Civilscope

From MediaFranca

Preface

The Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago maintains a website called Civic Footprint ^[1] that aims foster active citizenship by exposing how democratic institutions work, to show you "where you stand and who stands for you." Users of the website submit their address and are provided a list of legal jurisdictions they live within including precinct, police beat, ward, community area, and judicial subdistrict. A list of elected representatives is also given.

Project Description

Screen sketch: displaying connections between jurisdictional zones and representatives

We plan to enhance and extend the functionality of Civic Footprint. Currently the website provides information in little more than a list format. Our visualization of this information will map these overlapping boundaries of power, providing a clearer mental model of these spatially rendered legal jurisdictions. Users will be able to see how they are situated within the arcane political geographies of the city, how they fit within the invisible overlays that structure and influence their civic existence.

We also plan to provide additional information about officials that hold power in the jurisdictions we are mapping. This may include voting records, recent news stories, or other data in an effort to extend mere awareness of these representatives and provide a springboard to begin evaluating their administrative actions.

Our map will be designed to run on the web and will most likely be created in Processing. We plan to create a custom map interface in order to craft the design of the information most effectively and minimize unnecessary information. We are also exploring the idea of creating a Dashboard widget as a supplemental method of providing updated information on representatives.

Our project will be scoped to the city of Chicago.

Data Sources

Map Projection

Boundary files come in a variety of different specifications and projections. We have decided to use the GIS standards that the city of Chicago uses, which produce the smallest amount of distortion. Files not provided by the city are reprojected into the following format:

Datum: North American Datum 1983 (feet) Projection: State Plane Illinois East FIPS Zone 1201

Places and associated people

Areas to map

The area names listed in bold are ones we have shape files for, those listed in italic are ones we are still searching for.

• Ward (50)
  • Represented by one Alderman
  • Also represented by two committeemen, one Democrat and one Republican
  • Definition: A ward is an electoral district used in local politics. It consists in a division of a city for representative, electoral, or administrative purposes.
  • Precinct (~2600)
    • Each ward is composed of several voting precincts.
    • Definition: A precinct is the smallest geographic area in US voting subdivisions, in which local party officials are elected. A precinct usually has from 200 to 1,000 voters in it. The purpose of a precinct is vote for a candidate and to elect delegates who will go to the city or county convention, and relay the precinct's vote for that candidate. Each precinct has a specific location where its residents go to vote. Sometimes several precincts will use the same polling station.
• Congressional District (14)
  • Represented by one Congressman
  • Definition: A congressional district is an electoral constituency that elects a single member of a congress. Presently, there are 435; the number can be increased so long as it does not exceed the constitutional limit of one per 30,000 citizens.
• State Representative District (118)
  • Represented by one State Representative
  • Definition: A geographical area designated for representation by a representative. Legislative districts are drawn to ensure that a nearly equal number of constituents reside in each legislator’s district, and are re-drawn by a specially-appointed legislative committee every ten years to accurately reflect changes in population. from ([1])
• State Senate District (59)
  • Represented by one State Senator
  • Definition: That division of the State represented by a legislator, determined on the basis of population. Senators are elected from legislative districts; Representatives are elected from representative districts. (from [2])
• Community Area (77)
  • Definition: Established in the 1920s by University of Chicago sociologists conducting urban research, these zones represented moderately coherent social character across urban space at this generalized geographical scale. (from [3])
• Police Districts (25) (I have this, but it's from 1998)
  • Police Beats (279)
    • Each Police District is composed of several voting precincts.
• County District (17)
  • Represented by one Commissioner
• Judicial Subcircuit (15)

Areas & Content

Interface Design

ver. 01

In this first version we integrated the applet tabs with the HTML divs into one navigation element.

ver. 02

In the second version we added an extra radio button in order to overcome the ambiguity of the double function of the button. state "on" (extended tab) toggles whether or not the shape is being rendered, while "active" (radio button) toggles which information is being displayed in the HTML (via javascript function).

External Links

MapWindow Best GIS program for ease of use and easy reprojection of data.

We will be using the following data sources (and probably others):

• The Civic Footprint API
• Chicago GIS shape files
• US Census Bureau Cartographic Boundary Files
• Elected officials information
• Google or Yahoo Maps API
• http://www.illinois.gov/
• http://www.co.cook.il.us
• http://www.voterinfonet.com/
• http://www.sourcewatch.org/ congress wiki format example: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Janice_Schakowsky
• http://www.opensecrets.org
• What is "Gerrymandering" (Wikipedia)
• infovisfinal tag on del.icio.us

Known Bugs

• The map page won't display the shapes in IE 7, but it will display them if redirected to the Google maps page.
• Firefox on a Mac won't redraw the page correctly after the javascript is triggered from the applet; If the window is resized, it will redraw the div with the information correctly. It also has an annoying flash every time the javascript is called.

Buggy Addresses

• 345 N Western Ave Chicago, IL (address not in precinct)
• 1416 W 115th St. Chicago IL (applet halted)
• 4058 S Maplewood Ave Chicago IL (applet halted)

Fixed

Nice Shapes

• 6636 S Kenwood Ave. Chicago IL
• 1724 N Lockwood Ave. Chicago IL
• 1615 W Wilson Ave. Chicago IL
• 3660 N Lake Shore Dr, Apt 903 Chicago IL

Notes

1. ↑ The Center for Neighborhood Technology developed the Civic Footprint, a website to help Cook County, Illinois residents find out who represents them by entering their address.