Early last week I read an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about where the city’s police officers live, an important issue given the city’s loose requirement they reside within the city limits. Whilst most do, especially in the far Northeast, the Northwest, and South Philadelphia, a significant number live outside the city. (The city of Philadelphia is the same as the county of Philadelphia.) The interactive map included in the article shows just where the force lives according to the city’s payroll data.
The map works well. the five-bin colour scheme clearly registers and the designer kept the background muted in neutral greys that visually fall below the yellow. And this, a screenshot of the default view, shows the city and the four (Pennsylvanian) suburban counties; Chester is visible, but not labelled.
However, the article points out that a small number of officers report residences far from the city suburbs. Now to be clear, the map is interactive and the user can zoom out to his or her heart’s content. But this map appears early on and by the time the article describes one officer’s residence north of Altoona in Clearfield County—the article mistakenly says Centre County, best known as the home of Pennsylvania State University’s main campus—the map is far above.
I wish the designer had included a separate map highlighting these far flung residences. Here is a screenshot of how that looks in the same frame, but zoomed out to include the Clearfield County location.
These are clearly and literally outliers, and I suspect are likely are done for tax purposes—a number of the yellow zip codes north of Lehigh County are in the Pocono Mountains.
I also wonder, for all that the article discusses the rise in the total and share of extra-Philadelphia residences, could the article have included a chart showing the changes from 2017, the last time the Inquirer analysed this payroll–residence data.
Overall, though, I enjoyed this article and thought the map was well done.
Credit for the piece goes to John Duchneskie.