This article was presented as the 8th annual Transactions in GIS plenary address at the American Association of Geographers annual meeting in Washington, DC. The spatial sciences have recently seen growing calls for more accessible software and tools that better embody geographic science and theory. Urban spatial network science offers one clear opportunity: from multiple perspectives, tools to model and analyze non‐planar urban spatial networks have traditionally been inaccessible, atheoretical, or otherwise limiting. This article reflects on this state of the field. Then it discusses the motivation, experience, and outcomes of developing OSMnx, a tool intended to help address this. Next it reviews this tool's use in the recent multidisciplinary spatial network science literature to highlight upstream and downstream benefits of open‐source software development. Tool‐building is an essential but poorly incentivized component of academic geography and social science more broadly. To conduct better science, we need to build better tools. The article concludes with paths forward, emphasizing open‐source software and reusable computational data science beyond mere reproducibility and replicability.

中文翻译：

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正确的工作工具：空间科学工具构建案例

本文被介绍为GIS中的第八次年度交易在华盛顿特区的美国地理学家协会年会上的全体会议讲话。最近，人们对空间科学的要求越来越高，它们要求更易于访问的软件和工具更好地体现地理科学和理论。城市空间网络科学提供了一个明确的机会：从多个角度来看，建模和分析非平面城市空间网络的工具传统上是不可访问的，无理论的或其他限制的。本文介绍了该领域的现状。然后讨论了开发OSMnx的动机，经验和成果，该工具旨在帮助解决此问题。接下来，它回顾了该工具在最近的多学科空间网络科学文献中的使用，以强调开源软件开发的上游和下游优势。更广泛地说，工具构建是学术地理学和社会科学的基本要素，但缺乏激励作用。为了进行更好的科学，我们需要构建更好的工具。本文以前进的道路作为结尾，着重强调了开源软件和可重用的计算数据科学，而不仅仅是重现性和可复制性。