Project Leader : João Martins

Tech4Society is working on creating interactive and engaging data visualizations of census and ACS data. We want you to find and understand the dynamics affecting your city and your neighborhoods so you can successfully lobby for important policy changes.

Data

Each color represents the number of people paying rent within an interval of $50, $100 or sometimes more at higher rent values, e.g. above $1000. Cooler colors, at the bottom, represent lower rents, and higher colors, at the top, represent more expensive rents.

Interaction

When you click on an interval, the visualization will display how many people were paying up to that amount, for both 2011 and 2016, while connecting the two to highlight the trend. To reset the visualization, click on white space near the graphics.

Where the data comes from

This is American Community Survey 5-Year Estimate data for 2011 and 2016. We use the columns that indicate total number of renters paying gross rent within intervals of $50 and $100, e.g. between $500 and $550, or between $800 and $900. These buckets are unfortunately not available as adjusted for inflation, so 2011 dollar values are slightly undervalued compared to their 2016 counterparts.

This data is static, and obtained for Pittsburgh’s East Liberty, as defined by census tracts 1113 and 1115. It also only keeps track of renting units, not owned units.

Future work

At the moment, all data is static, and only for Pittsburgh’s East Liberty (tracts 1113+1115). In the future, you will be able to produce this visualization for any group of census tracts in the USA. This will allow you to look at rent trends for individual tracts, neighborhoods, cities, counties, or any combination you can imagine.