Eighty per cent of Canadians now live in cities. That has huge implications for the nature and quality of Canadians’ lives and livelihoods. How do we pay for and build successful cities? How do we remain connected to the rural areas that feed us and fuel our growth? How do we share the wealth?
One answer among many is that data journalism can help us make sense of our cities. In the midst of a highly politicized transportation referendum in Metro Vancouver in 2015, our award-winning Moving Forward project enabled more than 1.3 million people to access in-depth material that went behind the headlines. This is what we mean by public interest reporting.