Birthdays & Weddings

NYC's Open Data featuring birthdays & weddings

Independent Project

2023

Human Information Interaction, Data Viz

Methods & Visualisations: Data Analysis, Coding Data & Data Visualisations

Tool(s): Figma, MS Excel/Google Sheets

Guided by: Dr Irene Lopatovska, PhD

963

"Events"

772

Birthdays

191

Weddings

The Premise

How people chose to interact after the start of the pandemic, their relationship with socialisation, and non-work-related mobility, combined with NYC’s Open Data dataset on birthdays and weddings made for an interesting and compelling investigation.

NYC's Open Data

I came across NYC's Open Data Initiative and its data on permitted events in public spaces. These events included birthdays & weddings.

The data set is from all five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx & Staten Island). To limit the scope of analysis, I chose from January 2021 - June 12, 2023to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why Birthdays and Weddings?

Against the backdrop of the threat of COVID-19, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at celebratory milestones while people dealt with the collective trauma of the pandemic and while infection rates were fluctuating.

The Big Assumption

The civic authorities approved more events over time because people got more comfortable with the pandemic. This would then automatically lead to more events but the Open Data had another story to tell...

The Reveal

The data showed that the number of events (weddings and birthdays) had dipped from early 2021 to mid 2023.

This is despite the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had recommended, in 2021, that for those who are eligible to get vaccinated, gatherings held outside are safer.

The Data

Privacy Issues

The application for the permitted event doesn't require the names of the children to be mentioned but yet multiple instances of personally identifiable information (names and ages of minors) are made available.

At the time of the analysis, future events and their locations were also disclosed beforehand thus potentially creating safety issues.

Economic Downturn

From 2021 to 2023, the downward trend in birthdays and weddings was possibly due to a number of reasons:

An economic recession predicted for the latter half of 2023 or May 2024.
A study has shown that fewer people tend to get married as an “adaptive response” to an economic downturn.
Another reason for the dip in the number of weddings may be due to an increase in cohabitation rates.
In the case of birthdays, people are preparing for a recession and spending less.

Public Health

Does this downward trend also point towards decreased socialisation? Research has shown that this could adversely impact health and longevity.

The concentration of green spaces only in certain neighbourhoods/boroughs is also a cause for concern i.e. the access to green spaces is inequitable.

Takeaways

Terms of Use for the NYC Parks website should warn users from keying in personally identifiable information that may be disclosed as "open data".

Removing the event permit application fee could help increase social interactions among communities.

Park space acreage is disproportionate across different neighbourhoods — better urban design is the need of the hour.