Data Vis Dispatch, July 6

The best of last week’s big and small data visualizations

Welcome back to the third edition of Data Vis Dispatch! Every week, we’ll be publishing a collection of the best small and large data visualizations we find, especially from news organizations — to celebrate data journalism, data visualization, simple charts, elaborate maps, and their creators.

Recurring topics for this week include trees in urban neighborhoods, wildfires in North America, and how our habits are or aren’t returning to normal during — you guessed it — the pandemic.

This was a big week for trees, both urban and rural. We saw several reports on how tree coverage in US cities reflects a history of segregation:

The New York Times: Since When Have Trees Existed Only for Rich Americans?, June 30
National Geographic: How L.A.’s urban tree canopy reveals hidden inequities, June 30

And also warnings of how dry plants indicate a dangerous fire season ahead. (Can you guess the date with more US wildfires than any other?)

The Washington Post: Underpaid firefighters, overstretched budgets: The U.S. isn’t prepared for fires fueled by climate change, July 1
La Data Cuenta: Mexico Under Fire, July 1
The Wall Street Journal: Potential for Significant Wildfires Is Above Normal for a Growing Share of the U.S., July 2
The Conversation: Skip the fireworks this record-dry 4th of July, over 150 wildfire scientists urge the US West, June 30
Sebastian Meier, Fabian Dinklage: Klimawandelrisiken in Deutschland, July 5

After the collapse of an apartment building near Miami, Florida, these maps helped us understand the tragedy and where it could happen again:

The New York Times: Floor by Floor, the Missing People and Lost Lives Near Miami, July 3
The New York Times: Lax Enforcement Let South Florida Towers Skirt Inspections for Years, July 4

We found a lighter note in charts on the best place to aim during a penalty shootout and the effects of a recent crackdown on “sticky stuff” in baseball:

The Economist: Penalty shoot-outs are basically still crap-shoots, June 29
The Washington Post: How baseball’s war on sticky stuff is already changing the game, July 2

And this week’s general interest visualizations covered everything from a historical map of the Long March, to falling rates of Catholic weddings in Spain, to the intertwining timelines of Marvel movies:

South China Morning Post: A visual history of China’s Communist Party, July 1
El Diario: Las bodas religiosas pasan en dos décadas de rozar el 76% del total a apenas el 10%, June 29
Sam Parsons: “Rivers of Time,” June 30 (Tweet)

As votes were tallied in New York City’s mayoral primaries, we saw a fresh round of coverage for ranked-choice voting — this time with real numbers:

The New York Times: New York Primary Election Results, June 30
Bloomberg: Adams, Garcia Lead in Close NYC Mayor’s Race After Ranked-Choice Tally, June 30

Other political charts were retrospective, showing us the issues of the day throughout the entire Merkel chancellorship and this term’s ideological blocs on the US Supreme Court:

Zeit Online: Was Angela Merkel umtreibt, June 30
FiveThirtyEight: The Supreme Court’s Conservative Supermajority Is Just Beginning To Flex Its Muscles, July 2

Finally, COVID charts this week tracked our lifestyle changes during the pandemic and how quickly “normal” is returning around the world:

The Economist: Our normalcy index shows life is halfway back to pre-covid norms, June 23
The Economist: Covid-19 has persuaded Americans to leave city centres, July 4

What else we found interesting

David Fedman: “I don’t know who was designing Kanagawa Prefecture’s statistical yearbooks in the 1920s, but I sincerely hope they were being compensated appropriately,” June 30 (Tweet)
Reuters: How hot dog eating went from pastime to profession at Coney Island on the Fourth of July, July 2

Help us make this dispatch better! We’d love to hear which newsletters, blogs, or social media accounts we need to follow to learn about interesting projects, especially from less-covered parts of the world (Asia, South America, Africa). Write us at hello@datawrapper.de or leave a comment below.

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