Datasets
Sources for the stories above. Each dataset has curated views, structured filters, and a playground for arbitrary queries.
Philly 311 service requests
Live snapshot of the City of Philadelphia's 311 requests, queried directly against phl.carto.com via our Cloudflare Worker proxy. Five tabs, real SQL, real maps.
L&I Violations
License & Inspections violation notices issued to Philadelphia properties — the enforcement side of 311. Carto snapshot covering 2007 through March 2020. Join with 311 data to ask: does calling correlate with action?
Philadelphia Fire Department incidents
Every PFD dispatch since 2024-01-01 — false alarms, EMS assists, hazmat, and the ~14% that are actual fires. Quarterly updates from the city's stat360_fire_incidents layer, queried through our ArcGIS proxy.
Vacant Property Indicators
The City's three-layer view of vacancy: ~8.1k vacant buildings, ~25k vacant lots, and ~22.6k census blocks scored by vacancy percentage. The bridge from "someone called about a vacant lot" to "how much of this block is actually empty."
PHS LandCare program
Every parcel the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society LandCare program has stabilized — cleaned, fenced, planted — across Philadelphia. The cleanest public record of where vacancy intervention has actually landed, with year + season + program metadata.
L&I Complaints
Every resident-reported complaint to License & Inspections — unsafe conditions, vacant buildings, illegal use, no-heat, construction without permit. The intake-side companion to L&I Violations; each row is one phone call, not one complaint.
NYC 311 service requests
Live snapshot of New York City's 311 service requests, twenty-four million rows from 2010 to today. Queried via SODA v3 against data.cityofnewyork.us through our Cloudflare worker proxy. Noise dominates; less than 2% is what most people would call 'social disorder.'
NYC TLC taxi trip records
One-and-a-half billion yellow / green / FHV trips since 2009. Stories use build-time DuckDB aggregates. The Playground tab runs DuckDB WASM in the browser — ad-hoc SQL against remote Parquet, no server required.
PLUTO — every NYC tax lot
The Department of City Planning's Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output. ~860K tax lots, ~70 fields each — zoning district, land use, building class, year built, residential units, assessed value. The substrate beneath nearly every quantitative urban-policy paper written about NYC.
NYC Restaurant Inspections
Every sustained violation issued to every food establishment by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. One row per violation per inspection. The grade card hung in your favorite spot's window comes from this dataset — and the famous 1900-01-01 placeholder dates.
NYC Lead Service Line Inventory
Per-property classification of which NYC buildings are still served by lead pipes. Published per the EPA's 2024 Lead and Copper Rule Improvements. The headline isn't the lead count — it's the staggering "Unknown" classification, the public-health data void at the heart of the city's 2037 replacement deadline.
HPD Maintenance Code Violations
Every Housing Maintenance Code violation issued by HPD. Joins to PLUTO via BBL. The substrate beneath every "worst landlord" feature, the join key for tenant-advocacy tools that pierce LLC corporate-veil opacity to identify serial offenders.
HPD Affordable Housing Production
Every affordable housing project the city has financed under Housing New York and successor programs. Unit counts segmented by AMI band — what "affordable" actually means depends on which bands you include in the headline.
MTA Subway Origin-Destination
The MTA's algorithmic reconstruction of where 4M daily subway riders actually go. Turnstiles only capture entries; exits are probabilistically inferred from each rider's next entry. The cleanest public view of NYC's transit circulatory system.
NYC LL35 Algorithmic Tools Report
The city's annual algorithmic-tools disclosure required by Local Law 35 of 2021. AI/ML systems used by city agencies that affect rights, liberties, benefits, or safety — including the controversial ACS predictive risk scores that prompted the GUARD Act response. Static editorial; no live adapter.
Chicago 311 service requests
Live snapshot of Chicago's consolidated 311 service requests, ~13.8M rows from 2018 onward. Queried via SODA v3 against data.cityofchicago.org through our Cloudflare worker proxy. Aircraft noise from O'Hare flight paths competes with graffiti, potholes, and rodent baiting for the top-ten slots — a different texture from NYC or Philly.
Chicago Affordable Rental Housing Developments
Every municipally subsidized, deed-restricted rental property the Department of Housing tracks. ~600 rows, joins to 311 and Health Atlas via community area number. Excludes Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH) and Housing Choice Voucher placements — what the city directly subsidizes, not the entire affordable stock.
Chicago beach water-quality automated sensors
Hourly Lake Michigan telemetry from Park District buoys at six Chicago beaches: water temperature, wave height, wave period, turbidity, and battery life. Six sensors at the 2014–2015 peak; only Ohio Street Beach is actively reporting in 2026. Companion to the city's 24-hour-lab E. coli advisory.
Chicago food inspections
Every routine canvass, license, and complaint-driven food-establishment inspection by the Chicago Department of Public Health since 2010 — restaurants, daycares, schools, grocers, long-term-care kitchens. ~310K rows. Anonymized at the inspector level: per-sanitarian variance isn't recoverable from the public release. July 2018 schema break.