  In this paper, we explore the relationships that individuals have with their
communities. This work was prepared as part of the ASA Data Expo '13 sponsored
by the Graphics Section and the Computing Section, using data provided by the
Knight Foundation Soul of the Community survey. The Knight Foundation in
cooperation with Gallup surveyed 43,000 people over three years in 26
communities across the United States with the intention of understanding the
association between community attributes and the degree of attachment people
feel towards their community. These include the different facets of both urban
and rural communities, the impact of quality education, and the trend in the
perceived economic conditions of a community over time. The goal of our work is
to facilitate understanding of why people feel attachment to their communities
through the use of an interactive and web-based visualization. We will explain
the development and use of web-based interactive graphics, including an
overview of the R package Shiny and the JavaScript library D3, focusing on the
choices made in producing the visualizations and technical aspects of how they
were created. Then we describe the stories about community attachment that
unfolded from our analysis.
