A collaboration between Deloitte, Datawheel, and MIT has produced an intuitive aesthetically-pleasing gathering point for public data in the United States. Specific locations and industries boast easy-to-read profiles.
DataUSA is another attempt to make hard-to-use public data easy to access and fun to browse. This time, the result looks quite promising. Tanvi Misra writes, "For any county, city, metro, and state in the U.S., this site pulls up visualizations of data on the economy, demographics, health, education, and housing. It's essentially a one-stop shop for information that is easy to search, understand, embed, and build into new code."
The site's creators approached the design with users in mind, in terms of both structure and presentation. "The creators hope that journalists, businesses, teachers, and policymakers using the site come away with insights on these topics instead of just a set of loose facts and figures. That's why they've also included a tab called 'stories' on the site’s main menu, which features some notable highlights from the datasets."
Users interested in particular locations or demographic topics can use the search feature to bring up easy-to-understand, visually attractive profiles. Data has been assembled from a variety of sources including the American Community Survey, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, among others.
FULL STORY: The One-Stop Digital Shop for Digestible Data on Your City
Presenting Municipal Data in an Interactive Map, Nashville Style
The city of Nashville launched the NashView interactive data map earlier this month.
Los Angeles Debuts Open Data Visualization Tool
Containing more than 500 open datasets, GeoHub lets users access the wealth of data Los Angeles makes available. The tool is also intended to help employees from different city departments work together.
'ManyCities' Uses Mobile Phone Data to Visualize Human Activity
A new online visualization tool makes it easier to read and understand data about mobile phone usage in four cities around the world, including Los Angeles and New York.
Depopulation Patterns Get Weird
A recent ranking of “declining” cities heavily features some of the most expensive cities in the country — including New York City and a half-dozen in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Pennsylvania Mall Conversion Bill Passes House
If passed, the bill would promote the adaptive reuse of defunct commercial buildings.
California Exodus: Population Drops Below 39 Million
Never mind the 40 million that demographers predicted the Golden State would reach by 2018. The state's population dipped below 39 million to 38.965 million last July, according to Census data released in March, the lowest since 2015.
Google Maps Introduces New Transit, EV Features
It will now be easier to find electric car charging stations and transit options.
Ohio Lawmakers Propose Incentivizing Housing Production
A proposed bill would take a carrot approach to stimulating housing production through a grant program that would reward cities that implement pro-housing policies.
Chicago Awarded $2M Reconnecting Communities Grant
Community advocates say the city’s plan may not do enough to reverse the negative impacts of a major expressway.
City of Costa Mesa
Licking County
Barrett Planning Group LLC
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
City of Universal City TX
ULI Northwest Arkansas
Town of Zionsville
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