Open Data
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Brilliant Analysis of Bus Costs at the Chicago Transit Authority Over at Curious City
WBEZ’s Curious City has an amazingly detailed take on what it takes to operate buses here in Chicago: Fare Game: When do CTA Buses Break Even. First off, they found great data that answers baseline questions of revenue and cost:
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Breaking Down the Homan Square Story from an Open Data History Perspective
Yesterday morning one of the most respected publications in the world, The Guardian, dropped a story bomb on Chicago: The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden ‘black site’. As someone who has worked in the open data movement for a while, who lives and works in Chicago, this one hurts. Let’s break it down:
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Uber and the Open Government Data Movement
Yesterday was something of an odd watershed for the open government data movement. Uber, the private transportation giant that has done, in the main, whatever it damn well pleases in cities all over the world (though there has been a growing regulatory backlash) announced a data sharing partnership with the City of Boston. There is…
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On the Odd Ubiquity and Invisibility of Speed Camera Data
Over there weekend, there have been at least three news stories have referenced super-specific figures on speed cameras as released by the City of Chicago, but none of them link to the actual data. I read these stories, and marveled and the incredibly specific information they’ve pulled from what seems to be a specific document,…
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A Look at the Databases Used in Reporting “City gives felon six-figure grant to open liquor store”
This morning I read the story, “City gives felon six-figure grant to open liquor store: Liquor store with ties to felon just the latest problem for a blighted neighborhood that has suffered for decades” by Chicago Tribune reporters David Jackson and Gary Marx. I was struck by two things: the complexity of the issue of economic development in an area that…