Oakland Annexation

One-Liner

Mapping the historical annexation of land into the City of Oakland, California

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Background

This is a micro-project by @daguar (Dave) and @alanjosephwilliams (Alan). As Dave met up with Alan at the Oakland History Room of the Oakland Public Library, Alan mentioned that one of the librarians had just shown him a map she'd drawn (by hand) of the history of Oakland's annexation and growth. When Dave heard about this, he said, "(GeoJSON.io)[http://www.geojson.io]: Let's do this."

There was also the though that, hey, public librarians may well be a great target for some of the user-friendly web mapping tools that are becoming so prolific these days. This is in part a test-drive for this broader idea.

How We Did It, Technically

We used the excellent free web geo editor, GeoJSON.io, to digitally draw the shapes based on the Oakland Public Library's map. We then used the official city boundary data from Alameda County to place the actual current boundaries underneath.

We did partial commits of each shape (using GeoJSON.io to incrementally add) to create a history. This was inspired by @tmcw's /the-united-states-of-america project.

Data Quality and Caveats

This is a purely fun project in its first iteration and there is NO GUARANTEE that this data is precise at all. Use it at your own risk.

Contact / Getting Involved

Shoot us a note on Twitter at @allafarce (Dave) and @alanjosephwilli (Alan).