By Daniel Bendtsen, Deseret News

Cities have used mapping to help smooth traffic snarls for years.

But tackling poverty with maps? That’s a tougher issue. For a time, analysts only had “sad maps,” which showed that the city’s slums had a uniform concentration of poverty-related variables.

“Maps for crime rates, school retention and infant mortality measures all tell similar geographical stories: the darkest shades of the map, indicating the most severe disparities, represent the same few neighborhoods,” according to economist Matthew Tyler.

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