West Coast Student Food Coops
Map explanation: I'm the co-founder of the UCLA Student Food Collective, a group that's trying to bring better food to campus and train students to be member-owners of a sustainable community business. It's an exciting project because we are one in what seems to be a growing movement of students who are trying to provide themselves and their campuses with better food, and over the course of the last year I've learned about local student food initiatives all over the country, but especially on the west coast. Some of these, like the Kresge Coop in Santa Cruz, have been operating since the 1970s, but many are recent start-up projects. I thought it would be interesting to not only map these student groups, but the network of resources they reference-- other local coops, farms, eco-centers, etc. What kind of food systems are these groups operating in? What kind of opportunities and resources do they have access to? I included a few goodies (hint: Berkeley has a song for you).
On neogeography: I remember when the fanciest map I knew was the pink and turquoise map of the California coast that my mom would fumble with as we drove up highway five from our small student apartment in LA to my grandparents' home in the Bay Area--and that was because I liked the colors. Now I have high resolution commercial satellite imaging at my fingertips. There are some fair warnings about what digitializing and democratizing all that information could mean: we'll start turning on our GPS instead of remembering where to go (who needs memory when you have a pretty iPhone?), that there will be hundreds of useless, misleading maps! ... and obviously I don't want the federal government making some kind of sweeping policy judgement on information from any old teen geek neogeographer cutting class to map.
But in the context, most of those warnings seem pretty silly. The potential that democratizing information unlocks is always much greater. Take the map above as an example: in relatively little time I made a visual representation of the work I'm doing in the context of my community, my peers, and my region. This map will probably grow, I'll send it to my friends at other coops, and they can add all the resources I missed--and that was just for a weekly lab assignment. On the other hand, if I want to ride my bike over to Santa Monica, I don't have to call Tony, who is probably busy in Tahoe saving the world for Americorps, because there already dozens of maps made by LA bikers on the internet. And I'll still probably bug Tony, but the point is that it's so much easier visualize and place yourself within your community now than it used to be. I think it's far more likely that with every passing year people will have a better understanding of what the world they move through looks like.
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Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Lab 2: Map Anatomy
1.What's the name of the quadrangle?
Beverly Hills, CA
2. What are the names of the adjacent quadrangles?
Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, Anglewood, Quadrangle six not listed.
3. When was the quadrangle first created?
1995
4. What datum was used to create your map?
The North American Datum of 1927, although the NAD 1983 is also shown by dashed corner ticks.
5. What is the scale of the map?
1 : 24,000
6. At the above scale, answer the following:
(a) 5 cm on the map is equivalent to how many meters on the ground?
1200 m
(b) 5 inches on the map is equivalent to how many miles on the ground?
1.89 mi
(c) one mile on the ground is equivalent to how many inches on the map?
2.64 mi
(d) 3 kilometers on the ground is equivalent to how many centimeters on the map?
12.5 cm
7. What is the contour interval on your map?
20 feet
9. What is the aproximate elevation in both feet and meters of:
(a) greystone mansion (in greystone park),
It lies in the range of 540-590 ft.
(b) woodlawn cemetary
140 ft
(c) crestwood hills park
630 ft
10. What is th UTM zone of the map?
zone 11
11. What are the utm coordinates for the lower left corner of your map?
3763000 m N and 362000 m E
12. How many square meters are contained within each cell (square) of the UTM gridlines?
1000
13. Obtain elevation measurements, from west to east along the UTM northing 377100, where the eastings of the UTM grid intersect the northing. Create an elevation profile using these measruements in excel. Figure out how to label the elevation values to the two measurements on campus. Insert your elevation profile as the graphic in your blog.
14. What is the magnetic declination of the map?
14 degrees east
15. In which direction does water flow in the intermittent stream between the 405 freeway and stone canyon reservoir?
It flows south! You can tell by looking at the elevations along the stream. In the northern areas, the stream is at a higher elevation, suggesting southbound flow.
16. Crop out UCLA and include as a graphic on your blog.
Beverly Hills, CA
2. What are the names of the adjacent quadrangles?
Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, Anglewood, Quadrangle six not listed.
3. When was the quadrangle first created?
1995
4. What datum was used to create your map?
The North American Datum of 1927, although the NAD 1983 is also shown by dashed corner ticks.
5. What is the scale of the map?
1 : 24,000
6. At the above scale, answer the following:
(a) 5 cm on the map is equivalent to how many meters on the ground?
1200 m
(b) 5 inches on the map is equivalent to how many miles on the ground?
1.89 mi
(c) one mile on the ground is equivalent to how many inches on the map?
2.64 mi
(d) 3 kilometers on the ground is equivalent to how many centimeters on the map?
12.5 cm
7. What is the contour interval on your map?
20 feet
9. What is the aproximate elevation in both feet and meters of:
(a) greystone mansion (in greystone park),
It lies in the range of 540-590 ft.
(b) woodlawn cemetary
140 ft
(c) crestwood hills park
630 ft
10. What is th UTM zone of the map?
zone 11
11. What are the utm coordinates for the lower left corner of your map?
3763000 m N and 362000 m E
12. How many square meters are contained within each cell (square) of the UTM gridlines?
1000
13. Obtain elevation measurements, from west to east along the UTM northing 377100, where the eastings of the UTM grid intersect the northing. Create an elevation profile using these measruements in excel. Figure out how to label the elevation values to the two measurements on campus. Insert your elevation profile as the graphic in your blog.
*Note: UCLA data points are outlined in yellow.
14 degrees east
15. In which direction does water flow in the intermittent stream between the 405 freeway and stone canyon reservoir?
It flows south! You can tell by looking at the elevations along the stream. In the northern areas, the stream is at a higher elevation, suggesting southbound flow.
16. Crop out UCLA and include as a graphic on your blog.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Lab 1: Maps I Like
KYF Compass Map
This map shows USDA grants to programs related to local food systems from 2009-2011. You can zoom in and out, search by theme (infrastructure, careers in agriculture, farm to institution). Originally part of a mandatory report to congress, it also has data sets, photo and video for stakeholders. Each colored circle is a grant, colored according to theme. If you click each one a window pops up with information about the grant amount, the program that it falls in, relevant congressional areas, and grant recipient.
I chose this map because I care about good, healthy food--sustainably and ethically produced, good for the workers, good for the planet--and do my best to support the livelihoods of farmers in my local community. A debate just recently fired around the sustainable food world when Sam Sexton from the Freakonomics blog posted an article about the inefficiency of local food. One of the things I thought was misleading about that article was how much Sexton made of the "local food lobby," which is relatively non-existant. I'd argue that most of the push for supporting small farmers and local food institutions has been very grassroots. Anyway, this map is interesting because it shows you exactly what funding the federal government has been giving the movement, when it was given, and to whom.
Source Map: Laptop Computers
Source: http://sourcemap.com/view/744
Source map is a crowd-sourced directory of product supply chains, mapping everything from Chiquita Bananas to TOMS shoes to hockey pucks and your iPhone 3. This particular image shows the birth and life of a laptop computer, marking upstream and downstream travel, including it's chip assembly location (Southeast Asia) where all that manganese comes from (Eastern Europe), and the wafer fabrication (The UKand the US). I like that Sourcemap tries to answer the big consumer question that growing more and more poppular--where do our products come from?--collaboratively, with crowds-sourced data (if The Man won't tell us we'll figure it out for ourselves!). But I do wonder about the accuracy of these maps, if anyone can contribute, and how correct information is filtered from inaccurate information, if it is at all.
Source map is a crowd-sourced directory of product supply chains, mapping everything from Chiquita Bananas to TOMS shoes to hockey pucks and your iPhone 3. This particular image shows the birth and life of a laptop computer, marking upstream and downstream travel, including it's chip assembly location (Southeast Asia) where all that manganese comes from (Eastern Europe), and the wafer fabrication (The UKand the US). I like that Sourcemap tries to answer the big consumer question that growing more and more poppular--where do our products come from?--collaboratively, with crowds-sourced data (if The Man won't tell us we'll figure it out for ourselves!). But I do wonder about the accuracy of these maps, if anyone can contribute, and how correct information is filtered from inaccurate information, if it is at all.
Wind Map
Source: http://hint.fm/wind/
I would be lying if I told you I thought this map was thematically or dynamically interesting. I might be an environmental studies major, but that doesn't mean I'm sitting at home watching the weather man for my daily meteorology fix, looking for patterns that hark evidence of climate change. The real reason I love this map is because it's beautiful. It also moves. I highly recommend clicking the source link and losing yourself in the silent, symphonic data. The surface wind data comes from the National Digital Forecast Database, but was designed and executed by a dataviz collaborative called hint.fm. It's revised once per hour, tracking the tracery of wind flowing over the US with a time stamp to mark the last download. Some major cities are depicted for reference, but the primary information presented is the flow and velocity of wind, with brighter areas representing stronger wind flow.
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