U District Partnership
Mapping a business landscape
Role Research & Design
Employer U District Partnership, Seattle
Client U District Partnership
Year 2020
Employer U District Partnership, Seattle
Client U District Partnership
Year 2020
The U District Partnership, a Seattle-based non-profit organisation, wanted to extensively research and map the business landscape in the city’s rapidly growing university district, to better understand the business mix and make-up.
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Businesses of the U District
- 600+ licensed businesses
- Majority managed by owner-operators
- A large percentage of woman- and/or minority-owned businesses
- Diverse mix of cuisine types in food & beverage
My role was to research the businesses in the area and map my findings, to help the Economic Development team find out more about the U District economy, focusing on contact details, business category mix, the variety of cuisine options and diversity of ownership.
All the data was collected, recorded and sorted in a master database, providing a central resource for the team to reference and amend as required. This became particularly useful during the pandemic to facilitate communication between the U District Partnership team and the community they serve.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e9d2202c6981762e642655a5e6a5cb489221c27c2eb9f570835edeaf65cbe635/BGArtboard-9.png)
The Economic Development team wanted to visualise the
business category mix to illustrate the diversity of the district’s business landscape.
The data lends itself to a number of outcomes, either in print or online. For this phase of the project it was decided that a large-scale printed map would create a visual overview of the area in the minds of the project stakeholders, communicating topline information that could help to inform decision-making.
The data lends itself to a number of outcomes, either in print or online. For this phase of the project it was decided that a large-scale printed map would create a visual overview of the area in the minds of the project stakeholders, communicating topline information that could help to inform decision-making.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/30f23f5d3104d309623d2d0c4f4ac9174369057210eb7f10e377628db74c3fbf/BGArtboard-12.png)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ba930da3eaf74e5fdcea9efa365119cd6fb29dbd61b3bd46b0fb29e974f479bb/BGArtboard-10.png)