Mike Connery of The Opportunity Agenda writes in to talk about an excellent use of mapping and data by an advocacy campaign he’s involved in:
It’s a Google Maps Mashup displaying hospital closures in NYC in 1985, 1995, and 2005 layered over race and economic demogaphics of the 5 boroughs during those decades. A pretty interesting mix of technology, research and advocacy, I think. www.healthcarethatworks.org
Groovy stuff — it illustrates their point far more immediately than text alone would have done, and the ability to toggle between different years and different kinds of data lets you pack a lot of information into one screen. And of course it’s married with an email-your-state-officials function, tightly linking activist education and action. My only suggestion would be to maybe make the Take Action link a little more prominent — it usually doesn’t hurt to hit people over the head. I would bet that we’re going to see more and more uses of mapping technology for advocacy purposes like this in the future. Thanks for sending it along.
– cpd