The Relationship between Historical Redlining and Crime in San Francisco

This map shows the relationship between crime and historical redlining rankings in San Francisco. It features three main data layers: redlining polygons, crime counts, and police stations. The effects of redlining and the manner in which it reduces beneficial resources in certain neighborhoods is evident as historically redlined areas feature higher crime counts as well as more police stations, increasing the odds of unfortunate encounters between citizens and police officers.

Lake Tahoe Ski Resorts

This map illustrates the locations of ski resorts in the Lake Tahoe area. For this project, we were tasked with creating a map of a tourist location in California. We were also meant to demonstrate our ability to use halo effects, shadows, serif and sans-serif fonts, letter spacing, and callouts. The decision to strategically use these throughout the map was intentional and based on fundamental reasoning presented in Cynthia Brewer's book, "Designing Better Maps".

Cartography

After a few years of using GIS for analysis and spatial data visualization, I have learned the importance of good cartography. If you cannot portray your work in an aesthetic and easy to read way, then what is the point of even doing it? I have found myself getting better at cartography throughout my time as an undergraduate student, but two major events really opened my eyes to the benefits of great cartography and how I can optimize my map-making skills.

The first was my time working on Phase I of the Urban Trees Initiative. Dr. John Wilson and Beau MacDonald, the two PIs, set specific standards for my and my colleagues maps in order to maintain a consistent and clean look on our maps, which were ultimately included in the final publication. I learned about layout organization and font choice and from then on, paid extremely close attention to my layouts.

The second experience was my time taking SSCI 589 at USC with Dr. Bernstein. The class was all about cartography and how to design well. I learned a lot of fundamental skills and also developed the ability to use a variety of design techniques in order to create quality maps dependent on the anticipated audience.

Below, I have included a selection of some of my best maps (and one of my worst ones) and I hope you enjoy looking at them!

(Click on the arrow to the right of the layout to advance to the next map, or click on the image to zoom in and scroll through with better visibility)