Christopher B. Goodman
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cities (7)
counties (1)
data (2)
dataviz (21)
local govt (15)
maps (14)
pedagogy (2)
project management (2)
property tax (2)
public finance (3)
r (13)
special districts (4)
teaching (3)
technology (3)
urban (3)
dataviz
maps
local govt

Illinois Special Districts Per Capita, 2017

January 25, 2023

 

Illinois Special Districts Per Capita, 2017

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local govt
special districts

Florida is dissolving the Reedy Creek Improvement District, home of Disney World. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

April 28, 2022

I recently had the pleasure of writing a blog post for the London School of Economic’s US Centre Blog. It covers a recent controversy about the Reedy Creek Improvement District -- something I have a somewhat unique perspective on as a scholar of local governments and, in particular, special districts. See below for the full text of the post as well as a link to the original.

Florida is dissolving the Reedy Creek Improvement District, home of Disney World. What happens next is anyone’s guess.

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dataviz
maps
local govt

Horizontal v. Vertical Fragmentation

January 25, 2022

 

Horizontal v. Vertical Fragmentation

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dataviz
maps
cities

Municipal Incorporation in the US, 1789 - 2020

December 7, 2021

I've been collecting data on the earliest date of municipal incorporation for every active municipality in the US. This project is beginning to bear fruit.

Municipal Incorporation in the US, 1789 - 2020

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local govt
urban
cities

The structure of US local governments is often a poor predictor of local economic growth

November 17, 2021

I recently had the pleasure of writing a blog post for the London School of Economic’s US Centre Blog. It covers a recent publication in the *Journal of Urban Affairs* on the implications of local government structure on long-run economic growth in the US metropolitan areas. See below for the full text of the post as well as a link to the original.

The structure of US local governments is often a poor predictor of local economic growth

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technology
project management

Academic Project Management Notion (Update)

July 14, 2021

About a year ago, I wrote a small post about how I use Notion as a project management tool. I didn't really expect it to be as popular as it is, but I also didn't expect myself to change too much about the process either. It was working. Fast forward one, sort of over, but not really pandemic later. Things have certainly changed, sort of. This post is meant to explain some of those changes and to provide a template for anyone who wants to give this a spin.

Academic Project Management Notion (Update)

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local govt
special districts

Special Districts: America’s Shadow Governments

April 22, 2021

I recently had the pleasure of writing a short blog post for the UIC Government Finance Research Center's blog. The piece is a bit of a short explainer on special districts in the United States and a few fiscal issues that arise. It's by no means comprehensive but part of a broader focus I have on writing more popular or policy focused work on these relatively hidden local governments. Below is the intro (I don't have full re-print rights) and a link to the original.

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r
dataviz
maps

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

April 16, 2021

Over on Twitter, Dan Immergluck (GSU) asked about what municipal fragmentation in the U.S. at the metropolitan…

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

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cities
public finance
data

The Price of Residential Street Parking

September 15, 2020

Cities, broadly, manage a number of public assets with which they provide public services. Some of those services are somewhat passive in the sense that no active labor…

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dataviz
maps
local govt

Per Capita Independent Special Districts, 2017

June 16, 2020

Per Capita Independent Special Districts, 2017

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project management
technology

Academic Project Management using Notion

June 11, 2020

I'm horribly bad at project management. It's not usually something that is specifically taught in graduate school even though it's incredibly important to an academic's professional life. There are many ways to go about this (low tech to super high tech), but the purpose of this post is to explain one tool that I have found incredibly useful and flexible. That tool is Notion (notion.so). Notion can do way more than I am going to explain (see Using Notion as Your Second Brain), but this is how I use it to keep track of writing projects throughout the process of development to publication.

Academic Project Management using Notion

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dataviz
maps
local govt

Per Capita General-Purpose Local Governments, 2017

May 16, 2020

Per Capita General-Purpose Local Governments, 2017

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dataviz
maps
local govt

Per Capita Local Governments, 2017

May 7, 2020

Per Capita Local Governments, 2017

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property tax
public finance

Speculating on the Impact of COVID-19 on Chicagoland Property Taxes

April 17, 2020

Over on Twitter, I worked through a how the current COVID-19 pandemic might influence property taxes in the Chicagoland region…

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dataviz
r

How to Desaturate Figures for Publication using R

February 25, 2020

"Many academic journals require figures in greyscale. This can be done relatively simply by printing to PDF as greyscale; however, this doesn't give you a) a way to preview what the resulting figure will look like and b) much control over the process of desaturation. If you're making figures in {R}, this process is almost as easy as the more simplistic print to PDF method."

How to Desaturate Figures for Publication using R

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dataviz
maps
local govt

Total Local Governments, 2017

January 31, 2020

Total Local Governments, 2017

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pedagogy
technology

How I Record Lectures

January 19, 2020

I am teaching online again and that means recording audio lectures. A lot has changed (or I perceive it to have changed) since the last time I did this so I endeavored to find a way to record/edit all my lectures on an iPad Pro. To be clear, I made this harder on myself by restricting everything to be done on an iPad. But I want something reasonably portable in case I need to record on the go.

How I Record Lectures

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dataviz
r

Custom Coefficient Graphs

December 3, 2019

Recently, I was asked by a reviewer to include a large number of regression results in a manuscript I am revising. In my experience, attempting to display more than a few…

Custom Coefficient Graphs

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local govt
public finance

Why your sprawling, low-density suburb may be costing your local government money

October 21, 2019

I recently had the pleasure of writing a blog post for the London School of Economic’s US Centre Blog. It covers a recent publication in Public Budgeting and Finance on the implications of dimensions of urban sprawl on per capita public spending by local governments in the US. You can find more information about…

Why your sprawling, low-density suburb may be costing your local government money

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dataviz
teaching

MPA/MPP Degrees Conferred

October 15, 2019

Created in R with ggplot2. Full code and data can be found here. Data from the IPEDS Data Center for CIP 44.04 (MPA) and CIP 44.05 (MPP).

MPA/MPP Degrees Conferred

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dataviz
r
local govt
maps

Local Government Overlap

September 23, 2019

Local government overlap is calculated similar to Berry (2008) by taking the ratio of all special districts, school districts, and overlapping townships to municipalities and non-overlapping townships in a…

Local Government Overlap

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teaching
pedagogy

Students Writing Their Own Exam Questions

September 11, 2019

Writing good exam questions is hard. If done correctly, the student should have no idea the lengths you went through to write a good set of questions. But maybe they should…

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local govt
special districts

How a type of local government you may have never heard of may be costing you a bit more

March 20, 2019

I recently had the pleasure of writing a blog post for the London School of Economic’s US Centre Blog. It covers a recent publication in State and Local Government Review on the implications of overlapping local governments on local public employment in the US. You can find more information about this…

How a type of local government you may have never heard of may be costing you a bit more

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r
dataviz
urban
cities

Zipf's Law

December 12, 2018

Zipf’s law is a constant curiosity for urban observers. According to the law, the size of a city (i.e. population) is inversely…

Zipf's Law

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r
dataviz
counties
local govt

County Supervisors per 100,000 Residents

November 30, 2018

Created in with ggplot2. The relevant code is below.

County Supervisors per 100,000 Residents

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r
dataviz
cities
urban
maps

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

July 31, 2018

Full color, stylized maps created for my working paper on local political fragmentation and economic growth. These three maps…

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

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r
dataviz
cities
local govt

Canadian City Councilors per 100,000 Residents

July 28, 2018

Created in with ggplot2. Full code and data can be found here.

Canadian City Councilors per 100,000 Residents

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r
dataviz
cities
local govt

City Councilors per 100,000 Residents

July 28, 2018

Created in with ggplot2. The relevant code is below.

City Councilors per 100,000 Residents

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r
dataviz
special districts

Special District Creation and Dissolution

June 30, 2018

Special District Creation and Dissolution

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r
dataviz
maps

Maps in R using {urbnmapr}

June 16, 2018

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…

Maps in R using {urbnmapr}

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teaching

Teaching Public Finance with John Oliver

April 18, 2018

Ever so…

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data

State Collection of Local Government Public Finance Data

March 31, 2017

In a conversation with a few colleagues, the question came up of which states collect public finance data on their respective local governments. Over the years…

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r
dataviz
maps

Maps in R using library(maps), Update!

February 14, 2017

I’ve previously written about how to make simple, print ready maps in R using library(maps). Unfortunately, the more recent versions the county database has some issues with…

Maps in R using library(maps), Update!

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property tax
maps

Property Tax Reliance in U.S. County Areas

January 13, 2015

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…

Property Tax Reliance in U.S. County Areas

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r
dataviz
maps

Maps in R using library(maps)

July 11, 2013

My last few posts have included a large number of maps to visualize the Census of Governments’ organizations data. Rather than using a full fledged GIS program like ArcGIS…

Maps in R using library(maps)

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    2013-2022 Christopher B. Goodman All content licensed under
    Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0

    ORCID 0000-0002-8565-9714
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