New Course! Summer 2016: Urban Data Visualization

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Summer 2016: URBAN DATA VISUALIZATION (URBDP 498A/598A)

  • Quarter: Summer Term A only
  • Credits: 3/5 credits
  • Meeting Schedule: Tuesdays &Thursdays 10:50-1:40
  • Registration Status: Open
  • Syllabus: Click here to view the course syllabus
  • Questions? Contact the instructor, Philippe Vaillant: vaillant@uw.edu

Overview:

Visual statements have always been an efficient means to speak about cities and influence urban decisions. Contemporary cities have grown extraordinarily complex and are analyzed through an increasing variety of social, economic and environmental data. New tools have been created to cope with the extraordinary availability of urban data, make sense of it and report it to citizens in a meaningful and appealing way. Interactive maps are changing city planning, and therefore having a grasp on how to critique and design them is an asset for anybody working in this field.

This course will teach the basics of harnessing urban datasets, storing them in databases, analyzing them and visualizing them in an interactive manner. It covers the use of database and basic queries for analyzing data as well as web visualization for making sense of it. The following software and languages will be used for the class: MySQL, Javascript, HTML, Node.js, Leaflet, etc. Urban web design truly lies at the interface of art, quantitative analysis and policy making.

The class will be split in groups of 3 or 4 students working on a specific visualization project, which will need to tackle a specific urban issue through the use of original and voluminous data. The students will need to come up with a narrative of their data, their analysis and their visualization. In addition to in-class quizzes, two outputs will be graded: the webpage hosting their visualization and an individual report explaining the individual contribution of the student.

This course can be challenging because it requires students to use new tools in a short length of time, but the skills are extremely useful for anybody working with urban issues. It is conceived as a design group project, which should be especially familiar to students from the built environment college.