Civic Return: How Equitable Is Your City’s Green Space?
Civic Return uses open data to measure how much public green space
is available in Kentucky cities, based on total square footage per
resident. The goal: transparency in land use, equity in investment,
and clarity for citizens and planners alike.
About the Project
The Civic Return dataset pulls from publicly available land use and
population data, standardizing it to reflect the square footage of
accessible green space per resident. It’s a tool for residents,
journalists, and local governments.
Why I Built This
Green space is often unevenly distributed, and I built Civic Return
to make that disparity visible, using publicly available data. This
project represents my interest in equity, local governance and
usable civic technology.
About This Build
This project was built using vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It
includes a responsive layout, a dynamic form, and modular JavaScript
to control behavior and interactivity.
All data is processed locally through URL parameters and matched
against a known dataset. The interface is kept intentionally minimal
to ensure fast load times and clear navigation — even for
non-technical users.
Tech Stack: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript (vanilla), Git,
Open Data CSV
FAQ
Where does the data come from?
Kentucky's public land records and census population estimates.
What counts as green space?
Parks, open fields, and tree-covered public-access land — not
private yards or golf courses.