This directory contains the UrbanTempo package for the R programming language and software environment for statistical computing. This package contains computer code to plot urban temporalities from observational data, similarly to figure 4.6 in Marie Gibert's PhD thesis (2014) as well as a figure in her forthcoming book chapter (Southeast Asia urbanization, Routledge handbook). As such, this package can be of interest to urban geographers and anthropologists.
Indeed, beyond the long-term processes of urbanization, daily urban practices contribute greatly to the production and continual adaptation of the urban fabric. Methodologically, such an investigation can be carried out by means of Lefebvre’s "rhythmanalysis" (original in French in 1992, English translation in 2004), which seeks to capture the everyday rhythms and dynamics of social life. This methodology, initiated in Ho Chi Minh City in Gibert's PhD thesis (2014) and developed in Gibert-Flutre (in prep) as part of the SEANNET program, is particularly relevant in urban context, where it reveals highly polyrhythmic places and neighborhoods.
Practically, before installing and using the UrbanTempo package, you first need to define your research question and choose the urban location you are interested in. Then, you can start the long process of collecting data on urban temporalities. Once this is done, the goal of this package is to help you drawing a figure representing the urban temporalities you observed.
This software is available under a free software license, the GNU Affero General Public License (version 3 and later); see the COPYING file. For more details about free software, you can refer to the information provided by the Free Software Foundation. The content of this package is versioned using the git software, the central repository being hosted on the GitHub website.
You, the user, first need to install on your computer the R software (details here). This software is available under a free software license, hence is best used on a computer with a free operating system such as GNU/Linux, but it can also be used on Windows and Mac operating systems.
Once this is done, it is recommended to also install the RStudio software (the Desktop version; details here). This software is also available under a free software license, hence is best used on a computer with a free operating system such as GNU/Linux, but it can also be used on Windows and Mac operating systems. For Mac users, if asked, there is no need to install "git" or "XCode" tools.
Once this is done, launch RStudio, which will also automatically launch an interactive R session. At this stage, you still need to install the devtools package (details here), along with its dependencies. This is easily done via the following command, to be copy-pasted in the R console of RStudio, and executed by pressing the Enter key:
install.packages("devtools")
Once this is done, you need to load the devtools package into the session via the following command:
library(devtools)
Once this is done, you can now install the UrbanTempo package via the following command:
install_github("marieflutre/UrbanTempo", build_vignettes=TRUE)
Once this is done, the UrbanTempo package is available on your computer.
Once the Urban Tempo package is available on your computer, it can be loaded into a R session:
library(UrbanTempo)
A brief explanation of how to use this package is available directly via the R console:
?UrbanTempo
You are also encouraged to read the tutorial:
browseVignettes("UrbanTempo")
Executing this command should automatically display the R vignette coming with the package into your default web browser, such as Firefox (free software).
Some information about the package, including the list of all its functions, is also available directly via the R console:
help(package="UrbanTempo")
For any given function, its documentation is available by adding the question mark symbol, ?, in front of it, for instance:
?readTemporalities
Most importantly, if you are new to R, it is advised to read its official documentation. Other useful sources of information are listed below:
A scientific article (to be published in an academic journal with peer-review) is currently in preparation. This package is made available in the mean time for pedagogical reasons. As the authors invested time and effort in creating this package, please cite it when using it:
citation("UrbanTempo")
See also citation() for citing the R software itself.
In the introductory tutorial (R vignette mentioned above), you will see how to reproduce part of figure 4.6 from Marie Gibert's PhD thesis and her forthcoming book chapter. The data used to reproduce this figure are provided with the package as an example file. Once the package is installed on your computer, and loaded in a R session, you can execute the following command:
system.file("extdata", "Gibert_2014_data-PhD-thesis.tsv",
package="UrbanTempo")
which will return the path to the example file.
But, more easily, you can download the example file, by clicking here. Do "right-click", then "Save as...".
The resulting file is in "plain text" format, with columns separated by a tabulation, hence the .tsv suffix of the example file, standing for "tab-separated value".
A typical usage would be to open such a file with the Calc software from the LibreOffice suite (free software), or with the Excel software from the Microsoft Office suite.
In order to smoothly handle various alphabets, the file should be saved in the UTF-8 encoding.
For this, it is strongly advised to use LibreOffice Calc, whatever the operating system.
You can also download the example file specifying the appearances of the data (such as their colors), by clicking here.
When encountering a problem with the package, you can report issues on GitHub directly (here).
Remember to copy-paste the output of sessionInfo() to help efficiently diagnose the problem and find a solution.