WA Population by County

For this map I wanted to examine the population of Washington State by comparing the county populations. Population is a foundation for planning. The role of planning in terms of population is to direct where development will take place. These types of decisions, usually incremental, are made in conjunction with political leaders and other professionals and stakeholders.

Washington leadership has taken steps to regulate growth in more heavily populated areas using a law called the Growth Management Act (GMA). Each county and municipality is required to have Critical Areas Ordinances to protect and regulate activity. The less populated counties such as Whitman County are not required to create as much regulation as more populous counties under the GMA. Population concentration or de-concentration is also a factor in where lands can be conserved, where natural resources can be mined or harvested and where agricultural activities can take place.

The map shows a heavy population in King County and along the Interstate 5 (I5) corridor and in Spokane County. From the map I can see several counties that have a similar size population as Whitman County where I work. There are several counties with even smaller populations.

To make this map I downloaded population projections for 2009 from the U.S. Census website. The U.S. Census is a more reliable source for projections than any other because their projections are based on trends since population data has been collected. I also used the congressional districts I had downloaded for the first map. I also downloaded the county boundaries from the U.S. Census website. I cleaned up the data in Excel and used the JOIN function to put the data into the attributes table, joining the tabular data with the shapefile. I selected proportional symbol dots to illustrate the population data. I did not use the psychological scaling to resize the dots since there is only one largest dot and it is already covering the whole county outline. I did not use a white outline because there was not too much overlap like some of the population maps we have seen and created. I went back to what we learned in Lab 6 to make this map. Dots are a standard way to illustrate population, so I like using this method. It matches the use of raw data.

I had several issues with this map including several fixes that I believe are now repaired for the final version. I had selected WA state on the location map but when I was working on reprojecting, I lost that selection. I also did not like the green-on-green color scheme that I had originally chosen. The scale bars were a challenge because the scale was off until I reprojected but it was a little difficult to get a standard scale and to fit the scales into the map visually. I chose the projection that was default in the new data frame and reprojected the data to match that one: North American GCS 1983.

Map of the week

If you want to think about something freaky, let’s think about aliens not coming here as they would likely just destroy us. So my map of the Week has to do with the fact that I think NASA should listen to one of the smartest men on the planet and stop sending out communiqués to unknown would-be destroyers!

Link to the news article:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hv9rsWDHwN4cA9QfcOgoK-JsWU3QD9FC9OV01

Also, this internet map is in honor of our guest lecturer: Edward Flathers – thank you for the great lecture on web-based map!

Disclaimer: this map is used for educational purposes only. Source: Google maps. Dear Google, please kindly let me know if this is a violation of your copyright, I am in a class and I don't want to get in trouble with you. If it is a problem, I will take it off my blog. Thank you!

Population of Young Children in the City of Buffalo, NY

This dot map shows the population of the City of Buffalo in purple with a proportional symbol of the number of children under five in transparent spiral squares.

World Cities Population

This map is fun because it is my first 3D map! Lots of big cities. The center of Africa is interestingly less populated. But I think that those who like Burning Man could go and start that there.

Population of Seniors in Idaho

These two maps show the population of seniors in Idaho with Forest Service lands and without Forest Service lands.