What makes this U.S. map better than any other U.S. map? Attention to detail. The guy who designed it — a seasoned cartographer named David Imus — spent 6,000 hours of his own time building it. And according to other cartographers, it shows — from the shading to the typography on down. Neat.
I notice he still calls Willis Tower by its old (but more famous) name of Sears Tower. Does he win points for sentiment or lose them for accuracy?
Maps and demographics of Los Angeles’s neighborhoods, via the Los Angeles Times’s Mapping L.A. Project
NYT decides to show off by making insane demographic mapThere’s everyone else, and then there’s the NYT. And we’re proven this fact yet again with his crazy demographic map based on U.S. Census data. You can get very detailed with this thang. We think they’re just showing off this time. source
This reminds me of the maps Eric Fischer made back in September, but the New York Times ups the ante (significantly) with interactivity, newer data, and additional maps.
Today in coming full circle: back in 2009 Micky Hulse made a map that demonstrated the remarkable similarity between Marge Simpson’s profile and Europe’s outline. The Simpsons’ producers were apparently paying attention, and, in a recent episode, we see this map back on the show that had inspired it in the first place.
Earlier I had written about 3D maps of Chinese cities. Similar maps are also being made for the US by YouCity.com (so far only New York and San Francisco are available—this video scrolls around Manhattan). None of these maps allow you to change your direction of view, however, so I don’t know if there’s much use to them beyond just looking nifty.
(Source: digitalurban.org)
Flip-Flopped Mercator Map Distortions: Arctic Africa vs. Equatorial Greenland
via Data Pointed
The world map, rendered as a musical score.
This image shows the Pudong business district in Shanghai. All the features on the map are computer-generated and kept up to date (the map defaults to showing the Chinese pavilion at Expo 2010, which is happening RIGHT NOW). I can’t even imagine the amount of work it takes to build and maintain this thing. Of course, if you read Chinese you’ll find the map much more useful as well as be able to navigate to maps of other Chinese cities (the Hong Kong map actually has an English version, and here’s Beijing if you’re interested), but it’s pretty impressive even just for browsing.
States mentioned in country music lyrics. The more mentions, the bigger the state is shown. The map comes from John Shelton Reed’s book My Tears Spoiled My Aim, which ultimately sources it to a July 1977 article in Harper’s Magazine.
It’s no surprise that Texas and Tennessee would be far and away the favorite statess, but I have doubts about the map’s accuracy otherwise. Just off the top of my head, I know that Johnny Horton’s song North to Alaska was released in 1960 and Lefty Frizzell’s Saginaw, Michigan (which, incidentally, also mentions Alaska in the lyrics) came out in 1964, but neither state is marked on the map.
