A tenant organizer, Rivergate — illustrative
The overlap chart was the first time an outside reader believed what the block had been saying for two years without a single dataset behind it.
Example case study — placeholder content for the casa-viva stack
A Neighborhood,
Told in Data
Six chapters, one invented neighborhood, and the layers a data story usually keeps in six separate spreadsheets — brought into a single scroll.
Begin ↓
01 · The Question
Nobody could say exactly why
Rivergate is not a real place. It is a placeholder neighborhood, invented so this stack has something honest to scroll through — see README.md before reusing any of it. Its tenants’ association, also invented, asked a familiar question: families were leaving, and no one could say exactly why. Rent records told one story, school enrollment a different one, bus schedules a third. Alone, each dataset was thin. What the organizers wanted was to see the three move together, so a pattern no single layer shows on its own might finally surface.
02 · The Layers
Five layers, one street
Five layers went into the map: housing, transit, health, income, and community threads — the informal networks a spreadsheet never captures. Each signal below is one placeholder observation, tagged to the layer it came from. Filter by layer and the list re-lays itself in place, with a spring-eased flip, so you can watch the shape change as a layer drops out.
- HousingRent outpaced incomeAsking rents rose three years running while renter income held flat.
- HousingEvictions filed near the schoolFilings clustered within four blocks of the elementary school, two years straight.
- TransitOne line, one directionThe only route runs toward downtown mornings, away from it every evening.
- TransitA stop removed in 2021The closest stop to the clinic was cut in a schedule redesign.
- HealthSame visits, longer waitsVisit volume held steady while appointment lead time nearly doubled.
- HealthAsthma calls cluster by blockEmergency calls concentrate on the three blocks nearest the freeway.
- IncomeTwo incomes, one job’s wageMost households now report two earners doing the work one used to cover.
- CommunityA tenants’ group, one year oldAn informal phone tree became a standing weekly meeting within a year.
03 · The Pattern
What five layers show that one doesn’t
No single layer explains the question. Rent alone is a housing story; a missing bus stop alone is a transit story. Put five layers on the same timeline, in the same blocks, and a different shape appears: the households most exposed to all five signals sit within four blocks of that removed stop. That overlap — not any one number — is what a spreadsheet keeps separate and a map puts back together.
04 · Field Notes
Three short notes
Illustrative and invented for this demo, not real quotes from a real engagement. Each opens for a little more context with a spring-eased height change; the short version is always visible first, with or without JavaScript.
A volunteer note-taker — illustrative
Cross-referencing it against clinic visit timing was the one thing a transit-only analysis would never have surfaced on its own.
A caseworker — illustrative
The map’s job was never to add a sixth number — it was to let five separate systems agree, once, on the same Tuesday.
05 · The Handoff
Gut this and refit it
This example ends here, on purpose — casa-viva is a stack, not a case study. The layered filter, the generative backdrop, and the spring-opened notes above are meant to be gutted and refit with a real story. Start with real data, in one array, and the scroll, the canvas, and the transitions already know what to do with it.