Gangs + Cupcakes?

I get so geeked out about interesting maps.

I went to a lecture today about telling stories with maps. One of the maps that Vaughn Tan shared with us was this San Fransisco map of gang territories and cupcake shops. Can we infer anything from this map? Probably not. But, it's super cool. The violence described in the accompanying article is absolutely not super cool.

Listen up, gangs: cupcakes, not guns.

what's exciting this semester?

I'm taking a GIS course this semester. Most people look at my like, "Um, GIS? That's... What IS that?"

Take really interesting data about Chicago, and chart it out, geographically. I'm a very visual person (difficult sometimes, also being a visually-impared person), and with my love of both maps and cities, this gets me excited.

Imagine, then, my fascination this morning when I picked up the Red Eye (Shut up, Carrie. I do the sudoku.) and they had this article from the Chicago Tribune about population changes across the 6-county area:

Chicago's population drops 200,000

Census data also show collar counties grew in numbers, diversity

By William Mullen and Vikki Ortiz-Healy

Tribune reporters

10:00 PM CST, February 15, 2011

Chicago lost a hefty 200,000 residents in the last decade, most of them African-Americans, while suburban counties grew dramatically in numbers and diversity, according to 2010 census data released Tuesday.

People continued to spread out far from the region's urban hub, as thousands flocked to Will, Kane and McHenry counties, all of which experienced a second decade of vigorous double-digit growth, the numbers showed.

"I think these data from here and elsewhere in the country reflect that the United States has become a suburban nation," said Scott W. Allard, a University of Chicago associate professor of social service administration. "It is a continuing migration from the city out to the suburbs while there are also immigration waves directly to the suburbs as well."

In the 2000 census, Latino immigration fueled a modest 4 percent population increase in Chicago, marking the city's first decade of growth since the 1940s.

This time around Chicago's Latino population was up just a little more than 3 percent. The white population was down a bit, while black numbers dropped nearly 17 percent.

Latinos and Asians accounted for the metropolitan area's biggest population increases during the 2000s. In both cases, the biggest gains for those groups were in collar counties, not in the city or suburban Cook County.

"The biggest (change) is finding more minority people in different places in the metropolitan area where you didn't used to find them," said Jim Lewis, a demographer and senior program officer at Chicago Community Trust. "That and the loss of black population in the region and the state."

The census information isn't yet complete enough to track where blacks who left the city went, Lewis said. The figures indicate some have moved to suburbs, but a slight decline statewide suggests some African-Americans have been moving out of the region entirely, Lewis said.

Carried by the collar counties, the population of the six-county Chicago region grew almost 3 percent during the decade, to 8.3 million. That's down significantly from the region's 11 percent growth in the 2000 census.

Some of that slowdown was chalked up to the economy going south late in the decade.

"There was just a big boom and then we got to the end of the bubble," said Dennis Sandquist, director of planning and development for McHenry County, who attributed some of the slowdown to the downturn in the economy. "Our hope is that when things pick up, it picks up to a sustainable rate of growth."

Despite the slower rate of growth, demographers said people continue to be drawn to ever more remote suburbs by job opportunities, affordable housing and better-funded school districts.

"Looking at the whole metro area, we are up over a quarter of a million people, which shows that we remain as an attractive place to people," said Matt Maloney, deputy chief of staff for policy development for the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. "We anticipate other metro areas in the Middle West will show that they are having trouble maintaining population, so that is a plus for us."

DuPage County, long the region's epitome of booming suburbia, barely grew at all. The county lost about 45,000 white residents, which was offset by more African-American and Asian residents.

"You could say that Kane County is the DuPage County of yesterday," said Rob Paral, a Chicago demographer. "The things we're saying about Kane County today is what we said about DuPage County 20 years ago."

Chicago wasn't the only place in Illinois to experience population drain. A number of rural counties through the state also saw population dips. Overall, the state grew just 3.3 percent during the decade, to 12,830,632.

That will cost the state one of its 19 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Chicago's population decline could also have consequences for its residents, according to Allard.

"The city will likely have to prepare for some cuts in federal grants based on population formulas, perhaps tens of millions of dollars over the next decade," he said.

For the second decade, Aurora and Joliet experienced dramatic growth. Aurora (197,899) passed Rockford (152,871) to become the state's second-biggest town, while Joliet moved up three places to No. 4, with 147,433 residents, nearly 40 percent more than in 2000.

In those cities and others, Latinos found homes far from the city's traditional ethnic enclaves.

According to Sylvia Puente, executive director of the Latino Policy Forum, some of those newcomers have achieved middle-class status that enables them to seek out better housing stock and schools.

But most, she said, have followed the development in the suburbs to work as landscapers, cooks, housekeepers and other blue-collar jobs.

"We've continued to see that all the Latino demographic growth that has been outside the city while the city's (Latino growth) has been flat," Puente said.

DuPage County "is now part of the old inner ring of communities, with all the characteristics of older Cook County communities," said Lewis of the Chicago Community Trust. There has been an aging process there, with lots of empty nesters and a decline in white population."

Cook County's population loss could have been even worse if it had not been for the recession and crash of the housing market, said Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire who was for many years based at Chicago's Loyola University and continues to study the city's population trends.

"Migration data suggest that the … loss from Cook County slowed precipitously near the end of the decade because the number of people migrating out of the county slowed," Johnson said. "This occurred because the recession had the effect of freezing people in place due to their reluctance to try and sell homes or change jobs because of the difficult economic situation."

Better yet? The accompanying graphic. This, my friends, is what I'm doing this semester, making maps like this to analyze data. It's so super cool.


And, I intend no copyright infringement. I didn't want to hotlink the image and bog down the Tribune's site.

are you sure it's not Monday?

Today's been downright weird in the way that only Monday's usually are. For one, I'm in the office, which I never am on a Thursday in the summer. I needed to unpack, though, as they moved my stuff back to my old office in the library while I was in Reno. It's like coming home. :) I do miss my Thursday morning breakfast with H, though.

Instead, I got an interesting conversation with my pal O. You meet such interesting folks from the College when you ride the train, I swear. O became part of our train crew last fall, and I've always thought he was a cool dude. We talked very openly about his recent diagnosis of bipolar/borderline and subsequent medicating. It's funny how people change for you in only 30 minutes. I have a newfound understanding of O, and I respect the way he's dealing with the diagnosis, namely learning all the can about it.

In other news, I woke up at 4:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. I'm obviously channelling my girlfriend, who fails at sleeping after about that point. The downside for me is that I'm also having trouble falling asleep--both are so unlike me! I'm pooped.

And hungry. I left the house without any food, and I have none here. Poor planning on my part. I actually left sort of frantically, running around desperately trying to find my keys.

Which reminds me: I hate our neighbors. Still. I went out to water my flowers and nearly fell over someone's bike, which was left RIGHT in front of our door. WTF, people? That's gotta warrant a note or something.

I took the day off from everything else yesterday and got all the wedding paraphernalia done. We're talking: invitations, reply cards, and maps. Dear gawd, the maps took for-ev-er, but they look awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing them live and in print, and not just the poor-quality printing I did here in the office (to see how they looked).

Alright, enough break. Back to organizing the office.

Google Street View: The Newest Undercover Cop!

Holy cow! Have you seen this?! Gawker has a post on what appears to be a drug deal caught by the Street View crew taking pictures on Chicago's South Side. You can even see the license plate of the car involved. SERIOUSLY. Go check out the Gawker post for their set of screenshots. Here's a sampling from Google, if you want to take a look for yourself:


View Larger Map

I hate our governor

I can't even be happy about all the good he's done for women's health. Right now, he's pissing me the hell off.

We're now four days away from Doomsday for transit cuts without revised state funding. And you know what? Last week, the legislature approved a tax increase to end the crisis...and the governor wouldn't sign it. Instead, he inserted an amendment to it that all seniors ride free and sent it back to the legislature. It's a nice idea in theory, but a bill that could have passed last Friday now sits, waiting for the legislature to approve it--approving it the first time was a narrow margin.

And so here we are. A good--though depressing--graphic was in the paper this morning, showing the effect of the loss of 81 bus routes (that's more than half) on the city.

To recap, that damage represented by those maps is the governor's fault, at least for this week (and in my book). And being the jerk he is, he added insult to injury yesterday when he told seniors to "hold your nose and take a bus for free." *blink* If I worked for the CTA, I would be HIGHLY offended. Hell, being a rider, I'm highly offended. What does he think about the transit system of Chicago? Apparently, he thinks it stinks from the funk you can only imagine...urine, vomit, and Gawd Forbind....the homeless! (note sarcasm) No wonder he's not in a hurry to fund the CTA. He obviously hasn't paid any attention to the work Ron Huberman (my CTA crush--I can admit it) has done to make the system more efficient and cleaner. (The first time I rode on a Red Line train with a newly waxed floor, I was afraid to set my shopping bags down for fear it was wet...no, it wasn't wet, it was just that clean.

If you can stomach his rhetoric and get through this without laughing yourself silly at his craptastic hair, you can hear the advice to seniors straight from the ass's horse's mouth.

As for me, I guess I'll get a helmet, find my bike somewhere in my mom's basement, and fork over the extra $10.80/month it's going to cost me to ride the train to work because Metra got a raw deal, too.

Fuck you, Rod Blagojevich.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

(Don't take that subject line as a cue to start singing holiday songs. I'll have NONE OF THAT until after my birthday, thankyouverymuch.)

I love this time of year. The leaves are so many different shades of beautiful, and with the college town's tree-lined streets, walking around campus is, for the most part, a joyful experience. I love these cool temperatures and the smell of leaves. Plus, Halloween is just plain fun. Candy and costumes? Can you really go wrong there?

BUT! I don't want to neglect the most wonderful thing about this wonderful time of year...

It's new phone book day!

...

*crickets*

...

Yes, folks, the campus phone book arrived in my mailbox today, and I'm rejoicing! Because I'm that kind of geek.

You see, I'm all about spaces and maps. I love them. And, looking through the information about my colleagues fascinates me. I look to see where they live. For the people who live in Chicago, I place their addresses on the map in my mind, pondering their train stops, walking distances to the trains, and neighborhoods. I'm a very visual-spatial person, and this is right up my alley. So, I sit and read the phone book. I've done it for years. The white pages are fine, but it's more interesting when I know the people, like a campus phone book (did this as a student, too). I'm disappointed when I find a colleague's home address isn't listed.

The other thing I find interesting about a phone book like this one is the relationships. "Learn to pretend there's more than love that matters" isn't my favorite quote for nothing. I like to see when people list their partners, and for couples who work here, who does and who doesn't list their partners.

I'm not interested in memorizing addresses or spouses names or trick-or-treating and the homes of the college faculty. I just like to think about places and people.

I've already spent 45 minutes with my nose in the new phone book. I'm far from done. :)