Yearly Archives: 2007

Information Design and Public Transit

The Washington, D.C. public has an aversion to public buses, particularly Metrobus operated by the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority. Does the region have an inherent bias against buses? A few bus routes are extremely well used in both high and low income neighborhoods (the 30s accomplishes this in one line). Furthermore, the DC Circulator, Georgetown […]

Read more

Presentation Tomorrow

Tomorrow I’ll be participating in the Society of Professional Journalists Convention as part of J-Lab’s Citizen Media workshop here in Washington, D.C. at the Hyatt Regency hotel. I’ll be presenting about my experiences with Arborupdate, DCist, and Rethink College Park. The SPJ website has some more information about the speakers and program. The organization sponsoring […]

Read more

The West Hyattsville Enigma

Less than one mile from the District of Columbia stands acres of vacant land. Wildflowers and grasses have gone to seed on a long-abandoned playing field (above). Weeds sprout in a dry, sun-drenched lot (below). An abandoned warehouse sits on land abutting picturesque parkland. Although large lots of undeveloped land inside the beltway are rare […]

Read more

Michigan Campus Activism Guide Published

Although it has been a while since I’ve written about the University of Michigan, I thought I would note the publication of a book by my friend and U-M senior Mollie Bates. An Art and Design senior, in collaboration with the progressive paper the Michigan Independent, Mollie has designed and produced an 80-page, full color […]

Read more

Ninth Street Vacant Property Survey

A previous map I made of vacant property owned by a neighborhood church in my D.C. neighborhood has proven a popular and controversial post, attracting views and comments months after it was first published. Although the church does own a number of vacant buildings in the neighborhood, I have often thought they are singled out […]

Read more

Building a Community with Bits and Backhoes

As you read this, heavy construction crews are hard at work grading roads, laying infrastructure, and preparing to build homes and offices in Austin, Texas’s newest neighborhood. Located on the former site of the Robert Mueller Municipal Airport (which closed in 1999), the 711 acre Mueller redevelopment project will be larger in size than either […]

Read more

Free Your Data

While new websites have done a terrific job allowing people to share text, photos, and videos, one form of data that has thus far resisted the trend towards new collaborative tools is raw data. Even the best websites generally isolate data as downloadable spreadsheets, leaving it to the individual users to analyze the results and […]

Read more