How Suburban are Big American Cities?

Yes, as many of us already know, the Census does not define "Urban" and "Rural", much less "Suburban".  This article from the FiveThirtyEight blog attempts to use a survey to get to a working definition.  Not their best work, but an interesting approach, none the less.  The survey only includes about 2000 respondents, and there are over 30,000 zip codes. so not a very robust sample. 

For those of you who want to cut to the chase, here are the rough break points they came up with:

Urban : > 2,213 households per square mile
Rural : < 102 households per square mile

You can read about it here: How Suburban are Big American Cities? 

How We Spend Our Money

FlowingData: How We Spend Our Money, a Breakdown
This interesting, interactive chart shows how our personal spending patterns have changed over the years.  

Gay Marriage State by State: A Trickle Became a Torrent

NY Times: Gay marriage timeline by state
In a few simple charts, The Times showed how quickly gay marriage laws were evolving across the United States.

Yield Curve 101

An interesting graphic from The NY Times Upshot section:

A 3-D View of a Chart That Predicts The Economic Future: The Yield Curve

Google’s recent deprecations ‘not cataclysmic’

A post on Directions Magazine about Google recent decision to deprecate the Earth and Maps APIs from Diana S. Stinton: Google’s recent deprecations ‘not cataclysmic’ 

Record Snowfall in Boston

 

Great visualization on twitter by Sam Lillo of how historic the snowfall has been this year in Boston.

Link: 30-Day Running Total Snowfall at Boston Logan Airport

The "Donut" Hypothesis

Just found this interesting map from a site called Radical Cartography.  Haven't seen anything I'd call "radical" yet, there there are some interesting visualizations.   One post in particular caught my eye: CITY INCOME DONUTS.

The goal was to test the "donut" hypothesis — the idea that a city will create concentric rings of wealth and poverty, with the rich both in the suburbs and in the "revitalized" downtown, and the poor stuck in between.  Not sure who to attribute this "hypothesis" to, but my own graduate research (yes, from a very long time ago) was built upon findings that the exact opposite was true.  Income doesn't form a geographic "donut", it more resembles a wedge shape, or in keeping with the pastry analogy, a "slice of pie". 

Regardless, the maps are interesting, and the site overall is worth perusing.