Categories ▸ maps

April 16, 2021

Municipal Fragmentation in U.S. Metro Areas in 3 Maps

Over on Twitter, Dan Immergluck (GSU) asked about what municipal fragmentation in the U.S. at the metropolitan level looked like. I, an expert on local government fragmentation, saw it as my duty to get to the bottom of this. I have the data to do it. It only needs to be reworked slightly.

June 16, 2020

Per Capita Independent Special Districts, 2017



May 16, 2020

Per Capita General-Purpose Local Governments, 2017



May 7, 2020

Per Capita Local Governments, 2017



January 31, 2020

Total Local Governments, 2017



September 23, 2019

Local Government Overlap



July 31, 2018

Long-Run Metropolitan Economic Growth in the U.S.

Full color, stylized maps created for my working paper on local political fragmentation and economic growth. These three maps examine long-run (1960-2000) growth in population, employment, and per capita money income among 314 U.S. metropolitan areas.

June 16, 2018

Maps in R using urbnmapr

The Urban Institute has released a new package for mapping state and county data in R, urbnmapr. Their posts can be found here and here. Since I occasionally write about how to make simple maps in R, I am going to quickly go from start to finish on making a county map.

February 14, 2017

Maps in R using library(maps), Update!

How to make maps in R using the library(maps), updated!

January 13, 2015

Property Tax Reliance in U.S. County Areas

The property tax has a number of desirable properties. State and local governments have been using it in the U.S. forever, and it’s incredibly stable (up to a point, see 2008-2009).