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Talk: Mapping Chicago Politics and the Power of Data-Driven Storytelling (LaDale Winling)

Talk: LaDale Winling (Virginia Tech), Mapping Chicago Politics and the Power of Data-Driven Storytelling

Wednesday, Mar. 13 | 6 PM | IES 123/124

No city in the United States is more studied than Chicago and no city's politics are more notorious than Chicago's.  The familiar metaphors of the Chicago "machine" and emphasis on City Hall, however, obscures the granularity of political will, the locality and contested nature of ward politics, and the changing demographics of the city over time.  This talk featuring the Chicago Elections Project, a publicly-oriented digitization and mapping project, will assess the changing strength of racial coalitions in Chicago, and provide evidence for new narratives and models for understanding city politics.     

The Chicago Elections Project is a digital collaboration in process of scanning and digitizing a collection of 95,000 microfilm cards of elections results and ward maps with precinct-level data.  The project has the goal of making this data accessible and meaningful through mapping, data visualization, and interpretation of the electoral and political history of Chicago. 

Please RSVP to Kyle Roberts (kroberts2@luc.edu) and let us know if you have any dietary restrictions.