Connecting the Dots: Race and Ethnicity Via Dot Visualization
While catching the tail end of Digital Media Wire’s NY Games Conference, I happened to be perusing Facebook when I saw an interesting link from BlackPlanet co-founder Omar Wasow. The link led to a Flickr page with a collection of maps. Titled “Race and Ethnicity,” the infographics are a visual representation of the racial makeup in several major American cities including New York, Houston, Los Angeles, and Detroit.
The maps, created by Eric Fischer, were inspired by a similar project created by Bill Rankin. In 2009, Rankin created a visualization of the racial breakdown of Chicago neighborhoods using dot mapping. The result is a visually stunning image that reveals the homogeneous makeup of the average American city. Fischer expanded the project to five pages on Flickr. No word on how he went about choosing which cities to profile, but each has it’s own story to tell. The data was compiled from the 2000 Census with each dot representing 25 people. When you click on a specific map, it switches to a larger view that contains a number of grids. Each grid has a little information about the particular neighborhood and the person Fischer worked with as a contact. Cities with high concentrations of African Americans include Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, and Atlanta. On the converse, Laredo, TX, Fresno, CA, and Colorado Springs, CO had low concentrations of African Americans.
Rankin and Fischer’s maps share the same color-coding: Blue = African American, Orange = Latino, Green = Asian, Red = Caucasian, and Gray = Other.
Below are a few of the Fischer’s maps. To check out the entire Flickr photostream, click here.
About the Author Sherri is a freelance writer that has a love of all things fun and geeky including gadgets, gaming, anime, and comics. When she isn't writing or out on the town living it up, she loves doing 10-12 hour marathon sessions on her Xbox 360 or one of her older consoles. It's not an addiction, it's a way of life!
See all posts by Sherri L. Smith.
