The next meeting of the Texas legislature starts in January, and House and Senate members just started the process of filing new bills. Over the next few months, these bills will be refined in committees, emerge for a vote, and potentially signed into law. But right now, they are the raw materials for the next…
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Every Monday morning, Judge Israel Garcia, Jr., who serves as Harris County Justice of the Peace for Precinct 5, stares down a punishing docket of eviction, debt collection, and traffic cases for the week. His courtroom has a line out the door of parents and children, desperate to resolve a dispute with their landlord or…
Read More The Texas Legislature doesn’t meet very often. When it does, a lot can happen in a short period of time. We have to live with the results. It’s a policy pressure cooker. Today, members of the Texas House and Senate began filing bills. The lege website makes it easy to see the bills filed every…
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Have you filled out your census? Houston lags behind the national average, with 58.4% of residents responding, compared to 66.3% nationally. Use our tool to check out how your City Council District is performing. Most importantly, make sure you and your neighbors have responded. You only have until the end of October to get counted! …
Read More The elections are over, but things are just getting started in Texas. The 86th Texas Legislature convenes in the beginning of 2019, and newly-elected House and Senate members are already filing legislation. Two years ago, we built a map of bills filed for the 85th session. This year, you’ll notice the maps got an upgrade.…
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Making maps is a great way to visualize data. Building them is easier than ever. In the past, you had to have enterprise software licenses and a lot of GIS knowledge. But if you’re just getting started with making maps, you probably don’t want to shell out thousands of dollars for software. Maybe you’re at a…
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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…
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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…
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This is the story of how we helped the City of Houston visualize and communicate the impact of Hurricane Harvey. You may have already seen these maps on Harvey by the Numbers. This isn’t a story about designing the maps and choosing the colors (although that was a lot of fun). This is a story…
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Over the summer, we worked with Children at Risk to develop a map of child care deserts in Texas. The map shows where there aren’t enough child care providers, as well as where there is a lack of subsidized seats or high quality providers. Then, using the map as a jumping off point, Children at…
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