The Best Map Ever Made of America’s Racial Segregation
The map, created by Dustin Cable at University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, is stunningly comprehensive. Drawing on data from the 2010 U.S. Census, it shows one dot per person, color-coded by race. That’s 308,745,538 dots in all–around 7 GB of visual data. It isn’t the first map to show the country’s ethnic distribution, nor is it the first to show every single citizen, but it is the first to do both, making it the most comprehensive map of race in America ever created.
This is the most comprehensive map of race in America ever created.
White people are shown with blue dots; African-Americans with green; Asians with red; and Latinos with orange, with all other race categories from the Census represented by brown. Since the dots are smaller than pixels at most zoom levels, Cable assigned shades of color based on the multiple dots therein. From a distance, for example, certain neighborhoods will look purple, but zooming-in reveals a finer-grained breakdown of red and blue–or, really, black and white.
“There are a lot of moving parts in this process, so this can cause different shades of color to appear at different zoom levels in really dense areas, like you see in NYC,” Cable explains. “I played around with dot size and transparency for a while and settled on the current scheme as being adequate.” You can read more about Cable’s methodology here, but it comes down to this: When you’re dealing with 300 million dots at varying levels of zoom, getting the presentation just right is as much an art as a science.
Looking at the map, every city tells a different story. In California, for example, major cities aren’t just diverse, they’re integrated to a great degree, too. We see large swaths of Sacramento dotted variously with reds, blues, oranges, greens and browns. Los Angeles is more distinctly clustered, but groups still bleed into one another.
In Detroit, amongst the most segregated cities in America, 8 Mile Road serves as a sharp racial dividing line. Image: Dustin Cable
In the Midwest, though, the racial divide can be shockingly exact. In Chicago, bands of whites, blacks, and Latinos radiate out from the city center like sun beams. In St. Louis, a buffer of a few blocks separates a vast area of largely black citizens from another of white and Asian ones. In Detroit, the most segregated city in America according to one recent study, there’s no buffer at all. We see how 8 Mile Road serves as the dividing line between two largely homogenous swaths–one predominantly white and one predominantly black.
But the map doesn’t just tell us about distinct cities. Cable points out how the area comprising the Northwest Territory–Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota–sees a good deal of population distributed by major roadways, as opposed to the states in the East where the populations often developed along natural features (compare the sweep of dots in Eastern Pennsylvania to the same area in this detailed map of the area’s rivers).
Looking at the Southeast, a wide, faint band of green represents the Black Belt, a region originally named for the dark soil in Alabama and Mississippi that eventually came to describe the greater region shaped by plantation agriculture. And while the West looks awfully barren, the density of cities like Los Angeles, Dallas, and Houston gives us a sense of why those states are actually so populous.
Responding to the Duke University study last year, experts were quick to expound on the complexities of the issue. Housing desegregation, one pointed out, is not a magic bullet for equal opportunity. Another made clear that blacks remained more segregated from whites than Latinos or Asians. Here, at least, Cable’s given us a chance to see how things stand today in greater detail than ever before.
Fonte: http://www.wired.com/design/2013/08...-this-eye-opening-map-shows-you/?viewall=true
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This map, created by Dustin Cable at University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, is the most comprehensive representation of racial distribution in America ever made. Here: New York City. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown 
Drawing from the 2010 Census, it shows one dot per person. White people are shown with blue dots; African-Americans with green; Asians with red; and Latinos with orange, with all other race categories from the Census represented by brown. Here: Atlanta. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Here we see Chicago, with bands of different races stacked atop one another. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Southern LA is relatively well-integrated, with the colors mixing into each other throughout. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
The Northern part of LA. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
In Detroit, among the most segregated cities in America, 8 Mile Road serves as a sharp dividing line. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Here we see Birmingham, Alabama, where whites have historically lived "over the mountain" to the South. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Dallas gives us a sense of the dense, sprawling cities of the West. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Here: New Orleans, another one of the nation's most segregated cities. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Philadelphia shows distinct clusters of races. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Here's San Francisco; the large Asian-American population is evident. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Sacramento, another one of California's well-integrated large cities. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
And Portland, also more evenly distributed (and significantly whiter). Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
St. Louis, with a large predominantly black area to the North and a White one to the South. White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Omaha. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Salt Lake City. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
But Cable's map doesn't just tell us about individual cities. It shows how sparsely people are distributed in the West, though densely packed big cities keep states like Texas and California among the most populous. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
The faint band of green represents the Black Belt, a region where plantation agriculture thrived. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Accounting for all levels of zoom, the map includes over 1.2 million PNG files--some 7GB of visual data. Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
Image: Dustin Cable White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown
The map, created by Dustin Cable at University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, is stunningly comprehensive. Drawing on data from the 2010 U.S. Census, it shows one dot per person, color-coded by race. That’s 308,745,538 dots in all–around 7 GB of visual data. It isn’t the first map to show the country’s ethnic distribution, nor is it the first to show every single citizen, but it is the first to do both, making it the most comprehensive map of race in America ever created.
This is the most comprehensive map of race in America ever created.
White people are shown with blue dots; African-Americans with green; Asians with red; and Latinos with orange, with all other race categories from the Census represented by brown. Since the dots are smaller than pixels at most zoom levels, Cable assigned shades of color based on the multiple dots therein. From a distance, for example, certain neighborhoods will look purple, but zooming-in reveals a finer-grained breakdown of red and blue–or, really, black and white.
“There are a lot of moving parts in this process, so this can cause different shades of color to appear at different zoom levels in really dense areas, like you see in NYC,” Cable explains. “I played around with dot size and transparency for a while and settled on the current scheme as being adequate.” You can read more about Cable’s methodology here, but it comes down to this: When you’re dealing with 300 million dots at varying levels of zoom, getting the presentation just right is as much an art as a science.
Looking at the map, every city tells a different story. In California, for example, major cities aren’t just diverse, they’re integrated to a great degree, too. We see large swaths of Sacramento dotted variously with reds, blues, oranges, greens and browns. Los Angeles is more distinctly clustered, but groups still bleed into one another.
In Detroit, amongst the most segregated cities in America, 8 Mile Road serves as a sharp racial dividing line. Image: Dustin Cable
In the Midwest, though, the racial divide can be shockingly exact. In Chicago, bands of whites, blacks, and Latinos radiate out from the city center like sun beams. In St. Louis, a buffer of a few blocks separates a vast area of largely black citizens from another of white and Asian ones. In Detroit, the most segregated city in America according to one recent study, there’s no buffer at all. We see how 8 Mile Road serves as the dividing line between two largely homogenous swaths–one predominantly white and one predominantly black.
But the map doesn’t just tell us about distinct cities. Cable points out how the area comprising the Northwest Territory–Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota–sees a good deal of population distributed by major roadways, as opposed to the states in the East where the populations often developed along natural features (compare the sweep of dots in Eastern Pennsylvania to the same area in this detailed map of the area’s rivers).
Looking at the Southeast, a wide, faint band of green represents the Black Belt, a region originally named for the dark soil in Alabama and Mississippi that eventually came to describe the greater region shaped by plantation agriculture. And while the West looks awfully barren, the density of cities like Los Angeles, Dallas, and Houston gives us a sense of why those states are actually so populous.
Responding to the Duke University study last year, experts were quick to expound on the complexities of the issue. Housing desegregation, one pointed out, is not a magic bullet for equal opportunity. Another made clear that blacks remained more segregated from whites than Latinos or Asians. Here, at least, Cable’s given us a chance to see how things stand today in greater detail than ever before.
Fonte: http://www.wired.com/design/2013/08...-this-eye-opening-map-shows-you/?viewall=true
