As a follow up to yesterday’s post about the SimCity zoning map of Chicago, I’d like to point out that the map is a collection of interactive apps developed by Open City based largely on information from Chicago’s data portal. A couple of other apps by this project that I think are really interesting are …
Continue reading ‘Interactive Map of Chicago Crime, Ward by Ward’ »
Here’s an exciting announcement for those of us in Cook County. The County is following the City of Chicago’s lead to create a state-of-the-art data portal at data.cookcountyil.gov. I’m particularly interested in the “courts” data. Here’s a press release for webcast about the portal this Friday (and a couple of other events that are part of Cook …
Continue reading ‘Cook County webcast this Friday on new Socrata Data Portal’ »
This week’s video is a fun one; it’s a concept video about Urbanflow, a collaboration between a NYC-based design company Urbanscale and Finnish designers Nordkapp. They want touchscreens everywhere in Helsinki, so the public can access maps and transit info, interact with each other, and report municipal concerns like potholes. John Pavlus has raised some concerns about their …
Continue reading ‘Urbanflow’s view of a touchscreen-filled data-driven city – Video Wednesday’ »
In 1932 Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote, “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” And indeed, the States remain a …
Continue reading ‘Are cities America’s greatest laboratories of government innovation?’ »
Here’s a chart from Chicago open data about the progress report for Chicago Public Schools for the 2011 to 2012 school year. Here’s what I did. I narrowed the list of schools down to 208, including only those that had data in these three categories: ISAT (Illinois Standard Achievement Test) Exceeding Math %, parent engagement …
LOVELAND Technologies is a neat project out of Detroit, Michigan, that is selling micro-lots of land in “microhoods” for $1 per square inch that people can track online. They focus on making these microhoods exciting by generating artsy urban-renewal projects. According to their website, they “aim to provide a fun, game-like ownership experience while creating entertainment …
Continue reading ‘Featured Website: LOVELAND Technologies’ »
I read a recent article in the Chicago Reader about continuing bed-bug infestations that inspired me to comment on an easy-to-make mistake regarding 311 data. Here’s what the article says: The City of Chicago’s Department of Buildings tracks the number of bedbug infestations reported through 311 calls, and reports [an upward trend]. The department started keeping a …
Chicago requires lobbyists to register and then lists them (and their clients) on the city’s data portal. I went through and tried to figure out who had the most lobbyists registered in Chicago in 2011. I combined subsidiaries whenever possible. Here’s the list, by my count: JP Morgan Chase (19)— the largest U.S. bank by assets. …
Continue reading ‘Who has the most lobbyists in Chicago? The city’s top 13 lobbyist clients’ »
Here is Rachel Sterne, NYC’s Chief Digital Officer, discussing a four-point plan for advancing technology in NYC. The four points—which are useful for any city government—are as follows: Access to technology, e.g., expanding the access to wireless Internet Open government, e.g., sharing more information with developers Engagement, e.g., using more social media, specifically Twitter, Youtube, and …
Continue reading ‘Chief Digital Officer for NYC – Roadmap to a Digital City – Video Wednesday’ »
I recently used open data from HUD about public-housing inventory and Census population data to examine which states had the most Section 8 housing units per person in 2010. (Section 8 is a federally subsidized program for low-income renters.) Here’s the top 6 and bottom 6: I’m not surprised that DC is number one, since it …
Continue reading ‘Which states have the most Section 8 housing per person – Census Tuesday’ »