Investigate Charlotte’s EveryBlock
Posted on 15 Jul 2008 by Ben Ullman
A ton of location-based data is now at your fingertips with EveryBlock, which has recently expanded its coverage to Charlotte. We are thrilled to see Charlotte added as EveryBlock’s 5th city, joining the ranks of such great cities as Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. The site allows you to access a variety of local news, including images, articles, police reports, restaurant and building permits, new library items, and more. The information can be filtered and displayed in a number of ways, including interactive map views.
According to their FAQ page:
EveryBlock is a new experiment in journalism, offering a Web “newspaper” for every city block in Charlotte, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco — with more cities to come. Enter any address, neighborhood or ZIP code in those cities, and the site shows you recent public records, news articles and other Web content that’s geographically relevant to you. To our knowledge, it’s the most granular approach to local news ever attempted.
The site is pretty easy to figure out, and some helpful sample searches are offered to get you started, such as Restaurant inspections in University Park, Police calls in Barclay Downs, or Everything near 100 N. Tryon.
Go to the top-level page to change cities (they also cover, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia) or learn more about the project from the About EveryBlock page, FAQs, or their blog.
It’s impressive that out of all the cities in the country left for them to add, they chose Charlotte. This is a slick service