Friday Fun: Mapping a Decade of Philadelphia Block Parties

David Bowie and Mick Jagger approved.

1 minute read

August 12, 2016, 2:00 PM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


"Philadelphia is a block party city," according to Jon Geeting, and it's no accident. "The city offers residents a very lightweight process for closing their streets for a weekend day of community fun: Pay an affordable $25 permit fee, and get the approval of 75% of the neighbors."

A block party culture has resulted from the ease of closing streets in Philadelphia, and given the city's role in allowing it all to happen, there's also a lot of data available about where and when the parties do down.

According to Geeting, "thanks to a new city dataset obtained by PlanPhilly, and mapped by GIS analyst Shrobona Karkun, the last ten years of block party data are available for our perusal." Thus, we have one of the funnest maps of all time, available at the article linked below, showing every block party hosted in the city of Philadelphia between 2006 and June 2016. 

Friday, August 12, 2016 in PlanPhilly

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