Research Question: How does the availability and use of public transportation in Chicago affect the status (gentrification, population size, diversity) of its neighborhoods serviced by public transportation, or do the changes in neighborhoods exert effects on public transportation use?
Audience: Students, users of public transportation, Chicago residents, historians, urbanists.
Approach: Researching changes in Chicago’s neighborhoods, especially the ones serviced by busy sections of the CTA, and visualizing CTA ridership data using data visualization tools, such as D3 (a JavaScript library) and Tableau Desktop, to determine if there is a relationship between ridership and neighborhood status.
MoSCoWs:
- Must-Haves (critical to the project)
- Easily digestible and informative visualizations of public transportation data provided by the CTA
- Graphics showing changes to at least 3 Chicago neighborhood changes
- Narratives explaining methodology and data processed
- Hosted on a web platform like WordPress or GitHub
- Visually appealing website
- Analysis of why data shows certain trends
- Discussion of implications for future plans for Chicago public transportation
- Should-Haves (important but not necessary)
- Visual essay format in the style of The Pudding projects
- Strong evidence of a relationship between CTA ridership and neighborhood status
- Could-Haves (desirable but not necessary)
- Animated visualizations showing changes to CTA ridership and neighborhoods
- Won’t Haves (future “wish list”)
- Comparisons to other cities’ systems of public transportation
- In-depth discussions of urbanism