
Reshaping New York - danso
http://nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/08/18/reshaping-new-york/
======
tryitnow
Pretty good work. My thoughts on the visualization:

Criticisms: 1) The moving around over the city skyline is slick and fun, but I
doubt it conveys much useful information. I'd rather see the growth of new
building over time. In visualization, motion should convey some meaning. Here
it doesn't seem to. 2) It's important for visualizations to convey both
anecdotal information (achieved through the before/after snapshots). But it's
also important to convey quantitative information, magnitude and directions of
changes. I don't detect anything like that here, even though there is
quantitative information embedded in the text (e.g. "Population is up 2,000,
but 600 poor people have left"). Numbers are good, visualizations that
artfully convey the magnitude and direction of relevant numbers are even
better. It's rare to have news narrative that can't be improved by conveying
the quantities involved.

Things they did right: 1) The before/after snapshots are useful and pack a
punch. 2) Inclusive. The visualization includes a a variety of changes and
doesn't get sucked down a narrowly focused rabbit hole. 3) Simplicity. It's
not a data dump. The visualization does a decent job of conveying single
themes without including unnecessary extra. It may go too far with this though
(see criticism #2 above).

Overall, I look forward to more visualizations like this from NYT and other
media outlets.

~~~
busterarm
I'm with you that it was mostly flashy without useful information. I actually
hadn't really noticed just how much new construction had been going on in my
neighborhood. I would have loved if the NYT provided something that I could
actually interact with and form some conclusions of my own. It seems like good
journalism has taken a back seat to flashy visualizations -- with most of
these stories there hasn't really been much of a story.

If they provided something like that, I would actually actively look at their
site again, rather than follow the occasional linkbait there.

~~~
benackles
How do you qualify "good journalism"? Data visualization is a powerful tool
for story telling and the NYT has been at the forefront of this revolution in
news. "Good journalism" is telling a story accurately and in a format that
people can understand. Your claim that "good journalism has taken a back seat
to flashy visualizations" seems to denigrate the work of data scientists such
as Mike Bostock who are transforming news in a very meaningful way.

How does data visualization qualify as "link bait" in the derogatory sense of
the word?

[1] [http://bost.ocks.org/mike/](http://bost.ocks.org/mike/)

~~~
busterarm
I don't mean "link bait" in quite the derogatory sense it's usually used
(though slightly).

I mean it in the sense that other than links from aggregator sites with
provocative titles, there is absolutely no reason that I would ever be on the
NY Times' site. They've done some pretty serious damage to their reputation in
recent years and newspapers are on the decline anyway.

While I'm sure these stories are a big hit for them, I don't really feel like
I gained anything from my time spent on the site. It looks cool and the work
done in data visualization is _very_ cool, but I want to look at some of the
data. I want to dig down and look at the parts of data that are interesting to
me.

So yes, data scientists are transforming news, but they're still failing to
deliver a product that I want..and something that I think a lot of people want
now. People used to look to newspapers as their go-to information source for
current events.

Oh the hours of my life that I've spent in a library looking at microfiche.
Thankfully we don't have to do that anymore, but instead of going to the NY
Times still, most of us go to wikipedia and follow links from there.

The NY Times is actually in a position to provide something that would give
them some relevance and make people want to use their resources to find out
things.

This site, however, was little more than entertainment. They could even just
present a platform to crowdsource information collection about the locations
(pictures of the locations over the years, places to put links to building and
tax records, etc) and I would be totally pleased with it.

Just give me some interaction with the data.

~~~
untog
_Just give me some interaction with the data._

Thing is, most people _don 't_ want that. They want something that is the
result of digesting that data and pulling out relevant conclusions, presented
in a clear and easy to comprehend narrative.

~~~
moocowduckquack
If you design things on the basis of what you think most people want, you end
up with nothing special. People probably won't complain much, as it is what
they expected, but it is unlikely to excite or interest them very much.

------
Game_Ender
Another great web piece by the New York Times. The other two I know of are
Snow Fall [1] and the Riding the New Silk Road [2].

1 - [http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-
fall/](http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/)

2 - [http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/07/21/silk-
road/](http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/07/21/silk-road/)

~~~
wallflower
About the making of Snow Fall:

[http://source.mozillaopennews.org/en-US/articles/how-we-
made...](http://source.mozillaopennews.org/en-US/articles/how-we-made-snow-
fall/)

See also:
[http://www.interactivenarratives.org](http://www.interactivenarratives.org)

------
pulakm
New York Times has been killing it with their visualizations. It would have
been nice to have 2013 pictures overlaid on the 2003 pictures though, to
really understand what the changes were. In some pictures, like Times Square,
I had to flip back and forth a couple of times and still wasn't sure what
exactly the changes were (can't see any obvious bike lane in that image, which
is supposedly what it's representing).

~~~
potatolicious
A lot of the photos are aerial, I'd imagine it'd be nigh impossible to get
them lined up so perfectly to overlay each other, but it would be very nice
indeed.

On the Times Square picture: the entirety of Broadway (the slanted street on
the far right) has been closed to traffic and is now entirely a pedestrian
mall. It's not just Times Square, large stretches of Broadway has been
reconfigured for bikes and pedestrians.

Interesting sidenote: they've been digging up Broadway in Times Square lately
to put actual sidewalk in its place. My guess is that Bloomberg is doing this
to cement his legacy and throw up additional barriers in case future mayors
want to re-automobile-ize Times Square.

~~~
pulakm
Fair point. Perhaps some labels on the images, at least, would make it clear
what they were trying to point out. The Times Square picture in particular was
confusing because I saw the pedestrian mall, but thought that the point was
about bike lanes which a pedestrian mall isn't.

------
HaloZero
What are residents of NYC opinion on Bloomberg? Is this reshaping good or
worse for the city?

It seems that he won his most recent re-election but barely, from what i know
he is a socially liberal, environmentally friendly, fiscal conservative.

~~~
michael_miller
As an NYC resident, I feel that Bloomberg has made the city a remarkably
better place. Probably the most transformative effect of Bloomberg's
initiatives has been making the outer boroughs appealing. Young people who
might have otherwise lived elsewhere because of ridiculous Manhattan rents
(~$2-$3k for a studio in downtown Manhattan!) are now flocking to
neighborhoods like Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant. These young people with
disposable income create demand for more great restaurants, shops, and venues
like the Barclay's center, all of which make the city a much more fun place to
be.

It isn't all roses. The poorer residents in Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant
are being forced to move elsewhere as their neighborhood gentrifies. However,
this is part of the typical cyclic trend: artists / poor people move into a
cheap neighborhood, make it trendy, then get forced out when the rent goes up.
The starving artists move to another more affordable neighborhood, and the
cycle starts all over again. Trying to stop the cycle by preventing
development is just delaying the inevitable. Bloomberg has simply accelerated
the trend of creating more upscale neighborhoods. I can understand how someone
in a less fortunate socioeconomic situation might feel differently, but it's
hard to argue that the changes haven't been beneficial from an outsider's
perspective.

~~~
sliverstorm
This is what always confuses me about gentrification. The core idea is that
improving the neighborhood is a bad thing that should be prevented.

I mean, I understand the arguments. I just have a difficult time saying, "Yes,
let's _prevent_ these neighborhoods from being improved".

~~~
busterarm
But the neighborhood improves without its residents. The economic situation of
those living there doesn't really change and they're forced to relocate to
other neighborhoods with similar locations to where they were but much further
away.

Bascially "we're going to make this a nice place to live, please gtfo".

It's not an argument against improving a space. It's one against improving a
space at the expense of its residents.

~~~
Retric
This assumes everyone is renting which while probably true in NYC is far from
universal. In other places people on fixed income have been forced out though
propery taxes but it's closer to here is 100,000$ GTFO simply from the
difference in propery values.

------
tkiley
It's interesting to contrast the evolution of NYC with the (lack of) evolution
of SF.

This article cites a net increase of 170,000 housing units from 2000 to 2010.
I can't find an exact comparison for SF, but it looks like SF has less than
25k net increase from 2000 to 2012.

~~~
aboodman
Well, given that NYC is ~10x the population of SF, SF is doing pretty well!

~~~
gwern
SF is 1/10th the population of NYC in part _because_ of those restrictions, so
the comparison is more apt than it seems...

~~~
guelo
NYC is also 10 times bigger land-wise, 470 sq miles compared to 47.

~~~
nerfhammer
SF is also twice the size of manhattan

~~~
mbesto
I'm trying to figure out where this discussion is going, haha.

Let me simplify it - NYC continues to build up, SF doesn't.

~~~
adviceadam
San Francisco is currently in a building boom. Over the next 25 years, there
is going to be approximately 92,000 more housing units. The population of San
Francisco should reach 1 million by then. Here are some links:

[http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-
economy/2012/12/sa...](http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-
economy/2012/12/san-franciscos-surprising-building-boom/4213/)

[http://www.spur.org/publications/library/article/san-
francis...](http://www.spur.org/publications/library/article/san-francisco-
boom-back)

[http://sf.streetsblog.org/2013/07/19/plan-bay-area-passes-
in...](http://sf.streetsblog.org/2013/07/19/plan-bay-area-passes-in-a-room-
full-of-paranoid-conservative-activists/)

~~~
blackjack48
It's important to point out that 92k units is the amount _needed_ to
accommodate future growth. The creation of those units is entirely dependent
on local politics, which is even more polarized here than in NYC.

------
ChrisNorstrom
It's so obvious he is preparing and advertising himself to run for president.
And it's about time.

He has something few other presidents have. Success in both Private and Public
office.

~~~
sbarre
Does he need to go through a stint in the senate/congress first, or could he
run directly for nomination?

I don't mean "need" as in legal, but just as a path to it?

Has anyone ever done that before? Run for president without being a governor
or a senator/congressman? (Asking as a Canadian who isn't super familiar with
historical presidential politics in the US).

~~~
endianswap
According to a Wikipedia article, it would be likely be in his best interest
to start somewhere bigger:

Every President of the United States has served as either:

Vice President of the United States a U.S. Senator a Congressman a Governor of
a state a Cabinet Secretary a General of the United States Army

~~~
ams6110
Mayor of NYC is probably a better executive experience that many (most?) state
governorships. Bloomberg isn't my cup of tea, politically, but he's certainly
qualified to run if he decides to do it.

~~~
mikeash
For example, as mayor of NYC, Bloomberg governs about three times as many
people as Bill Clinton did as governor of Arkansas.

~~~
protomyth
The governor of Arkansas deals with both rural and urban issues and has a good
cross section of what makes up this country.

~~~
mikeash
The biggest city in Arkansas is less than 3/4ths of a million people. To say
that Arkansas cities gave Clinton experience with urban issues in America is
roughly like saying that the sum total of NYC's parks and gardens give
Bloomberg experience with rural issues in America.

~~~
protomyth
That's more than a bit of hyperbole. He had to deal with the issues of an
urban area typical for US residents. He didn't deal with the super
metroplexes, but that is not the typical problems faced by most. NYC is not a
cross section of what makes up the US.

~~~
balloot
You're using a terrible example. There is exactly one city in Arkansas with
greater than 100k people, and that is Little Rock with 193k. That state has
zero claim to being "a cross section of what makes up the US".

~~~
protomyth
From a government systems point of view, it is a cross section. The White
House isn't about demographics, it's about process.

------
001sky
Woud be interesting to see the backstory on how they got access to the
data/subsamples. The visuals are well done, but the story is sort of
interesting in terms of how its edited. It neglects any mention, for example,
of the role of Finance in the building boom. And by extension, glosses over
the Financial crisis spawned (under his tenure, in new york) by real-estate
investment instruments and the general bubble-icous tendencies that follow
from "free money". NYC basically skims the profits of wall street both
directly (retail&real estate sails subsidized by incomes from the financial
sector) and indirectly through double taxation of corporation (financial
lagest sector) and city income taxes. So, there are a lot of grandmother's
withs withered pensions and decimated savings outside of New York that are
basically subsidizing all of this. Just worth thinking about.

------
everyone
Anyone else find this really buggy/broken + A horribly non-intuitive awkward
way of presenting information even if it worked?

~~~
dmra
The UX of this site is pretty bad. There's nothing to tell you what you should
click on or what clicking on those elements do. I found myself clicking on
random things, ending up in places that weren't related to what I clicked on,
and not sure how to get back.

~~~
everyone
My first reaction was to scroll down the page, as the scroll bar was
indicating there was more below. Apparently I was not supposed to do this as
it basically flips out.

This is your typical 'fancy flash website' syndrome

~~~
burntsushi
Scrolling worked just fine for me. It moved between the pieces of the
visualization quite smoothly.

~~~
everyone
On websites it is not customary or to be expected for scrolling to bring you
to essentially another page.

This thing is a slideshow fitting badly into webpage format.

~~~
burntsushi
...... I don't contest that ......

You said it "flipped out", which I took to mean that it didn't function at
all. I replied saying that it worked for me. That's it.

~~~
everyone
Yeah, it also flipped out on me (I had a load of green lines instead of text)
But I'm more concerned about the intended design. I think the act of scrolling
triggering a full-window video is shocking bad.

------
sebkomianos
I am neither from nor do I live in New York so I can't talk about validity and
range but that was a very enjoyable presentation of the city.

------
wallflower
OT: Kudos to the interactive team. I think it would be an interesting job to
work for the NYTimes interactive/mobile/media lab just based on the work they
have been producing. I hope that they will continue to push the envelope and
start to open source more or blog more about the process (which is the
interesting part) of creating.

~~~
dpeck
Good news, they do
[http://chartsnthings.tumblr.com/](http://chartsnthings.tumblr.com/), though
tends to come in bursts and looks like they haven't put up much since July.

------
sbierwagen
That sure didn't like my 1200x1920 monitor.

It also appears to depend on a codec that chromium on ubuntu doesn't have.

------
CervezaPorFavor
Why does the "Time Square, 2013" picture have markers for Hello Kitty, Elmo,
Mario and Spider-man?

------
shalmanese
Ironically, the mobile view is a MUCH more usable and navigable look at the
data. The technical restrictions of mobile reined in a lot of the excess
flashiness.

------
tzury
The central park remain the same!

That's a reservation de-facto.

------
RDeckard
Can anyone count how many times "Mr. Bloomberg" is mentioned across all the
slides? I lost count...

~~~
johnpmayer
This shouldn't be down voted. It's significant that it's not "Mayor
Bloomberg". "Title Lastname" is the format that it used to refer to
_candidates_.

~~~
danso
No, NYT style is to use Mr. and Ms. on second reference when using last names.
This applies to even the President. It's a policy that makes sense when you
consider the variety of titles (even just political) and the lack of
corresponding well known abbreviations

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/world/middleeast/pressure-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/world/middleeast/pressure-
by-us-failed-to-sway-egypts-leaders.html?hp)

------
sirsar
How is the camera panning done? It works on Windows Chrome but not Ubuntu or
Mint Chromium.

~~~
acqq
It uses video tag and .mp4

------
o0-0o
Seriously? Including the Freedom tower in this map is D-I-S-G-R-A-C-E-F-U-L.
Shame on the NY Slimes.

------
rorrr2
Bloomberg bloomberg bloomberg bloomberg.

Sorry, but most of these changes, are the result of private businesses and
taxpayers.

Saying "you can now build a skyscraper in area X" is hardly an amazing
achievement.

~~~
krschultz
Negotiating the rezoning process was largely a political triumph. Same for the
bike lanes, parks, and redevelopment of public land. Bloomberg has had a very
visible impact on the city - but even more importantly most of his reforms are
a ratchet. Plenty of politicians implement a program for a time, they can
later be undone. Bloomberg has done a bunch things that can't be undone. There
is no way to put the bike share program or more park land back in the bottle
now.

