The population of the world from 1 CE/AD through the end of the 21st century (projected) is mapped in this video and interactive map from Population Connection, a group concerned with the carrying capacity of the planet and the environmental impact of overpopulation (they used to be Zero Population Growth back in the day). In each, one dot represents one million people. [via]
Category: Web Mapping
Mapping Gentrification
Governing used interactive maps to measure the gentrification of the neighbourhoods of Boston (above) and 49 other cities as part of their report on gentrification in the United States last year. “While it has become much more prevalent, gentrification remains a phenomenon largely confined to select regions, not yet making its way into most urban areas. In the majority of cities reviewed, less than one-fifth of poorer, lower priced neighborhoods experienced gentrification. If all city neighborhoods are considered—including wealthier areas not eligible to gentrify—less than one of every ten tracts gentrified. Cities like Detroit, El Paso and Las Vegas experienced practically no gentrification at all.” [via]
A Snowstorm Revealed Through Traffic Delays
NPR graphics editor Alyson Hurt discovered that this month’s blizzard was showing up in Google Maps as traffic delays, and whipped up a little script that took regular screencaps of Google Maps’s traffic layer. She then created an animated GIF from the screencaps. The end result (above) dramatically shows the storm sweeping across the mid-Atlantic states.
Andy Woodruff then took Hurt’s script and created an animation of an ordinary day of Boston traffic. For a “quick, crude” script it certainly seems to have potential. [via]
Antiquity à la Carte
The Ancient World Mapping Center—formerly the Classical Atlas Project, the team behind the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, the expensive atlas later reborn as an iPad app (iTunes link)—has a web-based map interface to classical/late antiquity geographic data. The original (2012) version of “Antiquity à la Carte” is kind of old school and clunky; the (2014) beta version shows a bit more promise. [via]
More Snow Removal Maps
In addition to New York City’s PlowNYC website (previously), there are snowplow maps for Washington, D.C., the State of Pennsylvania, and various counties in the State of Maryland. Now be careful out there. [via]
Mapping Snow Removal in New York
Online Map Updates
Yesterday’s updates to Apple Maps include four new Flyover cities, traffic data for Hong Kong and Mexico, public transit data for Los Angeles, and Nearby search for the Netherlands.
Google Earth Blog reports on the mid-January imagery update for Google Earth.
Google Earth Blog also reports that version 1.0 of ArcGIS Earth is now available. Announced last June and previously available as a series of public betas, ArcGIS Earth appears to be aimed at filling the gap left by Google when Google Earth Enterprise was discontinued last year.
Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, is now in Street View.
Le Grand Paris en Cartes
Le Grand Paris en Cartes is a collection of interactive maps and infographics about the Grand Paris Express, a multi-billion-euro project to extend Paris’s Metro and rapid transit network deep into the surrounding Île-de-France region (if you can read French, the official site and French Wikipedia page provide a lot more information). These maps not only illustrate Parisians’ commuting routes and Metro usage, but also (see above) the kind of sociological data that underpins transit planning: employment centres, population density and so forth. In French. [via]
Cities and Memory
Cities and Memory is an exercise in sound mapping: a map of ambient sounds from hundreds of locations. Stuart Fowkes writes, “Every location and every faithful field recording on the sound map is accompanied by a reworking, a processing or an interpretation that imagines that place and time as somewhere else, somewhere new. The listener can choose to explore locations through their actual sounds, or explore interpretations of what those places could be—or to flip between the two different sound worlds at leisure.” It’s open to submissions.
Urban Scratchoff
Using an interactive interface to compare present-day and historical maps and aerial imagery is done all the time—on this website I use a slider plugin—but Chris Whong’s Urban Scratchoff uses a familiar metaphor to compare present-day aerial images of New York City with imagery from 1924. Give it a try. More on how Chris did it. [via]
Mapping New York City’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions
By cross-referencing public data on energy consumption with georeferenced tax lot data, Jill Hubley has created an interactive map of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions by property, colour-coded to show the biggest emitters. More on how she did it, and what the data reveal. [via]
Beware of Fake Snowfall Maps
Meterologist Dan Satterfield warns about fake snowfall maps appearing on social media. “[R]esponsible meteorologists do not post raw model data more than 3 days away from an event. It’s just not likely to be correct, and could actually give someone a false sense that the storm will not impact them. […] If you see a map showing snowfall totals, it almost certainly did not come from NOAA, or an AMS Certified meteorologist. There are even hoax maps floating around from storms in the past” (emphasis his).
Earthquakes in Canada Since 1980
CBC News has an interactive map of all earthquakes in Canada since 1980 that were higher than magnitude 4.0. The page also has a map of fault lines in British Columbia.
The Best New York City Maps of 2015
Over on Metrocosm, Max Galka has assembled his pick of the 10 best New York City maps of 2015. The list includes maps of buildings, trees and languages, pathogens and crime, housing and “interestingness,” among others. [via]
Google Maps Updates
Recent Google Maps updates include driving mode, an Android-only navigation mode that, as Android Police describes it, “uses your location history and web searches to make assumptions about where you’re going and give traffic updates and ETAs as you travel” [via]. Also this week, the world’s largest model railway, Hamburg’s Minatur Wunderland, was added to Street View. Quite engrossing if you’re into model trains.