Reposting our proposal to the blog — the original is in the comments section.
Team members are Eric Schooley, April Raine, Jim Duran, Ryan Regis, and Elly Couchum.
The project we envision would involve gathering information about income, gender, occupation, ethnicity, and religion from sources such as the Polk City Directory, Census Bureau, and the IRS/State taxes. The time period we will cover would be from 1863 to the present for as much of the Treasure Valley as we can handle.
Some questions we anticipate:
What jobs were located in which areas?
Are the patterns unique or to they follow larger patterns?
What are the correlations between our factors and geography?
What kind of segregation patterns will occur?
What effect would religion have on these patterns?
How did new developments (business/housing) affect these patterns?
Were women more prone to a specific field than another?
Was education a determining factor?
The methods:
We could use Google Fusion tables to analyze spatial information. This platform easily converts place names and addresses to GIS. We can then overlay our information on a standardized map. Then we INTERPRET!!!
Visualations
A modern map or historical maps with overlays similar to the San Francisco map, wherein the markers can be chosen in layers. We also envision intensity based markers when the data can be applied as such. More detailed information would be available by zooming into a plat.
http://www.boisepubliclibrary.org/research/Idaho_Information/ (POLK)
census.gov/cbdmap
irs.gov
bls.gov (bureau of labor statistics)
sutedentscomefirst.org