Introduction
This lab report examined the new school projects (CAP) and Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) current under construction in the New York City. Coming from a background of the education field, I found anything related to schools very interesting to me. The dataset was sourced from OpenData, with sufficient geospatial dimensions to accurately locate each school. The goal of this lab was to create an interactive map that would demonstrate the quantity of schools in each neighborhood and also allow for viewing schools by a construction project type.
Visualization Examples
The first visualization I found interesting was an interactive map that aims to show how New York City had changed over time. This map offers a satellite view of modern New York City. Readers who want to see the comparison between the city in 1836 versus today can use a ‘spyglass’ at a specific area on the map and he will then see how that area looked like in the past. I think this visualization is so interactive that it keeps readers engaged and motivates them to explore more on the map. A comparison reflected by using the ‘spyglass’ gives the reader an immediate visual contrast, and having the selected area be presented at the same place establishes a close relationship between the current and the past.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/interactive-map-compares-new-york-city-1836-today-180947939/
The second visualization example appealing to me was an interactive US map that demonstrate the level of difficulty for each county to live in. The results were evaluated by the following metrics: education, median household income, unemployment rate, disability rate, life expectancy and obesity. Two colors were used to represent if a country is doing better or worse. The deeper a color is, the worse or the better that country is doing. By hovering over a county, the map reader will be able to see the detail information of that country.
The last visualization that inspired me was a map that examined the Battle of Gettysburg. This visualization was created for people to better understand why certain strategic decisions were made during the war and what limitations existed in terms of actual on-the-ground visibility. This visualization combines the map with a timeline for the reader to interact with. The reader starts from selecting a date during the war. Once the date is selected, the map will move to the corresponding area and details introducing the fact will be displayed on the left side panel. The map also displays annotations for some significant moment during the war. I think this a great example when the time dimension is included in visualizing a map.
Materials
The primary dataset used to create this lab project was the Projects in Construction Map file acquired from NYC OpenData. Since there were no langitude or longitude information included in the file, another Zip Code Boundaries shapefile was also downloaded to be used to join with the primary data set in Carto, acquired from NYC OpenData. These two datasets were then imported into Carto for visualization creation.
Methods
To create the map visualization I imported the primary dataset into Carto. In order to display the map by different neighborhood, I imported the zip code shapefile as a different layer, so that the neighborhoods can be recognized. Under the ‘style’ page, I changed the aggregation to hexbins and selected count as the operation, so that the hexagons on the map indicates the quantity of schools that have construction projects. I then added two widgets on the map to serve as filters for readers to interact with the map, they were ‘neighborhood’ and ‘project type’. Once the style of layers were adjusted right, I published the map to obtain the share link and embedded link for better collaboration with others.
Results
Here I listed three different views of my final visualization. The first view displays all schools that are currently under construction projects in NYC. The color of each neighborhood represents the quantity of schools in that area. The hexagons also count the quantity of schools with projects. The deeper the color is, the higher the quantity of schools is. We can see that the majority schools with projects are distributed in Brooklyn. Queens appears to have the second largest amount of construction projects across NYC.
Interactive map link: https://mgao2.carto.com/builder/437d1fab-c8b1-4f32-8668-8686fa2c93dd/embed
The widgets on the visualization provide us with a quick way to filter information on the map. If a specific neighborhood needs to be viewed, the reader can simply select any neighborhood to see how the change reflects on the map. For example, when ‘Forest Hills’ is selected in the widget, only this neighborhood on the map is displaying construction project information. Besides, the other widget can come to help by filtering all projects into two construction types, CIP and CAP. When selecting a project type, the reader can easily navigate between different neighborhoods to observe how many schools in each neighborhood are going through the same type of construction project.
Projects in Construction in Forest Hills
CAP Projects in Construction in Forest Hills
Discussion of Future Directions
Currently the color progression of the neighborhood and the hexagons are showing the same information: the count of schools in that area. This could be redundant and I would want to think if any other metrics could be presented on the map based on my current dataset. Also, I would like to make the map more interactive and engaging. For example, I’d like to explore if I can hover over a hexagon and read the project information that is included in that area, like how the Gettysburg visualization does.