The digital project “Renewing Inequality” gets the majority of its data through the federal government. The United States Government released reports containing data during and after the urban renewal projects took place. Data on displacements and the razing and reuse of housing units comes from the Urban Renewal Project Characteristics report. Anything about the funding of these projects comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual report called Urban Renewal Directory.
This data on the project is not fully accurate on the full effect of Urban Renewal. Urban Renewal continued for 8 more years after the data stopped being collected in 1966. These numbers only show the years of the reports. Reports also were estimates, and only estimates of families who were displaced, not of single individuals. Reports don’t show what year a family may have been displaced from a singular project due to renewal projects covering a set span of years. The creators behind the project explain their thinking “If, say, a project displaced 500 families and was executed between 1961 and 1966, we estimate 250 displacements for 1961 and 250 for 1962. While imperfect, we reason that most projects were divided into three phases: acquisition of properties and relocation of people, clearance of buildings, and reuse of the cleared land.”
The project creators used a program called CartoDB to make the project along with the other brother projects. CartoDB is a software for web browsers, written in java-script, that provides GIS (geographic information system) and mapping tools to the user. It allows you to build custom maps, like in the project, and plug data into an interface that can be interactive. They also worked with Stamen Design, a data visualization studio based out of San Francisco, which is how the rest of the project works with the data through the menus.
The main page of the project has the meat of the site with the data plugged in and three options to view it in. There is a regular map that has the data and sizes of the displacement numbers overlapping, while the cartogram compares the sizes without overlapping allowing a comparative view of the map. Clicking on a city will bring you to a closer view with the areas of projects highlighted, with details on the ethnicity of those displaced, and if the available the budget of the project along with it.
When zoomed in on a city, the map has an option of a color coating called the “1930s Redlining Grades” which shows what the Home Owners’ Loan Associated labeled the security level of that neighborhood. This is tied with the brother project Mapping Inequality which is also through the parent project American Panorama. “Mapping Inequality” has more details on the redlining of cities and the meanings, but this info along with the housing data shows how things from the 1930’s still effected people in the 60’s.
