Citizen Mapmakers & Data Artists
Putting Important Issues on the Map -- and on the Web
THE PROJECT
Project Guide

About Project

Working Notes/Blog

Convert Census Files to SVG Maps


DEVELOPMENT ZONE
Utility Goals & Downloads

Cancer Alley

U.S Poverty: 1999

Census Tract Animation


SVG
Download SVG Viewer

SVG Collaboration

SVG on the Web


Download Directly
Conversion Utility 4/1/03

Utility code 4/1/03

Cancer Alley JavaScript 7/11/02

US Poverty JavaScript 1/1/03


SVG Mapmaking in Action
Carto.Net Tutorial and Example Site

Randy George's Map of Autauga County Alabama

Andreas Neumann's Map of Vienna

Gaëtan Gaborit's Map of the Département du Sèvre et Maine

Taiwan Social Map by Yi-Hong Chang and Tyng-Ruey Chuang


Denver Census Tract Animation Project (Ongoing Collaboration)

This page is to enable project participants (and any website visitors) to look at different drafts of the animation as we proceed. Comments and suggestions are welcome here. When the project is complete, the tutorial and links to the final version of the animation will be accessible from this page.

Project Description

This project is converting a GIS animation of shifts in Census Tract population from GIS format to SVG. The project has the following goals:

  • Convert the GIF animation on this page into SVG, demonstrating the far greater versatility of SVG in the process.


  • Develop and publish on this site a tutorial aimed at enabling easy replication of this effort with other data sets.


    • Current Status
    2/28/03: For some inexplicable reason, the following two links work OK on some machines and not on others. Hope to fix soon.

  • Here is Micah's animation (including fade out and fade in effects).


  • Here's Mike's animation with mouseover view of data by tract. At last report, Micah was unable to see the data change when viewing a local file version on his Mac. If anyone else cannot see population data for any given tract when hovering the mouse, please contact Mike with information about your configuration.


    • Current tasks:
  • Merge the best of graphics design and data visualization.


  • A feature to allow the user to pause or change the speed of the animation.


  • Data cleanup. (We ask viewers of the animation and anyone who downloads the current Denver.js to understand that the current data is for test purposes only and should not yet be considered an accurate presentation of populations from one decade to another).

  • One creative byproduct of this collaboration so far is a new boundary conversion utility written in Visual Basic. It converts UTM coordinates saved in ASCII ungenerate format into SVG.


  • A tutorial that helps people replicate this animation with similar data sets is the final goal of the project.


    • Participants
  • Jim Castagne, castagne@census.gov


  • Micah Laaker, micah@laaker.com


  • Mike McCullough, mm@citizencomputing.org


    • Citizen Computing Institute | Contact
    A Project of the Citizen Computing Institute - a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization