Idea: Alternate census

In tandem to the regular census, do an alternate census of the inanimate objects that make up the human environment. This might include numbers like:

• Cell phone and landline subscribers
• Grocery stores per neighborhood
• Schools and hospitals, and their capacity
• Restaurants per neighborhood
• Average wait time for metro or bus

Obviously the open question is how you’d collect this data. I suspect some already exists and some we’d have to get creative about. The thought came while discussing a Craft 2 census project this morning. To me, this alternate data set is the missing (and more actionable) other half.