How Much Did Your Landlord Pay for the Building?
The Planning Department put all its information online in a slick searchable, mappable interface. You can look up how much your property last sold for, the value of renovations, all permits issued for the property, whether you live in a historic resource, the zoning, and many other nifty little details.
An architectural historian friend told me that this information all used to be in an old DOS machine in the lobby of the Planning Department. Now, it’s all online, making her job easier, and our lives more interesting.
Available here.
Interactive Bomb Chart of London
bombsight.orgA group of British scientists made a interactive chart showing the bombs that fell on London during the Second World War. On the website or android-app,those interested can see what type of bomb fell where. Images of the 8 month period are also included. The team of Portsmouth University used data from the National Archives for their Bomb Sight Project. Researcher Kate Jones told the BBC she was surprised London had survived the Blitz.
During the Blitz, some 20000 people lost their live.Some 1.400.000 became homeless.
DataPlace: Another Beautiful Site for Quick U.S. GeoVisualizations
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Here is how an average evening at home on the couch goes at our place:
Buster: Um, can you tell me something? Where are all the counties in the U.S. that are more than 90% white?
Me: Hmm, great question! Give me 10 minutes.
And that’s when I discovered a really wonderful site for creating quick interactive maps: DataPlace, which is hosted by The Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University.
Much like the Brookings’ data site, DataPlace offers lots of pre-packaged data indicators. There are core demographics, health, arts, lots of real estate, and more. Data resolution goes down to zip codes, and includes counties (unlike the Brookings site). You can even create your own index indicator, using a combination of the pre-packaged indicators.
Check it out, and if you put a widget* on your own tumblr, let me know in the comments!
Pros:
- Maps several popular Census geographies
- User chooses Google Map or Satellite base
- Build an easily embeddable widget for your your particular search
- Make and map your own index
- Intuitive user design
Cons:
- Data sets not available for download
- User unable to adjust data classes
*Turn the widget code into a snippet that Tumblr (or Wordpress or whoever will accept). Use this awesome tool Embedr.
Holden's Footsteps: An Interactive Map
Click here to see where Holden Caulfield went that week in New York.
