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A valuable tool, and a neat toy, for LI's future
Long Island Index releases an interactive website for tracking land use, housing, income, much more
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| | | By Lee Lutz | | |
December 10, 2008 | 03:00 PM
Planning for Long Island's future just got a whole lot easier — and more fun. Wednesday the Long Island Index launched an interactive website that provides a plethora of information on population, housing, income, diversity, land use and much more for anyone with an Internet connection.
"Information that experts have available at their fingertips," said Ann Golob, director of the Rauch Foundation that funded the project, "we want everyone to have."
The detail available on the website, which beginning today can be accessed by visiting www.longislandindex.org, is extensive to the extent of being mind-boggling. Incorporated into the site is the ability to overlay land use maps, housing density, population data and much more with satellite photos that are amazingly clear, even in very high magnification. Built-in tools allow the user to blend satellite images and land use maps into each other; another connects directly to the Census Bureau's database to provide detailed data that, as Golob said, was always available but for which few would have even known where to look.
Zooming in on any particular area of Long Island, made easy by a pull-down menu from which the user can just click one of the 290 hamlets listed, will reveal every parcel of land in Nassau and Suffolk counties. Data for the project was licensed from the two counties to permit the information to be made available.
Golob said the City University of New York Mapping Service was chosen to implement the project due partly to their experience in having created a similar online data source for New York City. The project was led by Steven Romalewski at CUNY's Center for Urban Research.
"Median wealth, the age of housing, fire districts, legislative districts," are all built in to the system, Romalewski said. "It took us an intense six months to put it together." He said a beta or test version of the site was made available to county planning officials and others in October. In leading this reporter through a webinar to introduce the system, Romalewski's enthusiasm was obvious.
According to the Index, government officials in New York City, San Francisco, Washington State, Oregon, Maryland and Michigan have lauded the site, and even "mapping consultants and government representatives from Australia, France, Germany, Japan, as well as the … United Nations" have indicated a favorable reaction to the new tool.
Golob said even more data will be uploaded to the website at the end of January to correspond with the latest edition of the annual Long Island Index Indicator Report. She expressed her hope that, in addition to the general public and government officials, students and schools will begin to use the site for research and learning.
The Long Island Index gathers and publishes data on Long Island and publishes periodic reports. It does not advocate for specific policies but instead "attempts to be a catalyst for action, by engaging the community in thinking about our region and its future," according to its website. The Index also issues monthly essays on issues facing Long Island that have been published in The Village Times Herald for several years.
"The maps will undoubtedly be of significant assistance to community groups, government agencies, private businesses and anyone else interested in the demographics of Long Island's communities," said Tom Isles, Suffolk's director of planning, who was one of those provided with access to the beta version in October.
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