Mapping for Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities

This series of maps compare the spread of bars and grocery stores among various countries. It’s quite interesting and entertaining. Countries like France, Italy and Spain and UK seem to have more of an alcoholic culture, while countries German, Japan, Poland, Canada, Australia, India are more into groceries. U.S is half and half, depending on where you are. The north part of U.S. around the five lakes area are more into booze, while the rest of U.S. have more grocery stores around than bars. It says something about the cultures of these areas or countries. Very interesting. 

This map captures the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere around the globe from Sep.1 2014 to Aug 31.15. The map was released from NASA on Tuesday this week. It really shows the effect of climate change. Btw, the year 2015 was the hottest year on record and the year 2016 is on track to be even warmer. 

Copenhagenize (bicycle transport planning agency) has created several maps that show the distribution of public space and urban intersections. I enjoyed these maps because they effectively show how car-centric planning diminishes space for pedestrians and cyclists.

Similar to tutorial 6, this takes it a step further and layers water landat maps and demonstrates change over time.  The blue represents old water flows and the transition of color towards green shows where water has overflowed over time and has taken over.   

Source: http://gizmodo.com/gorgeous-new-maps-show-how-dramatically-our-planet-s-su-1789747502    Nature

I find this map very attractive for the colors and contrast with the black.  It represents all the transportation network from major cities and displays how far are their reach.  Looked more closely, the transportation areas in the east coast seem to touch often and sometimes overlap.  In the article, it points out that even if metros do seem to overlap at times, it does not mean they are really integrated.

Source:http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/12/how-4-million-commutes-shape-americas-megaregions/509483/?utm_source=SFFB

Water Basin of US

The other day I attempted to follow The Missippi river to its source, needless to say I got lost and it was difficult to tell from google maps, what was true.  I was not far from the truth when I found this map, the water basin of the US.  The biggest in Pink is the Missippi water basin - meaning multiple sources of water all convenience in New Orleans.

Source: http://digg.com/2016/every-body-of-water-us

An Interactive website that shows the history of the Mall in D.C. presenting a visual of the land area before becoming DC and which then progressively demonstrates change over time.  One thing of interest is that the area west of DC, Tiber Creek, was filled in and it is where Lincoln Memorial stands today.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/lifestyle/the-evolution-of-the-national-mall/

A little while ago, on Nov. 25, the Washington Post made a map about the changing landscape of diversity in U.S. from 2000 to 2014. The map is made from the U.S. census bureau data. The innovative or controversial aspect about this map is the representation of two dimensions or variables - diversity (low, high) and change (small, big) - through the use of colors (blue, yellow) and shades (light, dark). It’s kind of an eye-sore at the first glance. But once you scroll down through the article and view the subsequent maps, and then look back at this map; you will have a better understanding of what it speaks about. 

Thetruesizeof allows users to overlay country boundaries with other countries, aiding the comparisons of the relative sizes of each land mass. This is one of the most interactive and helpful maps I have come across, and find that it is very user friendly.

Forbearers.io has created a map which shows the number of people with a certain surname across the globe. For example, if you type in Smith, a total of 2,552,459 incidents appear in the United States and 233,996 incidents in South Africa Although it is an interesting interactive map, it is a little clunky, and should also beware of different orthographies. Wong and Wang, for instance, are different last names in the English language, but are the same, 王, in Chinese.

I put together this visualization of 24 hours of nyc subway activity, using data from the mta website and making some tweaks to Juan’s code from the citi bike processing tutorial. Juan’s tutorial is available here.

Here is a cartographic view on the financial infrastructure around the world. It reveals patterns of financial behaviors.  

Some interesting discoveries are: in terms of mobile money account, North America, South America and Europe diminish while Africa and Asia bulge. In terms of online shopping, North America, Europe and Asia swell while South America and Africa shrink; in terms of ATMs, the rest of the world disproportionally bulge while Africa shrink. 

It’s a very well-made informative and interesting map! I highly recommend you check it out. 

Scholars from the University of Michigan have made a series of cartograms to make sense of the U.S. 2016 presidential election. 

These cartograms offer an interesting perspective of the election results at the county level, and they speaks volumes to the bizarre result of this election where the president-elect won by electoral college but lost by popular votes.