Who+Lives+Here?

“Who Lives Here?” is part of a greater project called //Envisioning Development.// The project is designed to increase the engagement of community members in the making of land zoning decisions by educating them on the terminology and concepts required to have an informed discussion about development in New York City and its outlying boroughs. //Envisioning Development// is designed by the Center for Urban Pedagogy in collaboration with several other organizations. Its intended audience is New York City residents who are (or would like to be) involved in their communities but are lacking the education to communicate properly with land-use experts.
 * Who Lives Here? - **http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map

One of the greatest strengths of “Who Lives Here?” is its speed. With one click, the viewer is instantly given a ton of information, including neighbourhood name, median income for the area, and the distribution of income levels within the area. This data is clearly explained with the blurb in the top right corner. Keeping the map in greyscale makes the coloured graphs at the bottom really easy to read and prevents the visualization from overwhelming the viewer. The information in the bar across the bottom is a nice addition to the more general statistics provided in the rectangle in the top right corner, allowing the viewer to see the actual breakdown of resident incomes rather than merely the area’s average. This data is particularly helpful in an area like Parkslope/Carroll Gardens, where the neighbourhood median income is above the citywide median. While one might assume that this area is populated by moderate and middle income families, in actuality it has a fairly moderate spread across all income groups.

The box in the upper right offers a few other options for information display. One possibility is to view all data for a particular borough. This option may be of more interest to non-residents rather than the community members the project targets, because the information is much more generalized; it is presumably unlikely that a non-New Yorker would require the rent distribution data for Rego Park/Forest Hills rather than Queens as a whole.

The other option that can be toggled on and off is the rent slider which appears when “Who can afford to click here?” is clicked. This option is somewhat problematic. There are no apparent differences between each slider, despite being labeled as 1, 2, and 3 bedroom apartments. The 3 BR slider can be reduced to $100/month which seems highly unlikely and thus the information is mostly useless. Moving the slider creates a blue flickering pattern in the area that cannot afford the rent level selected which seems a bit redundant since the squares representing these residents have already disappeared. There is a clarity issue with the map itself as there is no clear divide between the clickable neighbourhoods and the surrounding areas. Since the surrounding areas are labeled with as much detail as New York City itself, it would suggest that they are also included in the data set, but they are not.

The data for actual rent levels is not provided which would have likely created a more compelling picture of what conditions residents are living in. The data for the income levels is based on a family of four. If the map could show how many of these families are forced to live in one or two bedroom apartments because its all they can afford, a much better story could be told.

The map excels in showing how huge the gap between the wealthy and poor is in such a small geographical area. Neighbourhoods that appear close to each other may have a completely reversed spread of incomes. There is an inherent problem, however, with the division of neighbourhoods as discrete areas when, in reality, the borders between these areas are much less clear. This isn’t so much a problem with the visualization but the organization of the city into neighbourhoods. The Upper East Side, for example, is overwhelmingly populated by high income families. The neighbourhood northeast of the Upper East Side, East Harlem, is home to many extremely low income families but still a few high income families. It is possible that these high income families live on the border of the Upper East Side but have been grouped with East Harlem, in which case they would not provide much information on the residents of the majority of East Harlem. Showing on the map where the various income brackets appear geographically might solve this, but is perhaps not necessary for this particular project.

Sophia Leonard