Wikidata:Events/Belgium/Open Knowledge Belgium/Towards Equal Street Names with Open Data

Presentation by Manon

The names of public spaces (streets, avenues, squares and others) define the identity of a city and how citizens interact with it. Brussels suffers from a major inequality between male and female street names and we want to help fix this!

There are several ways to approach the inequality of street names and leverage a positive change in our society. Ours is with the use of Open Data. We want to use technologies to create a world where knowledge creates power for the many, not the few.

How do we plan to do this?

Several not-for-profits Open Knowledge Belgium, OpenStreetMap Belgium, Wikimedia Belgium and the feminist collective Noms Peut-Être are partnering up to build a map vizualizing the street names of Brussels by gender. To make this happen, we will use open data - data which can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose - from OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia.

And to do so, we need your help!

Although the data exist, we still need to link both data sources. During this event, we will add Wikidata tags (a tag containing all the information from a Wikipedia page) to the streets on OpenStreetMap. Linking this data will allow many possibilities such as using existing Wikipedia profiles as suggestions for cities or analysing what types of profiles are used for street names.

Participants

• Signup

Queries

Belgian Women with a Wikipedia page

Logic:

• Persons can only have a street name when they died
• They need to have a Wikipedia page (for being notable)

The following query uses these:

• Items: human (Q5)   , female (Q6581072)   , Belgium (Q31)   

• Properties: instance of (P31)   , sex or gender (P21)   , country of citizenship (P27)   , family name (P734)   , date of birth (P569)   , date of death (P570)   , occupation (P106)   

  SELECT ?item ?itemLabel ?lastnameLabel ?birthdate ?deathdate ?nationalityLabel ?occupationLabel ?itemDescription ?linkcount WHERE {
    ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q5;
      wdt:P21 wd:Q6581072;
      wdt:P27 wd:Q31;
      wikibase:sitelinks ?linkcount.
    FILTER(?linkcount > 0 )
    FILTER(?deathdate < "2020-02-14T00:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime)
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P734 ?lastname. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P569 ?birthdate. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P570 ?deathdate. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P27 ?nationality. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P106 ?occupation. }
    SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "nl,en,fr,de,es,it". }
  }
  ORDER BY (?itemLabel)
  

Try it!

Proposed women street names

The following query uses these:

• Items: EqualStreetNames (Q104010394)   

• Properties: maintained by WikiProject (P6104)   , place of birth (P19)   , place of death (P20)   , sex or gender (P21)   , country of citizenship (P27)   , position held (P39)   , field of work (P101)   , occupation (P106)   , employer (P108)   , award received (P166)   , date of birth (P569)   , date of death (P570)   , family name (P734)   , given name (P735)   , notable work (P800)   , work location (P937)   

  # Proposed women street names in Brussels
  SELECT ?item ?itemLabel ?firstnameLabel ?lastnameLabel ?alias ?itemDescription ?nationalityLabel ?professionLabel ?birthplaceLabel ?deathplaceLabel ?birthdate ?deathdate ?workplaceLabel ?genderLabel ?linkcount WHERE {
    SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],nl,fr,en,de,en". }
    ?item wikibase:sitelinks ?linkcount;
      wdt:P6104 wd:Q104010394.
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P19 ?birthplace. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P20 ?deathplace. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P21 ?gender. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P27 ?nationality. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P39 ?function. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P101 ?domain. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P106 ?profession. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P108 ?company. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P166 ?prize. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P569 ?birthdate. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P570 ?deathdate. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P734 ?lastname. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P735 ?firstname. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P800 ?work. }
    OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P937 ?workplace. }
    OPTIONAL {
      ?item skos:altLabel ?alias.
      FILTER((LANG(?alias)) = "nl")
    }
    OPTIONAL {
      ?article schema:about ?item;
        schema:inLanguage "nl";
        schema:isPartOf <https://nl.wikipedia.org/>.
    }
  }
  

Try it!

Hints:

• Replace the last OPTIONAL by MINUS to show only women not having a Wikipedia page
• Change the language code to query other Wikipedia's
• The linkcount is an indication of the person's relevance
• Could be extended to other cities

External links

• https://equalstreetnames.brussels

See also

• (nl) Wikidata voor beginners (presentation)
• (nl) WCN 2016 Interlinking OpenStreetMap and Wikimedia (presentation)
• (nl) OSM Wikimedia linken voor het Museum Volkenkunde Leiden (video with subtitles)