Around the country, there are calls to reform our election process. Activists want to ensure that the outcomes of elections properly reflect the will of the people. Because elections are administered at the local level, this results in experiments in radical democracy in likely and unlikely places. Ranked choice voting is one of those experiments…
Read More
Counting people is vital to our democracy. Every ten years, the US government has a constitutional obligation to conduct a census that counts everyone living in the United States. This count determines how many Congressional representatives each state receives, the levels of Federal funding for state and local governments and federal programs, and serves as…
Read More
Here are some interesting recent stories about maps and data in the Houston area. I hope to make this a monthly roundup post covering areas of public interest, like crime, transportation, real estate, and population health. If you have a good project to share, please let me know! Houston Bike Share Crowdsourcing New Locations The Houston…
Read More
This is the second edition of Houston maps and data. This month, we saw Mayor Turner’s first major initiative take the form of an interdepartmental task force and a new website. Potholes in Houston will never be the same again. Here’s the scoop, along with a few other interesting stories about Houston told through maps…
Read More
Each month, we round up all the interesting stories told with data that help us understand the Houston region. Houston Public Housing Debate Rages A proposed public housing project at the edge of a fancy Houston neighborhood is causing confusion about the effects of public housing. This article drops some serious data (and a little bit of shaming) to…
Read More
Last year, we helped the City of Houston launch a cost-savings crowdsourcing program called Bright Ideas. I was reading through some of the responses, and I got curious about terminologies, priorities, and the general language used by City of Houston employees. So on April 9, 2016, I grabbed a database dump of the Bright Ideas…
Read More
This is our monthly series Houston Maps and Data, where we provide a roundup of interesting Houston stories using maps and data that help us understand the region by the numbers. In mid-April, the Houston area saw unprecedented flooding. There are a lot of attempts to explain why, but before you go down that rabbit…
Read More
Every year, the City of Houston goes through a capital planning process where they allocate about $8 billion over five years. I wanted to know where these projects are, and how much we’re spending on them. I became curious about this process after last year’s discussion about equitable distribution. So I extracted a bunch of data from the…
Read More
Last week, I published an article outlining what the City of Houston can do to promote broadband competition. I was responding to a group of citizens who came to Houston’s city council public comment session and asked our elected officials to do something about net neutrality. While the City of Houston can’t do much about…
Read More
A few weeks ago, I attended a civic club meeting where we talked about minimum lot size restrictions. Many of my neighbors were concerned about townhouse developments in the neighborhood, and the City of Houston Planning Department was on hand to teach us how to apply for minimum lot size protection. Minimum lot size restrictions…
Read More