Heat Seekers
An interactive map by Nilkanth Patel.
As we anticipate the winding down of this unusually brutal winter, it’s worth taking stock of the season’s effects on residents across the city. The past several months have seen a steady trickle of reports of apartment buildings going days without working heat, even as temperatures dipped into the single digits. To gain a bigger-picture perspective on how this season has affected New Yorkers, I collected and mapped data on calls placed to 311 citing heating issues. The incident reports, reflecting the most recent available information and stretching back through November of this past year, number close to 40,000. This map plots each one of them, and includes a heat map rendering — a “lack of heat” map, perhaps — that depicts areas with the greatest density of complaints.