

Innovative 3D Maps Show Where to Find Drugs and Prostitutes in San Francisco - JohnnyF
http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2010/06/06/innovative-3d-maps-from-datasf-show-where-to-find-drugs-and-prostitutes-in-san-francisco/

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tptacek
But this is based on crime enforcement stats, not underlying incidence of the
crimes themselves. There are areas of SF (like the park over at Haight and
Ashbury) where these laws basically aren't enforced. Thus: perhaps not a great
map for where to find drugs.

Prostitution may be similar; there seem to be areas in every city where it's
practiced openly and brazenly, which tells me there's a sub rosa understanding
between law enforcement and prostitutes.

(Note also that "drugs" here probably means "vials", and "prostitution" here
probably means "street hookers").

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dougmccune
Yeah, that's a really important distinction to keep in mind. I work a lot with
crime data, and so people say things like "Oh, so you know all the best places
to find drugs", when in reality what I know is the best places to _get
caught_. Where people are committing crimes and where they are getting
arrested may or may not be the same.

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marchdown
Is any of that data available to the general public?

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dougmccune
For San Francisco all the crime data is published (well, other than some
sensitive data like the locations of rapes). datasf.org has a listing of all
the geospatial data available for SF. A lot of other cities have their own
data repositories. Washington DC has one of the best (<http://data.dc.gov/>)
and New York has a good catalog as well
(<http://www.nyc.gov/html/datamine/html/data/data.shtml>).

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jrockway
I don't think this map is easy to read at all. 3D projections onto 2D lose
information; especially this one. A colored overlay (like weather radar) or
contour lines (like a topographical map) would be much easier to understand.

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pbiggar
Also, adding the light source makes it hard to read (though very pretty).

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anigbrowl
Most interesting; more from the original author at
[http://dougmccune.com/blog/2010/06/05/if-san-francisco-
crime...](http://dougmccune.com/blog/2010/06/05/if-san-francisco-crime-was-
elevation/)

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tmsh
What's also interesting is that that seems to confirm the East-side theory
about cities (at least for San Francisco) mentioned here a couple of weeks
ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1391400>

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teaspoon
The east-side theory predicts the geographical distribution of property values
and of low-income households. These maps plot the distribution of crime as
measured by arrests. Poverty and crime are not the same thing.

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tmsh
They seem, unfortunately, correlated. Certainly, there isn't any easy causal
relationship. And actually, looking at it more -- I may be wrong. Here's a
real-estate price map for San Francisco:

[http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/San_Francisco-h...](http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/California/San_Francisco-
heat_map/)

But by the logic of the westerly (east-blowing) winds, however, places in SF
like Hunters Point, etc., were probably not as attractive real estate
locations originally, and probably that led to some vicious cycles, etc.

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Detrus
I wonder what the economic implications are when things that are "illegal"
have a limited access to technology because of privacy concerns.

This is not a user friendly map.

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glhaynes
Should come in handy for WWDC next week. /not going to WWDC

