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Cities with data

How New Orleans the “banana republic” may thrive again :: There’s a visionary path ahead from a fading oil-based economy to a burgeoning blue economy

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How do you bring a once-proud city back to life? In the last 100 years, New Orleans’s natural resources have been sucked out and taken away, and the profit almost entirely taken by outsiders.

The jewel of a city that New Orleans once was became colonized by Big Oil, which deposited wages and warped the local economy while it extracted wealth.

But one person in particular has looked closer. Veteran architect, urban planner, and economic development specialist Greg Delaune sees a better story ahead. He says the banana republic-like economy contains seeds for revival of the Gulf region’s “blue economy” — already worth an annual $3.8 billion and growing fast.… Read the rest “How New Orleans the “banana republic” may thrive again :: There’s a visionary path ahead from a fading oil-based economy to a burgeoning blue economy”

The story made me do it Scapegoating data storytelling to cover bad data analysis

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Now and then a data analyst pipes up with a warning about storytelling. It’s a menace, they say. It’s so potent, they say, that it stands to corrupt even data, the twenty-first century’s supposedly immaculate compass.

Most recently, that corruption touched even a hackathon involving Canadian women’s rugby, as documented in a recent blog post. In “The Dangerous Allure of the Narrative,” Oscar Goodloe spells out how narrative seduced him and his fellow hackers.

Toward the end of a “lighthearted hackathon,” he and his data analytics team realized their results were invalid. They blamed the irresistible influence of storytelling.

The competition began as competing analytics teams received a set of data.… Read the rest “The story made me do it Scapegoating data storytelling to cover bad data analysis
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Real cities don’t start at “ping” Smart City Diaries has gone on the road to find a new definition for smart cities

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What do diaries have to do with smart cities? And who do two women think they’re doing trying to reset the agenda for smart cities? Doesn’t everyone know that smart cities are about data technology that goes “ping”?

“Ping” is the notion satirized by Monty Python in its sketch about a team of doctors more concerned with fancy machines than with the patient. The Acostas are part of nascent trend to supplant that notion.

Late last year, this mother-daughter duo set off on a trek from city to city across the U.S. to answer the fundamental question of what smart cities are.… Read the rest “Real cities don’t start at “ping” Smart City Diaries has gone on the road to find a new definition for smart cities”

Two recent “storytelling” tools for public audiences Toucan spoonfeeds data’s insight while Juicebox cultivates data skills

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The data-shy among us have two friends in the software business. One a few years old and one new this year. Nashville, Tennessee-based Juice Analytics rolled out Juicebox in February to join Paris, France-based Toucan Toco’s product Toucan for a pain-free “story” based entry into data analysis.

Important as such products are for the business audiences, they’re critical for the public as governments at all levels, particularly local. Understanding data will quickly become a basic skill of city life. The pandemic only accelerated that requirement.

On the surface, Toucan and Juicebox appear similar. Each touts “data storytelling,” and both come clothed in bright colors.… Read the rest “Two recent “storytelling” tools for public audiences Toucan spoonfeeds data’s insight while Juicebox cultivates data skills”

This is Datadoodle

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Where’s Datadoodle? It’s been on everyone’s mind, absolutely everyone’s. Well, not really. Most longtime readers probably assumed that the latest sabbatical was just Datadoodle doing business as usual. Still, the latest pause, from late 2019 until today, was just one of several in the blog’s 14 year history, 

This time was slightly different. I took a full time job as an industry analyst to see if the benefits of a paycheck and camaraderie compensated for lockstep. It didn’t. But I did get to spend 12 months with a remarkably intelligent and humane team. I also learned a few important things about industry analysis, some of which I will apply here.… Read the rest “This is Datadoodle”