InstaGIS and Tri-State Demographics

Posted by on Feb 25, 2014 in Lindsey, Projects | 5 Comments

For this activity, we used InstaGIS’s Infographics tool to take a snapshot of where each of us lives, as well as of the Macaulay area (and the Upper East Side, which is certainly an interesting point of comparison). As we come back together in the first week of March, we’ll further discuss what these GIS-inspired infographics tell us–as well as what we think might be missing or obscured.

5 Comments

  1. L. M. Freer
    March 11, 2014

    Well, I was right–a lot of people in my neighborhood of Astoria ARE younger than I am. The highest percentage in the age range is for the ages of 25-29. I wonder what that would’ve looked like five years ago, though–if the highest percentage would have been those aged 20-24, then, because anecdotally, it seems like the population is aging in place.

    The drawback to a 1-mile radius is that it doesn’t totally take geography into account. My snapshot probably also includes pieces of Sunnyside, Woodside, and East Elmhurst, neighborhoods as I think of being very different from the one I call home. There are also a number of home owners in parts of that 1-mile radius, as opposed to renters, and there’s no way to see how that skews the results.

    Reply
    • L. M. Freer
      March 11, 2014

      Furthermore, we’re not totally clear on what data sets the different parts of each infographic are drawn from–do they all come from the same analysis at the same time? The web site offers a list, but it doesn’t specify what is retrieved from each data set, so far as I can tell.

      Nevertheless, I like the auto-infographic–it provides instant visual POW. That’s cool.

      Reply
  2. Jenny
    March 11, 2014

    I think the most obvious point of departure between these graphics is in the area of ethnic diversity, which is most striking because it is most graphically portrayed. The other areas of the infographs are basically textual, which makes me wonder how such data might be better represented visually.

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  3. kerishma
    March 11, 2014

    In terms of racial/ethnic and income information, I don’t think anything particularly shocking or unexpected was illuminated for me. I really liked this tool–as we discussed in class several times, the infographic is a really engaging (and aesthetically pleasing) way to interact with information that would otherwise may be a pain or kind of boring to sift through. Obviously though, it’s not entirely accurate–for example, Sayville is obviously larger than the one-mile radius that was measured, and the information regarding the people living in rest of the town could change the infographic.

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  4. Colby Minifie
    March 11, 2014

    This tool is really interesting for me. Maybe it’s because I just moved to Ridgewood, Queens and I am constantly thinking about who is living in my area because I feel like my presence there is gentrifying it. This tool helps me understand that I am not the only one gentrifying Ridgewood, but that 25% of the population in a mile radius is caucasian.

    I think one of the limitations of the tool is that you cannot border the radius of their research to a man-made border, allowing you to separate your research into neighborhood. If I wanted to know how many caucasians there are in Ridgewood without bleeding into the very gentrified area of Bushwick, I wouldn’t be able to do that with this program.

    But otherwise, I think it displays the information beautifully and with a lot of good research.

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