The International Investments in Kentucky - Part 1

This is part of my #1YearOfViz series! Check out the archive here: http://bourbonandbrains.blogspot.com/p/one-year-of-dataviz.html
I'd like to start off with the fact that I live in one of the larger cities in Kentucky. Lexington is known for it's diversity of people and it's large international community. Given recent events and the recent gathering of people to protest the now overturned ban on people re-entering the US from several countries I thought it would be interesting to look at what the international community brings to the 'economic table' of Kentucky!

First a picture from one of my awesome junior roller derby skaters from the Lexington protest:

A photo posted by amelia (@amelia.loeffler) on Feb 5, 2017 at 5:30pm PST

I found this data at the ThinkKentucky.com site which is actually the Cabinet for Economic Development. Their datasets weren't numerous but their site allows for a lot of search/interaction so I dug that! Thanks again for all the rad data and if anyone from there wants to give me a shout I'd love to get some more in depth data sometime!

That said, I designed over 25+ worksheets out of this data and realized it would be foolish (as well as poor time management) to squeeze them all into one blog post. So this week will be covering the viz I published last week and then a secondary part of the viz I've buffed up for this week! That way I'm totally still on schedule for publishing one a week!

Me when I looked down and saw I'd already created 25+
Tableau worksheets from data!

Let's get to it! I took investments in towns/counties and looked at how the domestic vs foreign interests were spread around... this first dashboard is a look at Total Investments in Areas by Facilities. If you mouse-over any county the industries that have invested in that county will be displayed to the right color-coded by their ownership (foreign or domestic).

The second dash (and last one of today) is a little more in-depth breakdown of particular countries investments in counties in Kentucky. Again in this viz just mouse over an area to see it highlighted in the other half of the viz or for a more in-depth look by county or year feel free to manipulate the dropdown/slider at the top right of the viz.

I think the big thing to remember is that while we think of places as "American" literally 38.2% of investments in businesses in Kentucky over the last 2-3 decades or so have come from international money. With the climate of separatism that has arisen lately in these beautiful United States of ours... it's good to keep in perspective what international businesses have done for even rural areas in places like Kentucky with SERIOUS investment dollars!

Don't worry part 2 will be coming soon!

As always, if you have any questions or concerns leave a comment below or find me on twitter @wjking0!