Do you like to "do it yourself"?

The Ward 6 Task Force has been asked to recommend new boundaries that create Single Member Districts with 2000 (+/- 100) residents, and then combine them into several Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. As you can imagine, there are many possible ways to accomplish this.

The Task Force has been wrestling with the Census data to understand the implications for redistricting. The previous blog posts share some of our thoughts and observations so far, as well as ideas from the listening meetings and emails.

If you would like to explore the Census data for yourself, you have several options:

1) If you are most comfortable with pen and paper, the Office of Planning has provided a variety of maps in PDF format that you can print out and mark up.

2) The JDland blog has what is (quite modestly) called a rudimentary Ward 6 map tool. You can use this tool to click on blocks that you think should be in the same SMD or ANC, and have the populations summed up for you. You can then use the URL to share a map with others showing just those selected blocks.

3) NEW! If you are comfortable with spreadsheets, you can export to Excel from this Google Fusion Table in .csv format. Then, in the spreadsheet, change the ANC assignment for each Census block that is switching from one ANC to another in the column labeled "ANC2012." I find it helpful to do this in conjunction with the JDland map tool.

Since this spreadsheet was used as the basis of the second proposal from Commissioner Ronneberg, the following assignments are used in the "ANC2012" column:

1 = Shaw
2 = 6A/6C
3 = New Hill East
4 = 6B
5 = 6D

Then, import back into Fusion Tables. In the Map visualization, you will need to "configure styles" to create "Buckets" for each of the ANC assignments in the "ANC2012" column. Look at the map to make sure you got it right. Once you have a working map, we can use the "Get embeddable link" to create the code to drop it into the blog.

4) If you are comfortable working directly with spreadsheets and databases to create web maps, you may find the following links helpful. They are shared via Google Fusion Tables.

Ward 6 Census block data

Draft 2012 Ward boundaries

2002 Ward 6, 2C, and 7D ANC boundaries

2002 Ward 6, 2C and 7D01 SMD boundaries

Have fun and let us know if you have suggestions!

Posted by Cody Rice