Dataviz Final Project
The Pitch
American cities have risen and fallen with industry. Many places are defined by the work they offer: manufacture, tech, auto, etc. In the last century, they've fluctuated dramatically through crashes and booms. Recently Forbes wrote a piece on the fastest and slowest growing cities since the depression, but no one has graphed the change or plotted the fluctuations over the last 10, 50 or 100 years.
I would like to make an interactive graph of population over time in 50 of the largest cities in America. In either a sub graph or possibly in the main plot, I would like to chart the average level of education in these cities to look for correlation with current growing or sinking cities. Isolatable cities would be selected in a drop down menu, with clickable points of interest plotted on each city's line. For each city, I would list the large employers and industry big names that have been born in these cities and what the largest employers are currently.
I believe that this graphic would be very interesting and informative for seeing, at a glance, the economic change in America over the last 50 years from manufacturing (with a bounty of working-class jobs) to technology, with new cities rising up in significance in just the last 10-20 years.
News Angle
With industrial cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Cleveland losing substantial portions of their population and newcomers on the top lists like San Jose and Austin, I want to track population shifts in America against the rise of the information and technology sectors and the fall of manufacture. In particular, I want this data to have a local angle and look at the rapid expansion of San Jose's population and average income and the struggles of Oakland.
Sources
Info on population, income and education is available at http://www.census.gov/.
I would like to find significant mass-layoffs or factory closures in cities with plummeting population and use that in my notation on the graph. I would also like to talk with economists and social scientists to get a better idea of everything that contributes to drastic changes in city population.
Background
Forbes recently came out with a story on the nation's fastest and slowest growing cities, (huffpost did something similar) as well as a static infographic on the likely future growth of US cities.
Publication
Again, with a local focus I think this would be interesting to show the population trends in the Bay Area. I have contacts at the SFGate and at the Mercury News who would likely be interested in a graphic that showed this information. Ideally, however, this would be of national interest and could demonstrate national trends.
Preliminary Questions
How directly related are population fluctuation and employment/income level?
How directly related are average education and population increase/decrease?
Are people flocking from one city to another, or out of cities altogether?
Are there any demographic trends in US cities or regions?
Old Pitches:
Pitch 1: Baseball Revenue/Payroll
Baseball revenues and payroll expenditures have been increasing sharply in the last decade. Gross revenues have grown from $1.4 billion in 1995 to $7 billion in 2010. Even accounting for inflation, that's a huge jump. Many outlets have written about this jump, but no one has graphed this information by team, and no other outlet has combined the story of soaring revenue over this time period with that of disparity between the different slices of the baseball market.
With the Dodgers making a push to make the most of being based in one of the nations richest TV markets, MLB revenue sources and spending are hot topics in sports and business news.
I propose to build an interactive chart that graphs not only the growth in revenue for each MLB team, but also graphs player payroll and incorporates the current TV contracts of each franchise. The graphic will be selectable by team, with supplemental charts that compared the relative size of each team's TV market.
I would also like to include (as much as possible) educated estimates and even hard numbers on both the MLB's luxury tax and the new MLB revenue sharing model - if possible, I'd like to graph the proportion of team revenue that comes from these equalizing measures afforded to the poorer teams. Financial data is available from Forbes, USA Today, bizofbaseball.com, fangraphs.com, and other outlets that have been publishing revenue numbers year by year.
I would also like to speak with economists at UC Berkeley about TV markets and how they factor in major sports, why baseball's revenue is increasing so precipitously, and whether it's possible that some teams (cough cough - Oakland) could be working to keep their revenue low so as to qualify for a bigger slice of the revenue sharing payoff.
I believe this would be a marketable graphic, especially in the local market (Bay Area News Group papers like the San Jose Mercury and San Francisco Chronicle) with so much talk about the disparity between the revenues, markets and player payroll of the Athletics and the Giants. It also might be something the national market would be interested in as well.
Pitch 2: City Population
The major American cities have populations that have fluctuated sometimes dramatically in the last century. Populations have spiked with booms in city industries and collapsed with economic crashes. Recently Forbes wrote a piece on the fastest and slowest growing cities since the depression, but no one has graphed the change or plotted the fluctuations over the last 10, 50 or 100 years.
With industrial cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Cleveland losing substantial portions of their population and some unexpected cities booming like Charlotte, Albuquerque and Raleigh, the country is changing in some obvious and some intriguing ways.
I would like to make an interactive graph of US city population, with selectable cities from a drop down menu and clickable points of interest plotted on each city's line. These clickable dates would display info explaining boom or bust decades: mass factory closures, soaring industries, recessions etc. Ideally, it would look something like a (very) cursory economic history of the united states over the last 100 years.
Even with the government shut down and census data difficult to access (with the census website dormant), there are outside sites that have the data valuable such as Biggest Cities. The data for, say, the 20-30 currently largest cities would be easily exportable from here. I also propose to speak with economists and possibly anthropologists from the University of California, since they're such a close by, exploitable resource.
I believe that this graphic would be very interesting and informative for seeing, at a glance, the economic change in America.
Pitch 3: Major League Home Runs
Okay, so this one was clearly inspired by the strikeouts piece the Times did. But I have a purpose for it - it's not just a way to play in baseball data. The home run has been, at times, a minor and a major player in the game of baseball. Before the so called "live ball era", the home run was a relatively minor factor in run scoring. Teams were unable to rely on the home run as the keystone of any offense since they were so relatively rare. With changes to both the bats an the balls, they became not only one of the most important elements in scoring but also one of the most effective ways of getting fans drawn into the sport.
But more interesting than graphing the general history of the home run in baseball is the recent "steroid era" where steroid use became widespread and more or less unabashed in baseball. Home runs have been on the rise for the last 100 years, but they saw a peak between 1998 and 2006. When the MLB started imposing more aggressive testing, the home run rates dipped, but are once again on the rise.
I propose a graphic mapping home run totals for both leagues, as well as a total line, with click-able historical annotations centered around the more significant peaks and valleys on the line. I would be interested in talking to the beat-writers (Susan Slusser for the A's and Henry Schulman for the Giants) that covered baseball during that period, especially in looking at what the fan reaction to the time was. Many credit the steroid era for "saving" baseball, bringing back fans who had become disillusioned by the sport following the players strike of 1994. I would also like to include average park size, which has recently dropped.
This hasn't been plotted by a major outlet that I've been able to find. The data is available on numerous cites like baseball-reference and baseball almanac. I'm confident a well executed graph would be of interest to local papers as well as baseball-centric outlets.