest your best city in North America would be Boston.

But if you want to show that North American cities and European cities are very different, you might want to compare the compact-build city of Amsterdam to an American city with a lot of Urban sprawl (Phoenix) or a "100- mile city" (Chicago, Houston or LA might be one?) with all its edge cities, highways, suburbs, rapid expansion etc.

I could even go to Amsterdam and take some pictures if you'd like. But I'm not from Amsterdam and I'm not familiar with the city so you'd have to be specific about what you'd like to have photographed.

Hope I'm not to late ..

Greetings

Ronald

[Spartan]

Your school should have ESRI data DVD's that contain vast amounts of information about Europe... Talk to the head data person (or who ever manages the GIS system) at your current institution, they should be able to help you get what you need.