Guess how many DC homes have brick fronts

When the office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning & Economic Development (DMPED) launched its Economic Intelligence Dashboard in January, spokesman Joaquin McPeek painted it as “a continued effort of the Bowser Administration’s goal to use data to respond to residents’ needs and improve the District.”
Over the months since then, this mission has been carried out through the publishing of various city data sets, but also through the platform’s “chart of the week” project. Previous charts of past weeks have explored unemployment by ward, affordable housing and the educational background of D.C.’s residents.
This week’s chart, however, is a guest post — an appearance by one of our favorite D.C. data visualizers, Kate Rabinowitz of DataLensDC. In her chart of the week, Rabinowitz takes a look at what the District’s residential areas are made of.
“DC is a city with a diversity of people, businesses, and neighborhoods,” the post begins. “But walking along the city’s residential streets you may notice one aspect of the city that isn’t particularly diverse at all – facades of DC homes.”
Now, you can probably already guess that the majority of D.C.’s homes have brick facades. But did you know just how solid that majority is? According to Rabinowitz’s calculations, “more than three-quarters of home facades in DC are brick.”

DC's putting up more bricks than the @nyknicks! Our guest Chart O' Week via @DataLensDC https://t.co/0NCET89NTt pic.twitter.com/uG9sLcn4m3

— DMPED (@DMPEDDC) June 29, 2016

Every single Ward is dominated by residential buildings with brick facades, but Wards three and eight have, relatively speaking, the most diversity.
Rabinowitz’s analysis shows that the proportion of brick in each Ward ranges from 93 percent (on the high end) in Ward One, to 61 percent (low end) in Ward Eight.

Check out more of Rabinowitz’s work over on DMPED’s Economic Intelligence Dashboard.