Visualization dashboards revised on October 6th, 2020

 

Research Question: My original question was “Which streets of NYC do cars blast music the most?” and to seek the relationships with the outdoor events in the neighborhood.  Living in a vibrant area on the main street of Brooklyn, I experience the noise from cars especially when there are events nearby, from block parties to the parkwide concerts in the spring towards summer.  Needless to say, despite such regular seasonal patterns, the spring 2020 was indeed exceptional due to the Covid spread resulted in no amusement events were planned, so the streets were quite quiet replaced by the ambulance sirens.  Upon completion, the visualization should show how the pandemic affected the number of the 311 calls made during spring 2020.

 

Audience: My intended audiences are both who consider quiet residential area and who prefers affordable rent in a vibrant community.

Description: As I began my research, I filtered the 311 dataset by Cars/Trucks Music descriptor in order to distinguish other noise complaints because here in NYC, the other types of noise such as construction or residential claims are almost irresistible yet too random to pinpoint its potential susceptibility that regards to the location.  The data is also filtered for the months of March through July each year since 2010 to compare with the immense pandemic period.

 

Based on my hypothesis that the car/truck music noises are in connection with their neighborhood events, I initially constructed the graph to observe the total numbers of the calls logged with the descriptor since 2010.  However, the number showed different beyond assumed and I had to decide to focus on which area increased the numbers of the calls without external substantial influences.

Data and Design (← click to view full visualization dashboard):  Even during the stay at home order in March and April 2020, the total calls (1,874 + 1,687 = 3,561) increased by 27% from the previous year.  According to the Car Noise Complaints from March to July/2010 – 2020  bar chart, the total of the Spring doubled from approx. 12K calls to 25K in 2020.

If you compare the total number of 2020 Spring calls to the average of those in the last 5 years, it’s more clear in the second row of the Dashboard 1 with Spring 2015-2019 Monthly Average Calls and Spring 2020 Monthly Total Calls charts.  Each month’s average calls never surpassed 2,600 but in the last 3 months of the Spring 2020, they are significantly multiplied and even display the triple number of the previous years’ maximum average calls in June 2020.

In the next row at the bottom, Spring 2015-19 “Total” Calls by Area and Spring 2020 Calls by Area show more of the outcome with the density.  I set dots only for the calls made more than 2 times in the spotted area, and the opacity rate low at 20% as to demonstrate the layers with numbers called.  In reality, the calls during the Spring 2020 itself makes a pretty identical map to the “total” calls in the last 5 years.   You may see how the layers are thin if viewed year by year in the Map 2015-19 Worksheet.

 

Conclusion (← click to view full visualization dashboard)/Next Steps:  With that said above, the Covid spread has surely created extraordinary patterns in data, and in order to pursue my purpose for my intended audience, I also created a map 311 Calls on Car/Truck Music during Spring from 2015 to 2020 that identifies the distinct practices in 2020 compared to the regular years by zip codes.

The dark blue areas represent the area that are regularly reported on Car/Trucks Music.  The areas include the south Bronx (10456), Harlem (10026), Williamsburg (11211), Bed-Stuy (11221), Flatbush (11226) and East New York (11208) and it is obvious that they either possess affordable rent apartments or residents who call 311 immediately or both, either being gentrified or is gentrified.  And for those areas that are “being gentrified,” it may be the chance to rent an apartment if you don’t mind the music blasting outside the window like myself (and would even enjoy).  This apparently refers to the area that’s not suitable for the ones who prefer a quiet neighborhood.

 

The new pattern this year though, is the red area on the map.  Long Island City in Queens (11222) and Lower Manhattan (10002) had almost no car music complaints in the past years however this year.  Both of them consist of huge housing buildings so I would assume the time spent at home may have got something to do with it.

I also included articles on the traditional facet of the areas mentioned above in the map.

For the next steps, since my original hypothesis proved rhetorically opposite, I would like to deep dive into the causalities of the area shiftings of car music complaints.  For the nature of my research, I only came up with bar charts and the map allocation but in the sequel, I may focus on the red-colored area in the Dashboard 2 and create other types of charts to emphasize the features and attributes to find what may have changed the life patterns due to the impact from Covid pandemic.