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The United Zipcodes of Craigslist came about as a follow-up
resource for a preceding infographic, the United States of Craigslist. The project came about as a means of
identifying practical economic zones irrespective of political boundaries. One clear source of persistent geographically
localized economies is Craigslist. The
“sites” defining the ecosystem and dispersion of the Craigslist online
community are the location of a great deal of pragmatic peer-to-peer commerce,
but are themselves only a named regional entity. How might these effective trade zones
crisscross the United States? If I were
to drop out of the sky and brush myself off, in which Craigslist tribe’s turf
would I find myself? This was addressed
in the initial “chalkboard” map visualization, the United States of Craigslist, within which the Voronoi method was used to grow
purely digital boundaries around Craigslist “site” seeds. This map was released publicly and soon
questions started coming in around more immediately useful formats of the
results –most commonly requests for a list of US Postal Service zip-codes
corresponding to each region. This was
an opportunity to create the follow-up visualization, the United Zipcodes of
Craigslist, which was featured as Fast Company’s March 5, 2012, Infographic of
the Day (http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669120/america-charted-according-to-craigslist). This map assembles these socio-economic zones
from the pile of zip-code area bricks (where zip-codes, and therefore
residents, exist).
What sorts of things can this, and other methods of
constructing pragmatic economic zones, tell us?
It gives us a regional framework that, while ethereal, is in many ways
more meaningful than the sometimes arbitrary delineations of political
boundaries. Over time these
socially-constructed regions, and others like them, can and will shift,
providing a fresh and scalable means of seeing and understanding communities.
Wow, this looks stunning. This is so inspiring for a young learner like me.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with all your future work.
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