A basemap demonstration using TileMill and CartoCSS.
I designed a basemap of San José, with all of the most recent affordable, family housing units, according to the San José Open Data Portal as of September, 2016. The shapefiles came from the City of San José's government data download portal.
Using these tools, I sought to highlight isolation concerns associated with affordable housing, particularly those social, economic, geographic and cultural in form. Mapping the relative proximity of housing units to the cultural, social and economic hubs of a city help to elucidate many impacts of isolation, namely citizen buy-in to regional politics, economic prosperity in the form of job seeking/maintaining and taxing/public funding zoning.
I emphasized the visibility of major roads, making their proximity to the units conspicuous. I deemphasized freeways, highways and roads that are more often frequented by privately-owned passenger vehicles. Bus routes, train stops and other public transportation locations, which spur and/or are cultural, economic and social hubs, exist on major roads and not Interstate, State & US highways, in San José. Main roads are determined by the San Jose/zoning & planning governing bodies. Also emphasized are the parks, bodies of water, riverbanks and waterways near the homes, indicating access to natural recreational hubs/spaces.