- Research questions
In 2019 (from January 1st to September 24th), New Yorkers made 1,869,791 requests for service via 311. Among them, illegal parking accounts for 7.6% of all requests (n=141,444), making it one of the major complaint types. For this project, I am interested in all complaints made in 2019 related to illegal parking. I ask, 1) What do people usually complain about illegal parking (For example, blocked bike line/blocked hydrant/blocked sidewalk/commercial overnight parking/posted parking sign violation, etc.)? 2)Which borough has the most illegal parking complaints, and why? 3) Are there any connections between illegal parking complaints and different seasons?
- Audience
My interest in this project stemmed from my personal experience. It was my first year living in New York, once my friend gave me a ride to Queens. On our way, she needed to stop by a post office, but we couldn’t find any parking area close to the post office, nor did we see any “no parking” signs. We decided to take a risk and parked the car to the side of the road temporarily, which resulted in a parking violation ticket when we returned. This made me realize the importance of understanding what behaviors were considered as “illegal parking.” By visualizing different types of illegal parking complaints and their frequencies respectively, New Yorkers may be more aware of how to “park legally” in the future.
Understanding illegal parking complaints could also help city planners and policymakers measure neighborhood conditions and make better policies. For example, if certain neighborhoods/boroughs have much more illegal parking complaints than others, it could be a sign that more parking enforcement and government intervention are needed in this area. It is also possible that other factors, such as different seasons, may impact the volume of complaint calls. Perhaps people complain more over the summer. If so, developing a specific parking rule for the summer may help reduce the volume of complaints. Thus, it is worth exploring the fluctuations in the number of complaints over different months and understands its logic.
- Data and Visualization
The data is gathered from 311 Service Requests in NYC OpenData. I narrow my project to one complaint type, which is illegal parking, and I only look at the year 2019. In other words, the data includes all illegal parking complaints made in all five boroughs of New York City, organized by date from January 1st, 2019 to present. The data also includes the date of the call, the borough of the incident and its geospatial data, the complaint type, the responding agency, and the action taken on a given complaint.
I will visualize three figures to answer my research questions: 1. Illegal parking complaint by borough, 2019; 2. Types of illegal parking complaint, 2019; 3. Illegal parking complaint by month, 2019.
- Visualization
First, I want to visualize and compare which borough has the most illegal parking complaints. As we can see from Figure 1, Brooklyn has the most illegal parking complaints in 2019, followed by Queens, Manhattan, Bronx, while Staten Island has the least illegal parking complaints in 2019. I choose the bar chart because there are just five boroughs (i.e. they are discrete categories of data), and a bar chart is easy to display and compare the frequency of complaints made by different boroughs.
Next, I visualize different types of illegal parking complaints. From Figure 2, it seems that people complain about posted parking sign violations and blocked hydrants the most. The fact that people complain a lot about blocked hydrant reflects individuals’ willingness to intervene in the interest of community well-being and their concern for the city. Again, since I want to know what people usually complain about illegal parking (frequency), and different types of illegal parking are discrete categories, thus, I use the bar chart to compare.
Finally, I visualize the illegal parking complaints that happened in each month. I choose the line chart here because I want to compare the number of complaints in different months and seasons, and line charts can best visualize the trend in data over intervals of time. According to Figure 3, we can see most complaints happened in May, June, July, and August, with July having the most illegal parking complaints, which leads us to make the conclusion that during the summer, there are more illegal parking complaints. Probably due to the summer heat, people are less patient and tolerant towards illegal parking in the summer; or perhaps there are more people who are outdoors and park illegally in the summer than in other seasons.
- Next steps
We already know that Brooklyn has the most illegal parking complaints, while Staten Island has the least illegal parking complaints. Further research should look into different neighborhoods and see if there are any variations in the volume of complaints within each borough, and if there are certain patterns between different illegal parking types and certain neighborhoods. For example, maybe one specific neighborhood has most complaints related to the blocked bike lane, while another neighborhood has most complaints related to commercial overnight parking. These patterns will allow us to further explain and support our preliminary findings, and lead policymakers to make more targeted policy changes.
