Area comparisons on municipality, neighbourhood, and borough level: Shiny App in R for open data about menities and health

Abstract

Open government data can contribute to more transparency and a participatory governance. If the data is neighbourhood level data, it can support community-led actions and lead to changes in communities. However, open data can sometimes be difficult to find and interpret. This paper presents a Shiny application for the visualization of open data about amenities and health so that insights can be offered on both the state of the area and the comparison with other areas such that the average citizen is able to make sense of it independently. This is done by using the shinydashboard package to make a visually attractive app which includes two different tabs: for the data about amenities and about health. The app appears to be comprehensible for the average citizen, but for people without data literacy skills, data intermediaries may be necessary.