Incredible new crime mapping tool (Chicago, Oakland: crime rates, neighborhoods, zoning)

[prairiestate]

This should help put an end to debates about how safe a neighborhood is. Just select your neighborhood, and you'll see a map and a list of crimes over the past 50 days. Scroll all the way to the bottom, and you'll see a link to click on that will show all crimes over the past 12 months. When you get to that page, on the left side, there are various filtering criteria, including type of crime. This really puts things into perspective.

Crimes by neighborhood | EveryBlock Chicago (http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/locations/neighborhoods/ - broken link)

For instance, there has been some debate of the safety of the gentrifying areas of Kenwood and Oakland. Over the previous twelve months, there have been 15 armed robberies with a handgun in Kenwood, and 4 in Oakland. This compares with more then 30 in the Loop, 40 in the South Loop, and 50 in Lakeview. I know this isn't an apples to apples comparison. The neighborhoods vary in geographic size and population, and Lakeview is quite large in both categories. If someone has the time to calculate per capita crime rates, please do. At a glance though, I think it gives a good perspective on safety. Rogers Park is more comparable in size to Lakeview, and it has had 47 armed robberies with a handgun. On the other hand, it had 3 carjackings, versus one in Lakeview, and 5 homicides compared to 1 in Lakeview. It doesn't seem like Rogers Park is too bad. On the other hand, there has been some interest in the potential gentrification of South Shore. This a neighborhood that even urban pioneers might think twice about. There have been an incredible 287 armed robberies with a handgun over the previous 12 months, close to 1 per day.

[dddane]

this isn't new... this is the chicagocrime.org web site renamed...

it feeds off of the data from Citizen ICAM, which is the official site from the city that's also been around for years... CLEARMAP Chicago Police Department Geographic Information System

[prairiestate]

Well, you're right, strictly speaking, it's not new. But the format is new, and it is much more streamlined and easier to use then previous tools.

[Attrill]

The crime reports portion of Everyblock has been around since 2005 - it was originally chicagocrime.org and became Everyblock this past January with the addition of reviews, property transactions, zoning, etc. The site is the work of Adrian Holovaty who is one of the principle creators of the Django framework for Python. Everyblock is a great example of what can be done with Django.

Anyways, it is an awesome tool that is continuing to grow.

[Drover]

Unfortunately what everyblock doesn't have is crime data going back to late 2005 like chicagocrime.org did. Everyblock only goes back to mid-2007. That makes it a lot more difficult to track long-term crime trends that can provide better context to the overall crime picture of any given locale. I asked the site admin about this. He told me they were working on integrating the old data into the new database and that the 2005-2007 data would be up shortly. That was several months ago.

One of my major concerns with Everyblock is the mapping by neighborhood and official community area function. First, I'm a little wary of using the neighborhood filter since so many neighbors have nebulous, ill-defined borders. Second, while not having the ability to search by community area was one of the things that frustrated me about chicagocrime.org, I've noticed there are some inaccuracies in everyblock's official community mapping. This strikes me as odd since the official community borders aren't in dispute. Sometimes chunks of official communities get left out while other chunks get included that are not part of the queried community. That adds an extra step if you're trying to get crime info about a specific community where the database's boundaries are off.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by prairiestate

This should help put an end to debates about how safe a neighborhood is. Just select your neighborhood, and you'll see a map and a list of crimes over the past 50 days. Scroll all the way to the bottom, and you'll see a link to click on that will show all crimes over the past 12 months. When you get to that page, on the left side, there are various filtering criteria, including type of crime. This really puts things into perspective.

Crimes by neighborhood | EveryBlock Chicago (http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/locations/neighborhoods/ - broken link)

For instance, there has been some debate of the safety of the gentrifying areas of Kenwood and Oakland. Over the previous twelve months, there have been 15 armed robberies with a handgun in Kenwood, and 4 in Oakland. This compares with more then 30 in the Loop, 40 in the South Loop, and 50 in Lakeview. I know this isn't an apples to apples comparison. The neighborhoods vary in geographic size and population, and Lakeview is quite large in both categories. If someone has the time to calculate per capita crime rates, please do. At a glance though, I think it gives a good perspective on safety. Rogers Park is more comparable in size to Lakeview, and it has had 47 armed robberies with a handgun. On the other hand, it had 3 carjackings, versus one in Lakeview, and 5 homicides compared to 1 in Lakeview. It doesn't seem like Rogers Park is too bad. On the other hand, there has been some interest in the potential gentrification of South Shore. This a neighborhood that even urban pioneers might think twice about. There have been an incredible 287 armed robberies with a handgun over the previous 12 months, close to 1 per day.

I don't know about the rest, but for one, Oakland's population is less than 10,000. So don't get too taken in by the crime stats that look nice and low on paper. Calculate them per capita and they don't look so low any more.

[adrianh]

Originally Posted by Drover

Unfortunately what everyblock doesn't have is crime data going back to late 2005 like chicagocrime.org did. Everyblock only goes back to mid-2007.

Hey there,

I lead the EveryBlock project and just wanted to give you an update on this -- importing the older data is still on my to-do list. Sorry it's taken so long, but we've been distracted with adding a bunch of other stuff (like every Chicago building permit since Jan. 1, 2005).

Originally Posted by Drover

One of my major concerns with Everyblock is the mapping by neighborhood and official community area function. First, I'm a little wary of using the neighborhood filter since so many neighbors have nebulous, ill-defined borders. Second, while not having the ability to search by community area was one of the things that frustrated me about chicagocrime.org, I've noticed there are some inaccuracies in everyblock's official community mapping.

Yeah, neighborhood boundaries are always contentious...We're not using the official community areas, because they don't necessarily line up with colloquial "neighborhood" boundaries. We're using neighborhood boundaries provided by the city's GIS department, along with some changes that we've manually traced/drawn based on definitions from various sources.

If you know of any neighborhood boundaries on EveryBlock that are particularly off, let me know (adrian@everyblock.com), and I can change 'em. Down the road, I'd like to make it so that people could change the boundaries directly on our site -- stay tuned!

Adrian

[Drover]

Originally Posted by adrianh

Hey there,

I lead the EveryBlock project and just wanted to give you an update on this -- importing the older data is still on my to-do list. Sorry it's taken so long, but we've been distracted with adding a bunch of other stuff (like every Chicago building permit since Jan. 1, 2005).



Yeah, neighborhood boundaries are always contentious...We're not using the official community areas, because they don't necessarily line up with colloquial "neighborhood" boundaries. We're using neighborhood boundaries provided by the city's GIS department, along with some changes that we've manually traced/drawn based on definitions from various sources.

If you know of any neighborhood boundaries on EveryBlock that are particularly off, let me know (adrian@everyblock.com), and I can change 'em. Down the road, I'd like to make it so that people could change the boundaries directly on our site -- stay tuned!

Adrian

Hi Adrian:

Thanks for taking the opportunity to respond. I've actually been working on and off on mapping out the official community area boundaries on Google Maps using their "draw a polygon" function. Is this something that would be useful to you?

[adrianh]

Originally Posted by Drover

I've actually been working on and off on mapping out the official community area boundaries on Google Maps using their "draw a polygon" function. Is this something that would be useful to you?

Sure! Drop me a line at adrian@everyblock.com and we could give a shot at integrating your boundaries. Very cool.

Adrian

[Drover]

Great. I'll send it off to you once it's done. And thanks for adding the mapped results of filtered search results. Makes it a lot easier to interpret the results and spot crime clusters and possible problem areas.