Urban planning is undergoing a revolution in methods. Data science techniques allow us to do transparent and reproducible work while reducing common problems with bias and correlation.
Data for Housing is a data science training program that will prepare planners and policymakers working across all sectors to manipulate and analyze California’s housing and transportation data. This six-day workshop will train agency personnel to use modern computational data analysis tools, with a curriculum built out of California-specific and publicly available datasets.
Despite the emergence of significant new datasets, public sector employees tend to lag the private sector in learning how to manipulate and analyze data to answer key policy questions. Often, agencies work in their own silos, unable to solve problems that extend across domains. For instance, many cities struggle with an imbalance of housing and jobs, resulting in sprawl and long commutes. Yet, planning for transportation facilities and housing development takes place within different agencies, working at different scales – and with datasets that are rarely connected.We invite you to join us for an immersive, fast paced workshop where you can learn how to use Python to work with publicly available datasets to answer important questions about your work, take on new skills and challenge your organization to foster growth and connectivity using data science.
Planners and policymakers often need to create multiple drafts of spatial analytics and visualizations. For this Sensitive Communities map, we went through 75 different versions at the request of our many partners. This was possible because we used simple code. to incorporate changes and iterate the different versions.
In the Bay Area, many cities have created priority development areas (PDAs) without a good understanding of where jobs are located. Spatial analytics allow us to overlay PDA boundaries on MTC/ABAG’s forecasts for local job growth (in this case, by 2040) in order to minimize conflicts and refine our plans for infill development.
Simply reformatting a couple variable names can provide a multitude of different visualizations for various indicators with the click of a button.
In this course, you will be taught the fundamentals of data science using Python by several of Berkeley's top urban, data, and social scientists. The workshop examines California housing and US census data and draws from proven research developed by the Center for Community Innovation, the Urban Displacement Project, and the D-Lab. We will empower participants with the fundamentals of data science, big data, and visualizations. You will learn tools to identify housing trends in your region and isolate important variables driving these trends which will then make your organization's planning processes more robust and transparent.
Ask and answer the right questions to improve your analytics. Our workshop will bring you up to date on what urban scholars and practitioners are doing to make new breakthroughs in research.
Big data is not exclusive to the private sector. Use large volumes of data to automate processes and monitor progress on your projects.
Mapping is integral to planning. Before, we had to rely on high cost mapping software to build our spatial analysis. Now we can use open source software and code to produce maps at scale.
Move beyond simple graphs and charts and learn creative new ways to spread knowledge about your analysis from the previous workshop.
Learn cutting edge machine learning techniques to be able to build new datasets and analyze data in innovative ways.
Program costs differ by organization type. We also offer discounts. An early bird discount* of 10% applies to all who apply before March 13, 2020. In addition, we offer a “buddy discount”: if both you and one or more of your colleagues sign up, we offer a discount of 40% (see below). Finally, for those with special hardships, we will be providing scholarships to attend the training.
| Organizational Type | Price | Discounted Price |
|---|---|---|
| Private/Individual | $5,000 | $3,000 |
| Public/Government | $2,500 | $1,500 |
| Non-Profit | $500 | $300 |
*Early bird discount is applied at checkout and will be reduced from your entry.
We will not be hosting a workshop for the year of 2021. We do hope to provide an improved experience in the near future. By pressing the apply button on top, we will put you on our member listserv and keep you updated on workshops in the future.
If there are any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to us via email for quick questions or to set up a phone call.
