What do you think you will learn when reading this title? Real-estate? Gold?
A number of years ago I came across this study about the “million dollar blocks” and found it fascinating. This is a really nice example of how geography and spatial analysis are so useful for bringing to life data and really gaining insights about a topic.
Million Dollar Blocks is a project about associating place with costs associated with incarcerated prisoners. Where incarcerated prisoners are from and the costs associated with keeping them in prison.
More than 2 million people are locked up in jails and prisons in the US costing the states in excess of millions of dollars each year. This project examined criminal justice system records and mapped where prisoners were from. What they found was really quite fascinating – a disproportionate number of prisoners were found to come from a certain neighbourhoods in many of the big cities in the US.
By mapping prisoner by geographic location, it became clear that prisoners came from a small number of neighbourhoods. In some places the concentration of prisoners was so high that when the total costs associated with each prisoner was calculated, they found that in some areas, the state was spending in excess of a million dollars a year to incarcerate the residents of a single city block! The map shows the costs associated with each block. The higher the costs the brighter the red.
Source: https://c4sr.columbia.edu/sites/c4sr/files/inline-images/SIDL_MDB_expenditures_1.jpg
In 2003, 11 blocks cost over 11 million to incarcerate people; hence the Million Dollar Blocks.
As captured here, geography and GIS are useful for bringing information together to gain insights about a problem from a different angle. The geography provides context so that the problem can be better understood. Geography matters.
Not quite what you thought you would be reading about, but hopefully more interesting. Check out the other cool stuff this group is doing.
Source:
Million Dollar Blocks: https://c4sr.columbia.edu/projects/million-dollar-blocks
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