01 Data in/& Design

Pin-up 09/20

Goals

For the first assignment, you will choose a city or region of interest to map. You may choose New York City or anywhere else in the world, so long as you are able to find spatial datasets that describe that place. Your task is to find two datasets that describe that place, and to create three maps of that place at an appropriate scale. The appropriate scale will depend on the place you have chosen as well as the data that describes the place. You may choose a location and topic that you are interested in pursuing for your final project.

You must use the data you have found to represent either categorical or continuous information of the place (do not simply map administrative boundaries, unless that is crucial to your narrative). Your goal is to use the place, and information you have chosen, to make an argument or tell a story.

Each student will present their work to the class in two minutes, leaving time for one peer question/comment and one instructor question/comment. You should plan to explain your representation choices and describe what your data is trying to convey to your audience.

Learning Objectives

• Explore and interpret datasets that describe characteristics of a place. These interpretations should be critical of what the datasets can and cannot say about the place.
• Become comfortable with using GIS and design software to explore data and iterate on design options. There is rarely a single way to interpret or represent spatial information, and becoming comfortable with the relationship between designer-practitioner, data, and tools is essential for practice.
• Choose a scale, representation mode, and visual identity that is best-suited to communicating these characteristics to the audience. Ideally, the decisions made on these points will allow the audience to ask questions about the topic and not about the representation decisions.

Deliverables

• Three maps, each 11”x17” either of the same size or with one larger than the others, plotted out for pinup, and be pinned up
• Maps should have:
  • title
  • legend
  • scale bar / north arrow
  • data attribution
• An accompanying paragraph that explains your maps and what you are trying to convey. (This paragraph could serve as the script for your presentation).

Resources for finding data

For sources for spatial datasets see:

• Columbia Library Geodata Portal
• Local and State Government operated Open Data Portals, such as:
  • NYC Open Data
  • Socrata (the company that built NYC Open Data and many other open data platforms for cities and states across the US) also helped to build the Open Data Network which is a search engine for datasets across all of their platforms
• University Mapping and/or Research Centers. For example:
  • National Historic Geographic Informaiton Center, University of Minnesota
  • Beirut Urban Lab, “Beirut Built Environment Database”
  • Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center at Columbia’s CIESIN
  • Eviction Lab, National Evictions Data. Princeton University, see also their interactive map here

A general rule of thumb for finding data: think about who would have the motivation (and the money/resources) to create the dataset you are looking for then try to research that entity.

A note on the pinup for students new to this format

Please arrive to class with your assignment printed according to the guidlines listed in the deliverables section above. You will then pin these materials up on the wall of the classroom along with the work of all of your classmates. Each student will have 2 minutes (max) to describe your work, 3-4 students will present in a row followed by a brief discussion of the work by the full class.

The goal of the pinup is for you to practice describing your work succinctly, and to provide an opportunity for discussion and constructive feedback on your work and the work of your peers.