City Pulse

# Build "City Pulse": an interactive 3D mobility atlas of New York City taxi activity (January 2025) ## Goal A single-page, English-language web visualization that shows how New York moves across one month: 31 days, 24 hours, 263 taxi zones. The reader should be able to watch the city's daily rhythm, compare any day against a typical weekday or weekend, and inspect any zone in detail. It is a descriptive analysis tool, not a real-time or GPS product. Every visual must state what one mark represents. ## Data Sources (public): - NYC TLC Trip Record Data, Yellow Taxi, January 2025 (parquet) - NYC TLC Taxi Zones (263 zones, shapes + borough lookup) - NYC Open Data building footprints (Manhattan only, as visual context) Preprocessing (Python + DuckDB or pandas), output small static JSON files: - Filter invalid trips: pickup outside Jan 2025, non-positive or > 3h duration, unknown zones (264/265). - Per day, per zone, per hour: pickup count, median trip duration. - Per day, per hour: top origin → destination zone pairs (aggregated flows, top N per hour). - Reference averages per zone-hour: weekday average (23 days) and weekend average (8 days), per-day means, holidays kept in the weekday group. - Month-level fixed scale: max zone-hour pickups, used for every day so heights stay comparable. - Zone metadata: id, name, borough, centroid, label anchor. Simplify zone geometry. Files: month.json (daily totals, scale, top zones), weekday.json, weekend.json, days/2025-01-DD.json, zones geojson. Load the current day lazily; keep the first paint fast. ## Stack - One self-contained HTML file (or small Vite app) with Three.js 0.160 (ES modules via importmap), OrbitControls, EffectComposer + bloom. - D3 only for scales/formatting and small SVG charts. - No framework required. No external API calls at runtime; everything reads the static JSON. ## Layout (desktop 1920×1080 must fit in one screen without scrolling) 1. Header: "CITY PULSE / MOBILITY ATLAS", "Recorded replay" status, "Data & methods" link. 2. Status row: "A city, in motion." + three KPIs: citywide pickups (selected hour), vs. comparison average, median trip time. 3. Month strip: 31 day buttons as mini bars (bar height = daily pickups, weekends marked), prev/next day, date select, "Compare with" select (Weekday average · 23 days / Weekend average · 8 days). 4. Story bar: "Every movement leaves a pattern." with 4 chapters (01 Watch, 02 Unfold, 03 Compare, 04 Share) and "Start the story". 5. View tabs: 01 Connections, 02 Volume city, 03 Unfold 24h, 04 Ghost city, plus "Share finding" and "Create briefing". 6. Workspace: 3D map stage (left) + Location Insight inspector (right, ~330px, scrolls internally). 7. Timeline: Play day, speed (0.25×–4×), hour scrubber over a 24-hour bar chart of the selected day vs. average. Map stage height must adapt to the viewport (clamp between ~470px and ~780px) so the whole console, including the timeline, is visible at 100% zoom. ## 3D scene - Dark ground, zone outlines as thin lines, Manhattan building footprints as faint real-world context. - Camera: perspective, orbit + zoom, a recenter button. Keep the user's camera when switching views, except "Unfold 24h", which always reframes to show the whole matrix. - Hover a zone: tooltip with name and pickups. Click a zone: select it (updates inspector and flows). Views (each switch animates, no hard pops): - 01 Connections: aggregated zone-to-zone trips as glowing arcs with moving light particles; particle density ∝ trips; label the featured flow ("FROM / Midtown Center → TO / Upper East Side North, 71 trips / 18:00"). Caption: "Recorded zone-to-zone trips · schematic motion. Not GPS." - 02 Volume city: each zone extruded; height = pickups on the fixed monthly scale; selected zone highlighted.