Each group member selected a topic to focus on and designed that page of the app.

• Alison Lanski: Parks
• Ken Nagle: Public Facilities
• Marisa Roman: Abandoned Properties
• Russ Thomas: Schools

The group as a whole compiled the various scripts into the final code. Data is from 2018.

As mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigeig has stressed utilizing data and analytics for effective governance and decision making. To facilitate productive and data-driven discussions between Mayor Pete and the city councilmembers about equity between their districts, Group 1 East will present a interactive shiny.io dashboard focusing on city-related data. When Mayor Pete and 4th District Councilmember Jo Broden (for example) sit down to talk about community issues, new infrastructure funding, or constituent requests, they can utilize this dashboard and explore various metrics to compare the 4th District to the others. Data-driven discussions will allow Mayor Pete to avoid charges of bias in his dealing with different areas of the city and reduce tensions by displaying objective information in a manner that is straightforward and easy to comprehend. Serious differences or inequalities that might need a full-city effort to rectify can also be discovered and, if the data streams are turned live, monitored in real time. Together, Mayor Pete and the city councilmembers can make better use of data to spur better decisions for a better South Bend.

To assist these discussions, East Group 1 is creating a dashboard that explores several facets of South Bend operations by city council district: abandoned properties, parks, public facilities, and schools. Each of these will be presented on a separate tab within the dashboard. By examining each item relative to city council district, the dashboard will provide consistency between tabs which will reduce the cognitive load of those interacting with it. For further consistency, each tab will share a general design theme as far as possible, like similar colors for different districts and uniform aesthetics for ggplot graphs. The general layout will be the same on all tab as well, with sidebars and interactive visuals laid out according to a single template.

We expect each tab to have a map showing the item of interest overlaid on the council districts and at least one other interactive feature that allows data exploration in a different format:

• Abandoned properties: The user will be able to select one or more abandoned property statuses to filter the properties on the district map, as well as the table of abandoned properties that will also be on this tab. Clicking a map marker will display a pop-up with additional details about the abandoned property.
• Parks: The user will be able to select which parks are displayed on the map by general park amenity. A popup will show the name and address of the park, and the color of the marker will indicate the type of park. A graph or table below will show demographic information about the park's location based on 2010 census data.
• Public facilities: The user will be able to select whether fire stations, police stations, or libraries are displayed on the map. The name and address of each facility will be available in a popup upon clicking on the facility’s marker. A bar graph summarizing the number of facilities (for the selected type of facility) by district will appear below the map. Since many of the facilities are outside the boundaries of South Bend, they will be categorized by their location relative to downtown.
• Schools: The user will be able to view a map of South Bend schools within district boundaries. The user will also be able to choose to display only public or private schools. The name and address of each school will be available in a popup upon clicking a school’s marker. A table summarizing the number of schools in each district will be displayed below the map

We believe that this dashboard will be useful and used by the mayor, given our understanding of his attitude towards the office and his personal roots. Mayor Pete was elected in 2012 and is currently serving his second term. He is accomplished: the youngest mayor ever of a city over 100,000 residents after his election, a member of the National Guard who has served in Afghanistan, and a former analyst for McKinsey Consulting.

Mayor Pete's youth and analytical mindset give him a vigor and decisiveness in dealing with city issues that may sometimes rub people the wrong way (for example, his 1,000 Homes in 1,000 Days initiative which resulted in several hundred abandoned and derelict residential properties being torn down). Issues such as racially-biased policing, poor public schools, and effective economic segregation by neighborhood are currently challenging the city. Mayor Pete's efforts to tackle such issues with analytics suggests he believes in transparency and objectivity as provided by city data. Since he took office, South Bend has seen an explosion of analytics-based action, including the "smart sewers" initiative to better control storm runoff and flooding. Even though these initiatives may not be perfect, Mayor Pete clearly believes in the value of better decisions through better data.

We believe that Mayor Pete would benefit in being able to share the power of city data directly with the city council in a way that is accessible for them as non-technical end-users. Furthermore, having a pre-made dashboard will save valuable time in his schedule and eliminate time spent by the mayor and his staff to prepare extensive materials before each sit-down with a councilmember; the data is already there and can be examined interactively to help answer novel questions, rather than being limited to what was printed on a powerpoint slide. Finally, it's common local knowledge that Mayor Pete probably has presidential ambitions. As someone aspiring to higher office, we suspect that Mayor Pete would like to present a strong argument that he did the best job possible in addressing local inequality and serving (along with the city council) all of his constituents in a way that improves the city as a whole, especially where it needs it the most. We believe better data and information in this dashboard will further these goals.