See You In June

Satellite Launch

United Nations, Summit of the Future, 2024

Space Debris

United Nations, Summit of the Future, 2024

Same Sex Love is Not a Crime

United Nations LinkedIn, 2024

Refugees

Source: UNHCR, 2023

United Nations, LinkedIn, 2023

United Nations, UNHCR, Instagram, 2023

Global Wealth

United Nations, Twitter, 2023

Coral Reefs Climate Action

United Nations, How is climate change impacting the world’s ocean, 2022.

António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Twitter, 2022.

António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Twitter, 2023.

United Nations, LinkedIn, 2022.

UN Environment Programme, LinkedIn, 2023.

Coral Reefs Cliamte Action

Women's Representation

International Women’s Day 2020

World Economic Forum “These UN animations show how women are represented in society”

UN Women Medium “Visualizing the data: Women’s Representation in Society”

Women’s full and equal participation in all facets of society is a fundamental human right. Yet, around the world, from politics to entertainment to the workplace, women and girls are largely underrepresented.

International Women's Day Quotes

Women Heads of State

The 20 countries with a woman head of state/government

Oscar Nominations for Best Director

Jan 2020

World Economic Forum, “This is how many women have been nominated for best director in the Oscars’ entire history”

15 Defining Moments for Women in 2019

Dec 2019

Medium @UN_Women

World Economic Forum, “Fifteen pivotal moments in women’s history in 2019”

119 Years of Nobel Laureates

Oct 2019

ABC News, “Where are the women in this year’s science Nobel Prize awards?”

5 innovations that have advanced women’s rights

International Women’s Day, 2019

World Economic Forum, “5 innovations that have advanced women’s rights”

International Day of the Girl Child

Social Media Package for the International Day of the Girl Child, UN Women, 2018

United Nations Twitter: Gender Bias

UN Women Twitter: Gender Bias, Unemployment, Future Jobs, Education

UN Women Instagram: Gender Bias, Sanitation

Six Essential Objects for Refugee Women and Girls

Refugee Day Social Media Package, UN Women, 2018

UN Women Digital Library

UN Women Instagram Sanitary Pads, Razor Blade, Flashlight

Women Tech Heroes

Social media package for Girls in ICT day, 2018, UN Women

UN Women Digital Library

Remote Sensing Ulaanbaatar

June Jeongwon Seo, 2015

Data: https://landsat.usgs.gov

Rapid urbanization took place in Ulaanbaatar over the past decades, and the surging population caused a sprawl of improper housings around the urban core. This study attempted to measure the unplanned districts by conducting machine learning techniques with composite bands of satellite images. The satellite image of Ulaanbaatar is as of August 4, 2015, and is provided by Development Seend Libra.

The satellite image was processed with the false-color composite of bands 10, 7, and 3.

The urban core is represented by the coarse-grained pixels with the colors purple and blue. The sprawled part is represented by the fine-grained pixels with the color cyan. The dark green part represents plantations. GIS input this information and created shapefiles accordingly.

The urban core was about 21,257 acres, and the sprawled area was about 48,885 acres as of 2015. This figure shows that slums are double the size of the properly planned area. This can imply that the population growth is much steeper than the provision of housing infrastructures in Ulaanbaatar.

Hitler's Magic Words

2016

Data: hitler.org

Hitler was known for his ability to control people's sentiments with his oratory. In this study, I've looked at the most frequently used words from his speech to find a change in the pattern after he becomes the führer of Nazi Germany. Hitler used the words 'people' and 'Germany' the most along with 'state', 'nation', and 'reich'. I could assume that he was addressing nationalism to his audience to gain popularity before takes over power.

The word 'jew' appeared a lot in his speech before he became the führer. He used the word 8.5 times every 1,000 words. It's known that Hitler blamed a certain group of people who were not responsible for Germany's hardships just to evoke collective emotions. After taking over the complete power, he started to use the word 'war' more frequently, along with 'interest', 'peace', 'army', 'force', and 'soldier'. I could assume that he was trying to divert the public's attention to external affairs and justified his regime and wars to nullify unfair treaties that are made with neighboring countries after WWI.

Gap Between Most, Least Expensive Housing Listings in Prospect Park

June Jeongwon Seo, 2016

Data: StreetEasy, January 2010 - December 2015, All Housing Types + Any Bedrooms, Prospect Park Submarket in Brooklyn NY

Animated Version

Be Quiet (Please): Analyzing the Use of Social Media in the Provision of City Services

June Jeongwon Seo, J. Darcey, S. Lee, 2015

Data: TwitterAPI, NYC 311 Complaints

Airbnb Alert

June Jeongwon Seo, 2016

Data: InsideAirbnb, StreetEasy

Landlords in NYC have been turning their rental units into short-term lodging because Airbnb provides financially more profitable options for them to capitalize their asset. This force has been undermining existing rental housing stocks in certain neighborhoods.

The financial incentive here is defined by the difference between median rent and median Airbnb listing price by neighborhood. The top three NYC neighborhoods with the highest financial incentives are Columbia Street Waterfront District, Sheepshead Bay, and Ditmars-Steinway.

The difference between Airbnb income and median asking rent in Columbia Street Waterfront District is $3,010. Two other neighborhoods have more than $2,000 financial incentive to rent the space out through Airbnb.

Interestingly, all of those three neighborhoods are located near the water. Maybe this implies that water feature is valued differently to tourists than to residents in NYC.

BONUS

L Train Pain

June Jeongwon Seo, 2016

Data: StreetEasy

Block 2296, Brooklyn

June Jeongwon Seo, 2015

BLOCK 2296

Block 2296 is located in the North part of Williamsburg Brooklyn. It is surrounded by Wythe Avenue, Berry Street, North 11th Street, and North 10th Street. This block has largely two structures. The west half is old Hecla Iron Works Building (100 N 11th Street), and Vice Media and its sub-companies building (90 N 11th Street). I traced stories of this block.

INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURES

Williamsburg was home of manufacturing starting from 19th Century. Since this block is located in the vicinity of the East River Waterfront and most of the manufacturing businesses back then used maritime transportation, all the building structures were constructed in late 19th century (PLUTO, NYC Department of City Planning). Hecla Iron Works Building was built in 1894. It is now designated as a landmark. The building was the company’s headquarter and was also a showpiece for the types of architectural and ornamental work that the Hecla produced. The company was a main architectural ornament supplier for many of the cast iron buildings in New York City (Landmark Preservation Commission, 2004).

As manufacturing industries declined in 70s and 80s, these structures became underutilized and remained vacant. Starting from early 1990s, artists who are looking for joint living and working spaces started to move into those structures and because of that, many of manufacturing structures in this neighborhood turned into art production studios. This was really popular among artists because converting old industrial structures into working and living spaces was relatively easy and cheap. Su Friedrich, the director of the documentary film ‘Gut Renovation’ moved to Hecla Iron Works Building In 1989 with her girlfriend and ex-girlfriend.

REZONING

In 2005, NYC Department of City Planning rezoned Greenpoint and Williamsburg Waterfront and half of the block was included as a part of the rezoning plan. The city government rezoned the neighborhood from industrial use to residential mixed use. Su Friedrich video documented her experience with new residential development that occurred in Williamsburg after the rezoning. The film ‘Gut Renovation’ is about how once budding artistic community transformed into luxury condos. She continued to film the transformation of the neighborhood until she lost her apartment. Southern part of Hecla building became a luxury loft, and rents for 1 bedroom there is about $5,000 per month (StreetEasy, Compass/).

Hecla Iron Works Building converted to mixed use. Before that this building use to have four dance studios, one escape the room company, and it still has Brooklyn Brewery storage, and North 11th Shoe Repair Shop. I interviewed people who work at shoe repair shop and they say the rent increased abruptly after the rezoning, and most of the business that requires larger spaces left to other parts of Brooklyn. I sneaked in to the building, looked around, and there were some evidences of dance studios such as big mirrors and wooden floors. Brooklyn Brewery is a longtime tenant and currently uses ground floor as their storage. The actual brewery is across the street.

HYPER-GENTRIFICATION

Adidas plans to bring a design studio on a 2nd floor of the building (The Real Deal). The company signed a lease for 20,000 square feet and asking rents in the building were about $70 per square foot (Crain’s). That roughly sums up to $1,400,000. I am not sure if its monthly thing or annual thing but either way that is a quite amount of money considering that this building use to have small local businesses before Adidas plan to move in. The building is owned by landlord Solomon Jacobowitz and he purchased the building along with four others in 2011 for $16.4 Million. If those rent is calculated monthly, landlords will break even their cost less than 2 years.

The building was originally eyed for a residential conversion. But recently, creative companies are increasingly looking in Williamsburg for office space, and that boosted demand for the creation of such space in the neighborhood. If Adidas really moves in, it will be the first multilateral company moving into this block and that might create whole different impact than 2005 rezoning did.

The space will serve as a creative office, for three biggest shoe designers Denis Dekovic, Marc Dolce, and Mark Miner to lead the new venture. Those three shoe designers were employees of Nike. Nike launched a lawsuit against three of its former executives. Nike alleged that the designers stole trade secrets and plans when they left the company. Bringing those three shoe designers and opening creative office in Williamsburg was Adidas’ big move since Nike overtook Adidas as the second-largest sportswear maker. Having Adidas studio can be catalyst of office development in northern Williamsburg.

What was fascinating about this block was that it has all the evidence of change in industries in the neighborhood and how this change in economic base affected the characteristics of the neighborhood. And it was very ironic that the biggest antagonist of gentrification from the Williamsburg Rezoning used to live here and make film about it and now this block is about to take in one of the biggest sports apparel company and about to stark office development in northern Brooklyn.

Seasonal Variation of PM 2.5 in New York City

June Jeongwon Seo, J. Darcey, S. Lee, 2015

Data: NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, NYC Open Data

Using readings on particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) from the various air monitoring stations in New York City, we ran a Kriging analysis to predict the pollution levels in the city’s various census tracts each season, from the beginning of Fall, 2014, to the end of Summer, 2015. Based on these predictions, we located the five census tracts with the highest predicted PM 2.5 levels. Generally, Washington Heights in upper Manhattan and the northwestern corner of Staten Island display the highest PM 2.5 predictions, perhaps due to prevailing southwesterly winds blowing pollution from the industrial and port areas of nearby northeastern New Jersey.

Of the four seasons, Winter suffers from higher PM 2.5 values in most, if not all, of New York City’s census tracts. This is likely due to the rise in household emissions, largely stemming from increased oil usage to heat homes and office buildings. The winter phenomenon of temperature inversions often traps pollution so that it cannot escape the region and dissipate: this may explain why the same areas - upper Manhattan and northwestern Staten Island - feature the highest PM 2.5 values in Winter as in other seasons.

The interpolation also provided the probabilities of predictions exceeding nine, the critical level of PM 2.5; these probabilities only exist for Winter and Summer, as theese are the only months when PM 2.5 values exceed the critical level. As expected, the probability than PM 2.5 values will exceed the critical level eclipse 80% in large swathes of upper Manhattan, northwestern Staten Island, and the northwestern Bronx.