Good Use of Google Maps by an Advocacy Campaign

Mike Connery of The Opportunity Agenda writes in to talk about an excellent use of mapping and data by an advocacy campaign he’s involved in:

It’s a Google Maps Mashup displaying hospital closures in NYC in 1985, 1995, and 2005 layered over race and economic demogaphics of the 5 boroughs during those decades. A pretty interesting mix of technology, research and advocacy, I think. www.healthcarethatworks.org

Groovy stuff — it illustrates their point far more immediately than text alone would have done, and the ability to toggle between different years and different kinds of data lets you pack a lot of information into one screen. And of course it’s married with an email-your-state-officials function, tightly linking activist education and action. My only suggestion would be to maybe make the Take Action link a little more prominent — it usually doesn’t hurt to hit people over the head. I would bet that we’re going to see more and more uses of mapping technology for advocacy purposes like this in the future. Thanks for sending it along.

– cpd

Add comment January 16th, 2007 Trackback Bookmark on del.icio.us