Exploring secondary data and building a map with Carto

In this project, you will explore a dataset from the City of Seattle and build a map from that dataset using the web-mapping platform Carto Builder. You will make decisions about how to filter and display the data and will critically assess the subjective components of data
categorization, visualization, and interpretation.

Part 1: Exploring a data set from Data.Seattle.Gov
In Project 2, you started to explore what data the City of Seattle makes available through its open
data portal, Data.Seattle.Gov. Here, you’ll take a closer look at one of the datasets available
there, examining its metadata and learning more about the process of data collection, thinking
about the quality of the data, and considering how the dataset mediates our knowledge and/or
experience of Seattle.
Step 1: Initial assessment
• Find the data set we’ll be working with at https://data.seattle.gov/Community/SeattleCultural-Space-Inventory/vsxr-aydq
• As you examine the data set, note some things about it:
o Date of creation and date of last update
o How many rows does it have? (These are the individual data points that make up
the set.)
o How many columns does it have? (These are the attributes about the data points.)
o Dataset owner (Note that if you had questions about the dataset, you could contact
the owner for more information.)
• Scroll down to the Table Preview, and look more closely at the columns and rows. Some
of the column headers are cut off and hard to read and we can only view 10 rows at a
time. Click the ‘Explore Data’ button above the table. This launches a new window with
a more complete view of the data table.
• Examine the data table for discrepancies or irregularities in the data. Take some notes on
this. You don’t have to limit yourself to these questions, but some questions you might
answer include:
o Are there any columns for which many of the rows are missing data?
o Do you notice any obvious data entry errors?
o Does any single column contain multiple or inconsistent forms of data (for
instance, categorical data and interval data)?
• Notice the columns titled ‘Stability Index’ and ‘Control Index’. Where did the numbers in
these columns come from? Are they derived data or captured data? The metadata doesn’t
seem to tell us. To answer these questions, we could contact the dataset owner, but it
might take a while to get a response. Instead, let’s do some searching for more
information.
Step 2: Looking for more background information
• The summary of the dataset says that it is part of an “ongoing inventory of cultural space
in Seattle.” Let’s see if we can find more information about this inventory. A Google
Geog 258
2
search of “Seattle Cultural Space Inventory” led me to this website:
http://www.seattle.gov/arts/programs/cultural-space, which explains how the City defines
a cultural space, gives links to various research reports the City has published about
cultural space, and more. Visit the page and peruse the ‘Definition of Cultural Space’
section to give you some background information on the bigger project that our dataset is
a part of.
• Scroll down to the section titled “How much cultural space is there in Seattle?” Follow
the link under this heading to the SpaceLab NW.
• This page links back to the dataset we were originally exploring and tells us a bit more
about the Inventory. Whenever you’re working with a new dataset, it’s a good practice to
search for as much information as you can find about the dataset and how it was created.
Often this means doing some searching to get more than what you’ll find in the dataset’s
metadata.
• Follow the ‘Want to be included?’ link in the blue menu under the image header on the
page. This brings us to a link to participate in the Cultural Space Inventory. Click on the
‘Click here’ button under ‘Organization.’
• This brings us to a survey with questions that seem to correspond to the columns in our
dataset. Excellent! This gives us a good sense of where the data in our dataset is coming
from. It’s very likely that the survey information submitted through this form is reviewed
and cleaned before being incorporated into the monthly updates that are published on
Data.Seattle.Gov, but now we know that the original data source is a survey completed
by leaders of arts organizations. And we’ve found the answer to our question about the
Stability Index and Control Index: it’s captured data, based on the self-assessment of arts
organizations themselves.
Step 3: Critically assessing the data collection instrument
• With survey data, the data collection instrument mediates the data produced through how
it asks questions and how it restricts a user’s ability to answer the questions. Designing a
good survey therefore takes a lot of work, and you could take entire courses on survey
methods for research. For a very basic guide to survey question design, review these
guidelines from SurveyMonkey, an online survey tool:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/survey-question-types/
• Now return to the survey for the Cultural Space Inventory
(https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSff–
NVc35kTpvZVc_6Aj5e_o6VlxkCcwcfje-lJhbcT0bprg/viewform).
• Notice how the survey frames different questions and how it restricts the kinds of inputs
the survey taker can use to answer different questions. Thinking back to the discrepancies
and inaccuracies you identified in the dataset in Step 1, what are 2-3 changes you might
make to the survey to improve the data this survey yields?

Part 2: Mapping the data in Carto
Step 1: Create a Carto account and look through the documentation
• Visit https://Carto.com/ to create a free account, and look over the documentation at
https://carto.com/learn/guides. You’ll be using Carto to make a point map, so
https://carto.com/learn/guides/styling/style-by-value might be particularly useful.
Geog 258
3
Step 2: Export data from Data.Seattle.Gov into Carto
• Return to the first place where we examined the data:
https://data.seattle.gov/Community/Seattle-Cultural-Space-Inventory/vsxr-aydq
• At the top of the page, click the blue ‘Explore Data’ button.
• In the dropdown menu that appears, select ‘Open in… Carto’
• In the pop-up window, select ‘Open’
• In a new browser tab, you should now see a map of the data from the Cultural Space
Inventory.
• Change the title of the map to something more meaningful and relevant than ‘Untitled
Map’ and edit the metadata to provide a link to the original dataset on the
Data.Seattle.Gov website.
• Now click the circle next to your map’s title to go to your Dashboard:
• This takes you to your Carto Dashboard, where you should see your new map saved.
Click the map to return to the map editor.
• Note that many data portals do not make it as easy as Seattle’s does to export data
directly in Carto. You can also upload data that you’ve downloaded from other sources
into Carto using the process outlined in Carto’s documentation.
Step 3: Creating new map symbolizations using the Carto Platform
Using the user guides available on Carto’s website (https://carto.com/learn/guides) modify your
map in the following ways:
● Symbolize the data points based on the value of one of the data fields (e.g., graduated
circles representing a numerical field, different colored circles for categorical data, etc.)
● Display additional attribute data of your choice in clickable pop-ups
● Change the base map from the default base map to a different base (there are many
options to choose from.)
● Add map elements such as title, legend, data source, ‘widgets’ that display data tables
and other text elements as you wish.
This is a dataset with many different columns of attribute data, and you have a lot of freedom to
map the dataset in a way of your choosing. You may include data from as many or as few
columns as you wish, and you can exclude certain data rows using Carto’s filter function if you’d
like. Think about the story you would like to tell with data and get creative! Avoid relying on
columns that have a lot of missing data (but don’t worry if some of the data is missing), and
make design choices that contribute to the story you want to tell.
Step 4: Publish your map to the Internet via the Carto platform
• When you’re satisfied with your map, click the blue ‘Share’ button in the bottom left
corner of the main edit screen for your map.
• Click ‘publish’, then copy the URL under ‘Get the link’ and paste it into your Write-Up
Part 3: Reflection and turn-in
● Write a description of the specific symbolization and design steps you took to make your
map, using language drawn from lecture and readings for this class. Reflect on the ways
Geog 258
4
you made choices about what to symbolize and how you emphasized some features of the
data set over others. Just like data collection, data visualization requires abstraction and
subjective interpretation. Are there elements of the dataset that you chose not to include
in your map? How might you have mapped the data using an alternative visualization
strategy to emphasize a different element of the dataset?
● Submit your Project 3 Write-Up on Canvas, being sure to include the link to your Carto
map