Air of Salt Lake City

Air quality is a big deal in Salt Lake City, where the mountains frequently disappear behind curtains of smog, a pattern known to locals as “the inversion”.

Salt Lake City resident and award-winning designer, Yvette Shen, created this awesome scrolling interactive to show how - contrary to public opinion - the city’s air quality has actually improved over the last 35 years.

Using the Air Quality Index (as developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency), her piece Air of Salt Lake City colour-codes daily and yearly air quality right back to 1980. With her data viz, it becomes clear that big improvements to air quality were made between 1980 and 1997, after which point it has remained at a roughly constant level.

Yvette’s scrolling interactive is complemented by radial charts revealing the change in composition of five major air pollutants and summary area charts.

Top stuff!