Tag: USA

Library of Congress Exhibition: Mapping a Growing Nation

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
buell
Abel Buell, A New and Correct Map of the United States of North America, 1784. On deposit to the Library of Congress from David M. Rubenstein.

Speaking of the Library of Congress, yesterday it opened a new exhibition both online and at the Library’s North Exhibition Gallery. Mapping a Growing Nation: From Independence to Statehood features the best known copy of Abel Buell’s 1784 New and Correct Map of the United States of North America—“which, among other things, has been recognized as the very first map of the newly independent United States to be compiled, printed, and published in America by an American. Additionally, the 1784 publication is the first map to be copyrighted in the United States, registered under the auspices of the Connecticut State Assembly.” Accompanying Buell’s map are other early maps—often the first maps—of each U.S. state; the maps will rotate on and off physical display for space reasons but will eventually all be featured online. [WMS]

The United Swears of America

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

united-swears

Linguist Jack Grieve studies regional variations in languages using quantitative methods. A year ago he posted a number of maps of the United States showing regional variation in swear word usage, based on a corpus of nearly nine billion geocoded tweets. Stan Carey of the Strong Language blog has more on the maps:

Hell, damn and bitch are especially popular in the south and southeast. Douche is relatively common in northern states. Bastard is beloved in Maine and New Hampshire, and those states—together with a band across southern Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas—are the areas of particular motherfucker favour. Crap is more popular inland, fuck along the coasts. Fuckboy—a rising star—is also mainly a coastal thing, so far.

I love everything about this. See also Stan’s follow-up post from last March. (Thanks to Natalie for finding this.)

Nick Ross Helps Out

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

On Canada Day, Nick Ross drew a map of Canada to help Americans out:

On the Fourth of July, Nick Ross drew a map of the U.S. to help Canadians out:

Five Years of Drought

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

nelson-drought

Cartographer John Nelson, whose relatively new but infrequently updated map blog is Adventures in Mapping, recently posted the above map to Twitter: it shows the intensity and variability of drought in the United States over the past five years. It’s not necessarily an easy map to read at first glance, but it’s striking to look at nonetheless.

Hillary Clinton in the Primaries: 2008 vs. 2016

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

sabato-clinton

Geoffrey Skelley compares the percentage of the Democratic primary vote won by Hillary Clinton in 2008 with the percentage she won in 2016: among other things, she was up sharply in the Deep South and down sharply in the industrial Midwest and Appalachia. “While the universe of voters participating in 2008 and then 2016 changed considerably thanks to mobility, interest, and mortality, our map suggests that many ’08 Clinton voters became ’16 Sanders voters, and many ’08 Obama voters became ’16 Clinton voters.” [Daily Kos]

‘There Is More to Gerrymandering Than Ugly Shapes’

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

On the liberal political blog Daily Kos, Stephen Wolf argues that it takes more than a weirdly shaped electoral district to make a gerrymander:

Land does not vote and we can’t judge gerrymanders simply based on geometry. Districts aren’t just abstract shapes on a map, but collections of actual people and voters. Ultimately, the outcomes produced by a particular map matter far more than a map’s appearance. Comparing the actual congressional districts to plausible alternatives in Maryland and other states demonstrates both how gerrymandering is more complex than merely grotesque shapes, and that Maryland is far from the worst partisan gerrymander nationwide.

Amazon, Race, and Same-Day Delivery

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Last month a Bloomberg story looked at the racial implications of Amazon’s same-day delivery service, which, the story demonstrated in a series of maps, tended to exclude predominantly black ZIP codes.

bloomberg-amazon
Atlanta (Bloomberg)

The exclusions were basically driven by the data: where their customers were, driving distance to the nearest fulfillment centre, that sort of thing. But the issue, it seems to me, is that the demographics behind the data are not racially neutral (something that Troy Lambert’s analysis for GIS Lounge, for example, fails to address): Amazon basically failed to ask its data the next question. Be very careful of why your data is the way it is. In the event, Amazon has since announced that excluded neighbourhoods and boroughs in Boston, New York and Chicago will get same-day service.

(Full disclosure: The Map Room is an Amazon associate.)

The U.S. as Seven Mega-Regions

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

us-mega-regions

In a piece for the New York Times, Parag Khanna—author of the forthcoming book Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization—argues that super-regions and urban clusters, rather than the 50 states, should be the focus of future planning.

First, there are now seven distinct super-regions, defined by common economics and demographics, like the Pacific Coast and the Great Lakes. Within these, in addition to America’s main metro hubs, we find new urban archipelagos, including the Arizona Sun Corridor, from Phoenix to Tucson; the Front Range, from Salt Lake City to Denver to Albuquerque; the Cascadia belt, from Vancouver to Seattle; and the Piedmont Atlantic cluster, from Atlanta to Charlotte, N.C.

Federal policy should refocus on helping these nascent archipelagos prosper, and helping others emerge, in places like Minneapolis and Memphis, collectively forming a lattice of productive metro-regions efficiently connected through better highways, railways and fiber-optic cables: a United City-States of America.

Note that this isn’t quite the same as, say, reimagining the U.S. as fifty equal states or Pearcy’s famous 38-state thought experiment: this is an argument against using state boundaries for planning purposes. (The EU has similar regions for similar purposes, I believe.) Makes for a very interesting map, though. [Tim Wallace]

1916 Frost Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

frost-1916

In 1916 frost maps that show the average dates of the last spring and first fall killing frost, Slate’s Rebecca Onion sees the history of climate change, given the growth in the length of the growing season since then. (Trying to find a modern-day example for comparison; frost maps don’t appear to be updated as rigorously as, say, hardiness zone maps.) [Slate Vault]

USGS Earthquake Forecast Maps Now Include Human-Induced Earthquakes

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

usgs-induced-earthquakes

For the first time, USGS forecast maps that measure the potential damage from earthquakes in the coming year now include human-induced earthquakes, such as those caused by hydraulic fracking. (Oklahoma looms large for that very reason.) Maps for the western U.S., where a different methodology is used, presume that all earthquakes are natural in that region. [Max Galka]

Lead Exposure Risk Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

vox-lead

Vox’s lead exposure risk map takes a nationwide look at a crisis some might have thought was limited to Flint, Michigan. “The areas where kids are at highest risk of lead exposure—an estimate calculated using government data about the surroundings—are scattered all across the country.” Lead exposure data is hard to come by, so exposure risk is calculated based on Washington State’s methodology, which uses age of housing and poverty as risk factors. [Mapbox]

Women in Cartography (Part 3)

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
willard-1826
Emma Hart Willard, “Ninth Map or Map of 1826,” in A Series of Maps to Willard’s History of The United States (New York, 1829). Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.

CityLab’s Laura Bliss has a second post on women and cartography, this time focusing on the work of 19th-century women cartographers, geographers and educators in the United States. The Library of Congress’s map blog, Worlds Revealed, focuses on the work (and maps) of one of those women, Emma Hart Willard.

Previously: Women in Cartography; Women in Cartography (Continued).