We're working to help neighborhoods help themselves by giving them easy access to useful civic open data. We're ultimately hoping to develop an app that- by providing easier access to civic open data- lets neighborhood organization and neighbors:
Better understand their neighborhood through data What is my neighborhood- what are its boundaries? How many people live there? How much crime happens here?
More easily track development and others projects in their neighborhoods Is a new business opening down the street? Is a building being torn down?
Make better decisions as a community Do we have a lot of senior citizens that need help with minor home repair?
Become more effective advocates for their community We need more police patrols and codes inspections- here's the data
These days, we're seeing a greater availability of civic open data in cities across the country- Kansas City included! We believe this trend towards more open data is especially good news for the neighborhoods that make up the fabric of the city. Rich,up-to-date information about crime, development, and demographics is what neighborhoods need to make better decisions and to advocate for themselves more effectively with government agencies and other organizations.
Unfortunately, even though the data are out there, its potential power to help neighborhoods isn’t yet realized. Accessing civic data might mean hours of wading through spreadsheets, then trying to interpret confusing terminology, or having to go through a website that is not easy to use for the average resident or neighborhood leader. Meanwhile, civic data is usually not presented at the neighborhood-level geography. Right now, for instance, it’s not possible to see the population of a neighborhood or the number of crimes that have occurred there recently.
We’re making an application that displays relevant civic open data at the neighborhood level.
To help realize the full potential of this data in benefitting our city’s neighborhoods, we want this tool to be:
Users of the site will be prompted to select a neighborhood on the homepage. This will direct them to a "neighborhood page," where they will be able to select a number of datapoints they would like to study.
Those data would be summarized in simple boxes, like in this example from this [civic data dashboard] (https://dashboard.edmonton.ca/) from the City of Edmonton, Canada’s website.
Another aspect of Edmonton’s dashboard we plan incorporate in our app is the ability to view data over time. By clicking on one of the data boxes, a detailed explanation of the data would expand and the data would be displayed on a graph. The graph could be standalone, allowing multiple datasets to be added to it, to allow comparison.
Ideally, data with a specific location would be displayed on the page’s neighborhood map.
Thank you for assisting with this project! We can always use more coders to assist with what we are doing!
Our Application is built with Ruby on Rails as the backend, and React on the Frontend. In order to run theses, you need to have Ruby, Rails, and NodeJS installed on your device. There articles can assist. (Make sure you use node version 6.2.2)
NodeJS - https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/ Rails - http://installrails.com/
If you are not using windows, I recommend installing the node version manager as well
NVM - https://github.com/creationix/nvm
If you are new to these concepts, these tutorials will be of great assistance.
In addition, if you need assistance with git, I highly recommend going through this code school class.
When you have cloned the application, you need to install all of the required rails dependencies to start developing.
bundle install --without productionOnce you have checkout out this application, run the following command to setup your Database
bundle exec rake db:create db:migrate db:seedAfter your database is ready, you now need to install the node modules.
sudo npm installFrom here, what's left is running the following command to compile the react code.
sudo npm run webpackFinally, run the following command to start the server
rails serverWhen this command is kicked off, a webpack dev server should be running that continually rebuilds your React code. Essentially, if you change and of the code inside app/js, the application should refresh itself. If you don't see that occur, run the following command to manually recompile the React code.
sudo npm run webpackThat's all you need! Now head to http://localhost:3000 to view the application!
The first step is to create a container hosting a postgresql database. Create it, and keep in mind the IP address, port, and login credentials of the databasel.
For the app Docker is used to create an nginx and passenger build for the application. To use this, run the following command to get a secret token.
bundle exec rake secretFrom there, run the following command to build the container
docker build . --tag=neighborhood-dashboard-test --build-arg database_name=<database_name> --build-arg database_user=postgres --build-arg database_password=<database_password> --build-arg secret_key_base=<secret_key> --build-arg postgres_port_5432_tcp_addr=<database_addr> --build-arg postgres_port_5432_tcp_port=<database_port|5432>After that is complete, take the container, and run it on the box with the following command.
docker run -d -p 80:80 <docker_container_id_or_name>We are in the process of gaining control of the http://www.kcneighborhoodstat.org/ domain.
The Vacancy tab currently includes filters which pull data from a variety of sources to display on the map: