Open Data Week 2022 is On!
Registration is now open (and free) for New York City’s Open Data Week 2022. Tomorrow night at 7:00 (Monday, March 7th) join Shawn Hill from Fordham University in examining a series of strangely uninformative maps produced by New York City to visualize the homeless crisis:
Polemical Mapping – Inclusion and Omission in Maps of Homeless Services (2017-21)
Polemical Mapping – Inclusion and Omission in Maps of Homeless Services (2017-21)
With the release of the report “Turning the Tide on Homelessness in New York City” the Mayor and NYC’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS) proposed a new approach to address the homeless crisis. Near the end of this landmark report was the map: “Cluster Sites and Hotels Used for Shelter by Community District” which served as evidence of shelter distribution in 2017 and as the baseline the administration intended to change.
This NYC Open Data Week presentation will examine the polemical subtext of this map by comparing it to contemporaneous maps produced by the New York City Council, a subsequent 2021 DHS map, as well as other maps created from New York City’s Open Data portal. By questioning and comparing the cartographic choices that shaped the “Cluster Sites and Hotels” map, this map can be better understood not only in terms of what it visualized but also what it obscured, and serve as a case study of how interrogating maps and cartographic choices should be part of the toolkit an informed citizenry brings to all received data visualizations.
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