… Analysing London

Using information from council websites, I made some maps to show the varying numbers and types of toilet across London, from public toilets and community toilet schemes to other publicly accessible toilets (in Stations etc..). That was yesterday’s blog post.

It revealed as much about the levels of information on council websites as much as it did about the number of toilets. With that in mind, I’m going to milk the data a little more, to see what else it can reveal.

Population

I downloaded a pretty cool dataset called ‘London Borough Profiles’ from the GLA’s London Datastore (though I only ended up using the population data)

Firstly, here’s a map of population by borough.

(Link to actual map)

I’m quite surprised. I knew Wandsworth (where I live) has 300 000 residents, but I didn’t know that this was nearly twice as many as neighbouring Hammersmith & Fulham.

Clearly Wandsworth should have more toilets than Hammersmith & Fulham..

..but how many toilets is enough? 

… Council Websites (London)

I’ve made a graphical map of public toilets in London by using the information given on council websites.

This is a screenshot, because I can't embed for toffee.

You can view the actual map (it’s ‘clickable!’) here. It has labels to show which council is which. You can also Download the Data (.xls)

It says as much about council websites as it does about toilets.

For example, the 4 ‘white’ areas show councils with ‘No Toilets’. That’s because they don’t have a public toilet webpage. They may have squillions of toilets, but like the proverbial tree in the forest – if a public toilet isn’t listed on the council website, does it really exist?