The most excellent Tumblr of the Sunlight Foundation
The Frustration of San Francisco’s Mass-Transit Riders, Visualized
Making more sense of dense data visualizations.
-Source: Atlantic Cities
Gun Violence in U.S. Cities Compared to the Deadliest Nations in the World
“We can’t put this off any longer,” President Obama implored the nation last week as he introduced 23 executive actions designed to reduce gun violence in America. While the United States has the highest level of gun ownership per capita in the world, its rate of gun homicides, about three per 100,000 people, is far lower than that of Honduras, the country with the world’s highest gun homicide rate (roughly 68 gun murders per 100,000 people). But America’s homicide rate varies significantly by city and metro area, as I pointed out here at Cities a few weeks ago.
The 113th Congress, by the numbers
The Best Open Data Releases of 2012
Last year, Cities named ten of its favorite metro datasets of 2011 from cities across North America, illustrating the breadth of what we might learn (regarding mosquito traps! misplaced vehicles! energy consumption!) in the still relatively young field of urban open data. For this year’s installment, we’re going one step further. Sure, raw data is great. But useful tools, maps and data visualizations built with said data are even better.
35 Amazing Graphs That Show How Your Spending Habits Change With Age
HS Dent, an economic forecasting firm, compiled Census data on spending behavior and presented them as a series of demand curves (see right). The curves measure average annual expenditure for a given product over the age of the consumer.
The charts couldn’t be more plain. But with a tiny bit of imagination, the curves offer a vivid look at how spending patterns change over time.
![80% of the U.S. Lives Within 20 Miles of a Starbucks
A Venti-nonfat-caramel-Frappuccino is no more than 20 miles away from most Americans.
University of Washington doctoral candidate James Davenport posted graphics on his blog charting Starbucks-owned locations in the country two ways: a Delaunay triangulation and Voronoi diagram (fancy names for cool diagrams). As the Atlantic Wire reports on the former, “[T]he green dots representing Starbucks cluster around big cities, and with the connecting lines, the map basically looks the same as a regular old map of the U.S.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbzyw60wJ21qhn3smo1_1280.png)
80% of the U.S. Lives Within 20 Miles of a Starbucks
A Venti-nonfat-caramel-Frappuccino is no more than 20 miles away from most Americans.
University of Washington doctoral candidate James Davenport posted graphics on his blog charting Starbucks-owned locations in the country two ways: a Delaunay triangulation and Voronoi diagram (fancy names for cool diagrams). As the Atlantic Wire reports on the former, “[T]he green dots representing Starbucks cluster around big cities, and with the connecting lines, the map basically looks the same as a regular old map of the U.S.”
‘The Worst Thing That Has Happened to Our Democratic Election System’
Andrew Cohen has been doing a formidable job of covering what is otherwise a substantially under-covered theme in this election year: the efforts to disenfranchise large numbers of voters, especially in swing states. Here are four sample installments in recent months: last week, earlier this month, in late August, and another just before that. Plus, this interview with voting-rights pioneer Rep. John Lewis. Our Garrett Epps has also been on the case, recently and notably here and here.
![theatlantic:
Mapping Acceptance of Same-Sex Marriage
According to the rule books, same-sex marriage is mostly unacceptable in the U.S. But that’s not the case when looking at the opinions of the American people. According to a new set of maps from Esri, same-sex marriage is popular in large swaths of the country.
The maps break support for same-sex marriage down by county. Green and yellow dots represent counties where people support same-sex marriage, while orange and red dots represent places where people do not. As you can see, there’s no consensus across the country.
Read more. [Image: Esri]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mapgrnmdn41qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
Mapping Acceptance of Same-Sex Marriage
According to the rule books, same-sex marriage is mostly unacceptable in the U.S. But that’s not the case when looking at the opinions of the American people. According to a new set of maps from Esri, same-sex marriage is popular in large swaths of the country.
The maps break support for same-sex marriage down by county. Green and yellow dots represent counties where people support same-sex marriage, while orange and red dots represent places where people do not. As you can see, there’s no consensus across the country.
Read more. [Image: Esri]
![shortformblog:
thepoliticalnotebook:
13 Mexican journalist have disappeared since 2003: here’s a map of their disappearances. These folks, as Atlantic Cities notes, were most likely killed, but unlike a number of their colleagues, their bodies have never been found. The map was made by Articulo 19. They also made an infographic of instance of attacks on the media with firearms and explosives.
[Atlantic Cities]
Nothing sadder than knowing that hard-working journalists went missing on a hunt for the truth.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mang797kL91qchhhqo1_1280.jpg)
13 Mexican journalist have disappeared since 2003: here’s a map of their disappearances. These folks, as Atlantic Cities notes, were most likely killed, but unlike a number of their colleagues, their bodies have never been found. The map was made by Articulo 19. They also made an infographic of instance of attacks on the media with firearms and explosives.
Nothing sadder than knowing that hard-working journalists went missing on a hunt for the truth.
A Map of Muslim Protests Around the World
If you can’t keep track of all the Muslim protests erupting across the globe, you’re not alone. The uproar over a 14-minute anti-Islam YouTube video has sparked furious protests from Somalia to Egypt to Sudan to Tunisia to Libya to Bangladesh to Indonesia to Pakistan. With new reports of protests surfacing every minute, we’ve compiled the latest reported incidents into this handy interactive Google Map. Click the locations and embedded links for more details about each incident.
![theatlantic:
The Gender Divide on Wikipedia, “The Free Encyclopedia that Anyone Can Edit,” Is Even Starker than We Thought
[Image: Santiago Ortiz]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ma76parL8O1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
[Image: Santiago Ortiz]
The Invisible Borders That Define American Culture
When we think about borders, we tend to think of administrative boundaries. Those demarcating lines, often grown out of rivers and mountain ranges or diplomatic quirks, govern our daily lives, and that’s doubly so if we live near a neighboring country or state.
We know that these boundaries are on some level unnatural. Driving around Kansas City, where I live, makes this abundantly clear. Gas price differences aside, it can be difficult to tell which state you’re in, Missouri or Kansas, and the small street of State Line Road does nothing to make it clearer.
How 40% of Our Food Goes to Waste. An eye-opening read on how we over buy every trip to the grocery store.
