The story of crime during the year of Covid is like the story of most any other subject throughout the pandemic: there was a before, a during, then a return to… a new normal. When you look at the time series of crime over the bulk of the year, and normalize each crime to its starting position (i.e., line them up vertically on the left), you can bring data-driven color to what the new normal is. Overall NYC crime dropped then came back (grey). Some crimes predictably dropped to near zero, like in-store theft, including shoplifting (green). Some, though lower in absolute numbers compared to the others, rose above their previous levels, such as murder (blue) and the theft of perpetually parked cars (orange). Others, like child endangerment (red), dropped, then rose, then dropped, possibly reflecting the changing pressures on family life during lockdown. This data begs the question that always haunts crime statistics: how do we tell the difference between the crimes that are occurring versus those that are being reported?  Both effects are certainly evolving over this time, but may be impossible to fully disentangle from imperfect data. Policies can only control what can be observed, and the pandemic has not only changed patterns in crimes but probably patterns in observation rates as well.

– John Stockton

No Adults

We mapped visitor data from 2017 through 2020 for playgrounds that had a “no adults” policy for some portion of the playground. There was a significant drop off in visitors in 2020 (see 2019 vs 2020, above). However, the data here is not a perfect fit for our question. The visitor information is actually tied to parks. In some cases there are multiple playgrounds within one park, but in other cases the park may be the playground.

– Rachel Blake

Playground Equipment

We were able to identify several types of traditional playground equipment and where that equipment is located. However, there are major limitations from the perspective of what a child might want to know and what might contribute to children’s joy. 

The data regarding equipment seems to be entirely a binary yes/no. So, the data does not tell us, for example, how many swings — each location contains. A question of utmost importance to many children. We can see that swings and basketball courts are quite common amenities, while sandboxes are quite rare with almost all in Manhattan. Only 1 seesaw is listed in the data!

– Rachel Blake

From this data, I created a series of color-coded props depicting park play structures by borough – a basketball counts out the courts in small dots, a skateboard delineates skateparks throughout the city. In the Parks Complaint data, we saw mention of people bringing their own swings to parks during COVID-19 closures.  Inspired by these renegade swings, I created a version that breaks down swing-set data by borough.  As Rachel Blake explains, this data – although accessible – does not point to the quantity or quality of play structures within parks, rather its binary existence.

– Cindy Stockton Moore

Outperforming Dog Bite Data

Each NYC borough has a standout dog breed who punches/bites above their weight. While the species who bite the absolute most are not all shown here, we show the count breakdown for each of the species who outperform their expectation numbers for attacks in one borough compared to the others:

 

Beagle bites are over-indexed in Staten Island,

Chihuahuas for the Bronx,

Havanese for Manhattan,

Huskies for Queens

and

Shiba Inus for Brooklyn.

 

This data gives an indication of the personality of each borough as well as what unique dangers might lurk for unsuspecting puppy petters. Maybe this data could be used to customize warning signs for particular neighborhoods? 

 

When merged with an independent set of dog naming data (licenses), this data takes on even more personality. Chihuahuas are a menace no matter what the borough, and this data tells you that this puppy perpetrator is more likely to be called Chiquita or Pedro, a name likely inspired by a character from the movie “The Lady and the Tramp”. This observation relates to a recurring theme in the data: many of the top indexing names for a given species seem to be inspired by animals from movies and pop culture more generally. Also see Brinkley the Golden Retriever from “You’ve Got Mail”, or Gizmo from “Gremlins” (apparently Shih-Tzu’s are closely related to Mogwais).

-John Stockton

I used John’s outperforming dog data to create a series of stackable bar graphs out of wood, where each 1/4″ equals one bite per breed.  This data was then disassembled and rebuilt into new data structures.

-Cindy Stockton Moore

Complaining About Children

We also searched in the complaints (narrative comments of the PIPS-plus inspection program) for mentions of children. However, there were very few. Many of them were actually complaining about adults in the playground without children. 

– Rachel Blake

Open Streets – March 2021

Drawing a large-scale chart directly on the ground, we encouraged the public to physically interact with the NYCOpenData.  Performing data visualizations in a public space, we invite free play where people can interact and activate the data in un-prescribed ways.  Set up outside of Tompkins Square Park on Avenue B,  we brought a variety of props from ‘Shadow Tag’ for street play.  We also created a new large ball graph that visualized attendance counts over the course of the  pandemic year in the playgrounds closest to our location.  Despite the cold March day and the on-going pandemic precautions, we enjoyed watching kids activate the data in surprising ways! 

-Cindy Stockton Moore

Children Visualizing NYC Park Complaints