Perusing Chicago Public Library data: Rogers Park ranks high among bookworms, Great Gatsby flies off shelf and eBook checkouts on the rise http://wbez.is/17FiJGF

By Elliott Ramos

In our recent story on Chicago’s sidewalk cafes, we sought to figure out how and why they were focused on the North Side.

We delved into economic development projects, but also wanted to key in mass transit, which appears to play a big part.

The map below shows the 2012 sidewalk cafe permits alongside the CTA transit routes.

We wanted to get a take as to how people interact with public space as it relates to transit, so we turned to an expert.

Steven Farber, is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Utah. He recently published a study that examined the land use and transportation of 42 major U.S. cities, and the implications those systems have on social outcomes.

Farber said his research indicated that people are spending more time on their commute were not fully engaging in their communities.

“If people are spending more time on their commute, we did find that the first thing that drops out of someone’s life as they engage in more commuting is social-activity participation,” he said.

“People are still going to go shopping. They’re still going to eat; they’re still going to do these mandatory daily activities that they need to do. If you’re going to drive more, there’s only so many hours in the day. The first thing that drops out are the discretionary activities.”

While his researched focused on automobile commuting, it may well have resonance in Chicago.

The concentrations of sidewalk cafés are clustered in neighborhoods with close proximity to CTA “L” stations, especially the Red and Brown Lines. There are nearly a dozen on the block of the Southport Brown Line station and dozens within a 3-6 block radius of the Brown Line Armitage stop and the Red Line Belmont and Addison stops.

While sidewalk cafes are a manifestation of businesses aided by the number of restaurants in an area, density, zoning and streetscapes projects, mass transit plays a big deal as well.

“I don’t see anything insidious in the fact that these establishments  have arisen at these locations,” Farber said.

“I think that neighborhoods without those types of opportunities for social contact may not fare as well as neighborhoods that do have these cafes and sidewalks and better streetscapes, so from that perspective, spending money on neighborhoods that are already at a higher socioeconomic level might just further decrease the divide between good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods or high income neighborhoods and lower income neighborhoods.”

By Lewis Wallace

Participants in MigraHack L.A. in 2012. The immigration-themed civic hackathon is migrating to Chicago for a three-day event in Pilsen at the end of May. (Aurelia Ventura/RDataVox )

Chicago techies, data nerds and community groups are preparing for three days of events surrounding the National Day of Civic Hacking on Saturday, June 1. And the organizers say this is not your average hackathon — its goal is to bridge a digital divide and reach the general public.

“Civic hacking is the idea that as a resident of a place, you can change its makeup,” said Dan O’Neil, Executive Director of the Smart Chicago Collaborative. The three days of events will match citizens, journalists and community groups with programmers, developers and designers to dig into digital resources such as the City of Chicago’s data portal, and then develop ideas for websites and apps that help make public data more accessible.

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By Elliott Ramos

Chicago and Google teamed up this past weekend in hopes of creating a safer Chicago.

The city of Chicago in collaboration with Google hosted the Safe Communities Hackathon, an event which sought to have civic hackers and developers create applications that would improve community involvement in neighborhood policing.

There were seven teams, competing in Google’s downtown offices awash in caffeine and free sandwiches.

The city’s Chief Data Officer Brett Goldstein (@ChicagoCDO) was on site.

The city spokesperson said the goal was to attract some of Chicago’s most creative minds to design an app that would help residents communicate issues in their community to their CAPS districts.

Because of that, the police department had dispatched two commanders to weigh in, including Cmdr. Lucy Moy-Barosik, who heads up the department’s Bureau of Patrol.

The police department was able to open up part of their reporting system by way of API. The city’s department of Innovation and Technology listed the available ‘calls’ developers would have access to ahead of the competition.

Of the resources developers would utilize: crimes by location, mugshots, warrants, lists of most wanted, community events calendars and ability to submit reports.

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