NYC Representatives by Congressional District is an interactive map created during as an introduction to Carto and GIS visualization. The map [Image] is hosted online with Carto and available here or through the link below (Raines). The data selected includes a bulk data collection of 115th House of Representatives current bills and shapes files for NYC Congressional districts (City of New York). The datasets were selected as practice with government datasets, and discover potential use by examining the activity of elected and appointed US reps and senators.
Limits discovered when working with these data sets mainly stemmed from a lack of data or inexperience with Carto. The main reason the visualization examines only Representatives is because of the limited area selected for examination, limited to NYC. Senators represent an entire state, this visualization is lacking the state geometric data. The numbers labeling the districts do not always align properly with the . This may be related to the shape files used for Congressional Districts and how Carto chooses a center for strange shapes, such as districts 7, 8, and 14. A more experienced user may also be able to overcome this through programming or manually moving the labels, something that was not understood while using Carto during creation of the visualization.
The limitations discovered here include the need for additional shape files of districts and states. The easiest solution may be to use Tableau Public, which hosts public shape data of districts and states. This would curb additional labor and time expended on the discovery of these files. Labels may not have the same problems in Tableau but this does not account for other issues that will continue to arise while working with these and other data sets. Future iterations of visualizations could include details about current bills, contact information for Representatives and Senators, and hopefully a visualization of the entire U.S.A.
Image: NYC Representatives by Congressional District
Bibliography
- City of New York. Congressional Districts. [JSON File]. City of New York. December 5, 2017. https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/congressional-districts-17be2
- Raines, K. NYC Representatives by Congressional District. Carto.com https://kieranlraines.carto.com/builder/5e391b7b-2cb4-41f7-9220-c47c0cf1868a/embed
- U.S. Government Printing Office. Bill Status – Bulk Data. FDSys. December 12, 2017. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/bulkdata/BILLSTATUS/115