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It’s #FF. Whose Twitter followers have grown the most in past two months?

Neighborhood associations and civic groups can help their members understand how properties in their area are being affected by AVI by including the AxisPhilly map of property tax changes on any site. And the map can be tailored to your section of the city, so residents see other nearby house values. It’s easy to embed [...]

We believe the city’s decision to integrate its data sets with OpenDataPhilly will strengthen the movement toward more open access to public information, and support all the other government agencies, non-profit organizations, businesses, and individuals that are participating by providing open access to useful data.

The National Journal project The Next America has been releasing maps looking at the changing nature of suburbs in the largest U.S. cities. Just released: Philadelphia.

Are you better off living in Philadelphia or its suburbs? The answer depends on several factors, but a new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia Research Initiative can help you assess your situation.

Organizations and lobbyists spent $650,204 in the second quarter to try to influence legislation and regulations in Philadelphia, according to the latest filings with the City of Philadelphia Board of Ethics as compiled by PPIIN’s Lobbying.ph application. That is an 11% decline vs. the $730,193 spent in the first quarter.

A hat tip to Next American City, which reported on the new Community Investment Index map from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. Ryan Briggs describes it as “a free, online mapping program designed to make tracking the flow of government and non-profit dollars throughout the region much easier.” DVRPC notes: “Community Investment Index maps [...]

The map shows 168 homes that sold for exactly $150,000 between January 2011 and June 2012. Because of the disparity in the assessed value of these homes, the taxes this year (before AVI is implemented) will range from $473 to $2,870. The average tax is $1,731.

PolicyMap is a great web-based mapping tool developed by The Reinvestment Fund, a nonprofit community development financial institution that works across the Mid-Atlantic. A recent update email noted how you can embed maps in a site, so we thought we’d give it a try. Here’s a look at where creative and cultural businesses are located [...]

A hat tip to CurbedPhilly for calling attention to Bike Share Philly, which created a crowdsourced map to let bikers in Philadelphia vote on where they’d most like to see bike-sharing stations. Click on the map below to go and cast your vote.

The city’s Licenses & Inspections Department now offers maps that show zoning permits, code violations, rental licenses and more. L&I data has long been sought by civic hackers, so in addition to its own map, the department plans to offer APIs for some of the data.

Up until now, we’ve highlight maps we developed, but we hope this feature can also look at other maps that illuminate critical issues in Philadelphia. This week: an analysis done by the Philly-based geospatial technologies firm Azavea to understand how the Voter ID law impacts different ethnic groups.

If you bought a home in Philadelphia in the past 18 months, how much property tax would you expect to pay? The answer: It can vary widely.

South Kensington Community Partners invited PPIIN’s Neil Budde and PHLMetropolis’ Tom Ferrick to speak about the Actual Value Initiative at a community meeting July 26. Because the area that SKCP covers (South Kensington proper and a few adjoining neighborhoods) didn’t have many home sales in the first half of 2012 (the period covered by our [...]

This week’s map examines the percentage of residential property that is occupied by the property owner (as opposed to rental property). Can you guess which areas have the highest rate of owner occupancy?

Nearly three-quarters of a million dollars was spent in the first three months of 2012 by lobbyists seeking to influence legislation in City Council, and now you can see the companies and lobbying firms behind that activity.

Read the press release here.

The past five years have brought a lot of change to some Philadelphia neighborhoods. One measure of that change is the level of home sales in a neighborhood. To get a sense of what areas are changing the most, we decided to map the city based on the percentage of residential properties that have sold [...]

  This presentation was made to City Council in April to provide an overview of the potential impact of AVI on different neighborhoods and council districts. At the time, it seemed likely that the millage rate would be set around 1.25%, so this analysis is based on that tax rate. Since then, many have said [...]

The City’s year-by-year assessments should have been more reflective of a multiyear rise in housing prices.