I found a story in our city government's infrastructure wish list. We reported it because a wish of our own was granted: mapping software. Our choice was Maptitude - among the least expensive mapping software available. But we were pleased with our results. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published, on Oct. 12, 1997, a page-wide map showing city wards, major streets and the drainage, bridge and traffic-signal projects that the city planned. We skipped street reconstruction or resurfacing because a much larger map than we could publish would be required. The best part was that we could export our Maptitude file, helping our graphics department create what turned out to be a handsome map. The Public Works Department of Little Rock worked for months preparing a list of infrastructure needs. A detailed file showed exactly where and what types of projects were needed, with estimates of the costs. The total - more than $400 million-made it clear that the city was about to set its infrastructure course for the coming decades. But the thick printout listing about 6,000 projects in hundreds of pages just sat there. We changed that.
Wards forward
Before we could begin to map, we had to examine the data. Here's what we did. The department created its list using a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet. Importing it was a snap. First, we looked at the file using Microsoft Excel, cleaned up the data, and saved the file as a dBase IV file.
Then we went to work. We used Visual FoxPro to take quick looks at how the projects were divided by ward. That way, readers could quickly see how their areas of the city would be affected. We broke down spending by each ward. Then we broke down projects by ward.
We saw, for example, that in one ward drainage improvement was a vital need. In another, reconstructing streets accounted for 75 percent of the city's planned improvements.
With that information, we organized the data to show exactly where the major projects were planned.
We exported some data to Excel, where we created easy-to-understand pivot tables for the reporter to work with. Then, we used Maptitude to inspect visually the city's plans by opening a *.dbf file with the mapping software.
The city helped. The public works department has a skilled Special Programs division that uses ArcInfo mapping software. It was quite willing to share mapping files with the newspaper, generating ESRI-exported, uncompressed files that Maptitude could easily import.
We imported ward boundaries, streets and other files in order to create maps showing total costs and percentages for each ward. The map and spreadsheet printouts helped the reporter find the areas of the city he should ask about and visit.
Graphics challenge
But then what? Maptitude made maps that were just fine for reporters to look at, but maps fit for publication were entirely different. We had to find a way to export the Maptitude files - from a Compaq, no less - to a file that the graphics department's Macintoshes could handle. Our answer was software called MAPublisher. We downloaded and used the limited-time demo version of the software for this project. We exported our files, layer by layer, to ArcView shape files, which MAPublisher imported as a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator. While the files still needed considerable work to make them presentable, we were not starting from scratch. The result: Our detailed stories about infrastructure needs were accompanied by a six-column map showing the pinpointed projects. The large graphic included breakdowns by ward of the total number of projects, how much money was to be spent for each type of project, and the percentage of the money to be spent in each ward. The best reaction came at a meeting of city officials. They asked employees to give them the same detailed information as the newspaper had provided its readers.
Jeff Porter can be reached by email at jporter@ardemgaz.com