Global Runway Orientation

More runways around the world are built on a north-south orientation than on a north-west axis. You can see this beautifully visualized on the Trails of Wind map. This interactive map colors airport runways around the world based on their orientation.

Aircraft are easier to land without a crosswind and planes can more easily take-off and land upwind. Aircraft also need a lower ground speed at both landing and take-off when pointing into the wind. As a consequence runways are usually built to point in the prevailing wind direction. In fact compiling a wind rose showing local wind directions is often one of the first steps taken when building a new airport runway.


On the Trails of Wind interactive map airports around the world are displayed with colored lines. The color of the lines reflect the orientation of the airport runways. Blue lines indicate runways on a north-south axis and yellow lines show runways on an east-west axis. If you zoom in on the central states in the USA you can clearly see a majority of runways have a north-south orientation. In Europe, the UK, France and Germany seem dominated by east-west orientated runways, while around the Mediterranean runways appear to be constructed along a north-south axis.

The Uber Driving Times Map

Uber Movement Speeds visualizes the normal driving speeds of Uber drivers on an interactive map. Using the map you can discover the historical aggregated speed achieved by Uber drivers during different times of the day and on different days of the week. The map comes with a whole range of filtering tools which really allow you to dig deep into the data of the average speeds that are really driven on our streets.

The map's default view colors road segments by the average speed driven. If you click on an individual segment of road you can view further details, including the street name, the average speed, and the percentage from free-flow speed. These details also include charts which show the average speed trends over time and when the speed on that stretch deviates from the norm.

Using the filter tools you can visualize speed averages for specific date-time ranges, day of the week, and time of day. You can also use the color bar to filter the map to only show roads with specific average speeds.


Obviously the average speeds which are achieved on roads can greatly affect the driving time of a car journey. If you are interested in how long a journey might take then you can check the Uber Travel Time map.

This interactive map allows you to view the average travel times between two different neighborhoods. If you click to place your point of origin and destination on the map the Uber Travel Time map will display the average time for your journey. All the other neighborhoods are color coded to show the average journey times to those neighborhoods from the starting point of your journey.

When you query a journey time the Uber Travel Time map also shows you charts which visualize the average journey time for different days of the week and for different times of the day.

The Most Populated Places in America

The most densely populated square kilometer in the USA is in Manhattan, New York. According to a new interactive map 42,673 people are tightly packed into one small area of New York. You can discover for yourself the 200 most densely populated square kilometers in 14 of America's largest cities on Garrett Dash Nelson's Square Density interactive map.

Select a city from the drop-down menu and you can sit back and watch as the map animates through the most densely populated places in your chosen city. A polygon overlaid on top of aerial imagery shows you the location of each of the most densely populated square kilometers. A smaller map shows you where that square is in the selected city. The text beneath the map shows you how many people live in each displayed square.

If you want to explore the map on your own then you can pause the animation and select any of the 200 most densely populated square kilometers by clicking on the chart, running along the bottom of the map.


This square kilometer in Barcelona is probably Europe's most populated location

According to Alistair Rae's examination of European population density, Think your country is crowded? These maps reveal the truth about population density across Europe the most densely populated square kilometer in Europe is in Barcelona. The Catalan city actually has one square kilometer housing 52,000 people. Of course there are locations outside of the USA & Europe where people live in far more densely populated locations.

If you want to explore population density elsewhere in the world then you should view the SEDAC Population Estimator (GPWv4). This interactive map uses NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) to show where the world's population lives. The map includes a tool to draw an area on the map to see an estimate of the population that is living there. You can therefore draw a square kilometer on the map to make your own comparisons with Europe's and America's most populated square kilometers. For example, I drew a square kilometer at random in Dhaka, Bangladesh and the map gave me a population estimate of 107,804. This is over twice as many people as the 52,000 people living in Europe's most densely populated 1km² in Barcelona.

Finding Retreats Away from Streets

During the 2012 London Olympics cars were banned from all the roads around my home. For one glorious month I could walk around my neighborhood without the fear of death from moronic driving, without having to breath in toxic levels of air pollution and without having to listen to the incessant noise pollution of hundreds of combustion engines. Since that time I've strongly believed that banning cars in London (or just in a one mile area around my house) would improve the quality of my life beyond measure.

If I lived in Berlin I could use the Retreats Away From Berlin's Streets interactive map to find the areas which are the furthest away from road traffic. Using Hans Hack's interactive map you can view the point in every city block which is furthest away from a road used by cars. On the map circular markers are used to show the distance from a car free retreat to the nearest street. Therefore the largest circles on the map indicate the locations in Berlin which are furthest away from road traffic.

The map includes three views. If you select 'All' you can view all the car free retreats for every city block. Alternatively you can choose to just view the 'Top 30' retreats, the thirty locations in Berlin which are the furthest from car traffic. The 'Top Neighborhoods' view shows you the location in every Berlin district which is furthest away from traffic. The map also shows you the location of all Berlin's bars, cafes and restaurants which are at least 50 metres from a street used by cars.

The Native Villages of Los Angeles

The Tongva were the original people of Los Angeles. They lived in Tovaangar, a land which reached from Palos Verdes to San Bernardino and from Saddleback Mountain to the San Fernando Valley. You can learn more about the Tongva people on a new L.A. Times story map which explores the locations of Tongva's native villages.

Mapping the Tongva Villages of L.A. begins with a map of modern Los Angeles. As you scroll through the L.A. Times story map the first thing that happens is that all the modern place-names and thousands of L.A. roads are removed from the map, leaving a simple relief map of the Los Angeles Basin. Scaled markers are then added to this map to show the locations and relative sizes of the original Tongva villages. As you continue scrolling the story map takes you on a small tour of some of the Tongva villages which existed long before the Spanish arrived. During this brief tour modern place-names are added back to the map to help you understand where modern L.A. sits on top of native Tongva settlements.

The interactive Tongva story map is part of the L.A. Times' series Saving Tonga, which explores Los Angeles' native language. As well as the interactive story map this series includes an audio tour of the Tongva language, as spoken by its students and teachers, and a study guide for teachers who are interested in teaching their students about the native people of Los Angeles.

You might also like Native Land, an interactive map documenting the territories and languages of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australasia.

The Impact of Trump's China Sanctions

On Friday the United States more than doubled the trade tariffs it applies to Chinese goods. American companies buying goods from China will now have to pay a 25% tariff instead of the previous 10%. A cost they will presumably pass on to consumers. Donald Trump's own economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said that 'both sides will suffer' from this new trade dispute.

Axios has released an interactive map which visualizes the concentration of tariff-affected industries in each county compared to the national average. The darker the color on the Trump's Trade War map then the higher the concentration of affected industries in the county. The green and pink colors show whether the county was won by Trump or Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. If you hover over a county on the map you can see how many industries are affected in the area and which sector those industries are in.

'Concentration' relates to the number of people employed in an industry as compared to the national average. If the map says that an industry is 2x more concentrated in a selected county then that means the industry has two times the share of employment in the local area than the national average. For example Las Vegas would have a larger concentration of workers in the leisure industry than the national average.


China says that it will retaliate against America's new tariffs but as yet has not confirmed how. Last year the Brookings Institute did map out the counties with the highest share of workers in industries affected by China's 2018 retaliatory tariffs on 128 American products. The Brookings' map in How China’s proposed tariffs could affect U.S. workers and industries shows that many of the counties affected by American tariffs on China appear to be the very same counties most affected by China's tariffs against American goods.


After the imposition of tariffs on American goods in 2018 many commentators, including Donald Trump himself, wondered if China had deliberately targeted Trump voters. The New York Times in Firing Back at Trump in the Trade War placed a map of where the tariffs most affect American voters side-by-side with a map of where voters backed Trump. There does appear to be a large similarity between the two maps.

Axios's new map, visualizing the counties affected by Trump's tariffs against China, also seems to closely resemble a map of Trump voters. If Donald Trump was right to wonder if Chinese tariffs were deliberately designed to hurt Trump voters perhaps we should also ask if Trump's tariffs on China are also deliberately designed to punish his base. 

Mapping the City Skyline

Zurich, like many cities around the world, has an ever changing skyline. A skyline which is increasingly interrupted by new imposing skyscrapers. The city's Department of Building (Hochbaudepartment) has released a 3D map which allows you to view and explore all of Zurich's growing number of tall buildings.

Zurich's High Rise Viewer is an interactive map of the city in which buildings are shown in 3D. On this 3D map all the city's skyscrapers are shown in blue. For this map skyscrapers are defined as buildings with a height over 25 meters. Under the map is a synchronized timeline graph which shows when each of Zurich's buildings were built and how tall each building is. This timeline therefore provides a great overview of which decades saw the biggest skyscraper construction booms and exactly when the city's tallest buildings were constructed.

If you select a building on the map or in the interactive timeline graph then the building is highlighted on the map and an information window opens providing information on the building's height and construction date.

Have You Gentrified Yet?

Gentrification is said to have happened when traditionally low-income neighborhoods experience rising numbers of higher income residents. However how we identify and measure that rise can vary depending on the method used. There can therefore be some debate about whether a neighborhood has gentrified or not.

Enterprise Community Partners has devised an interactive mapping tool which allows you to see whether neighborhoods in 93 different U.S. cities have gentrified under three different established measurements of gentrification. Select a U.S. city on the Gentrification Comparison Tool and you can see which local neighborhoods have experienced gentrification, in any of the last four decades, under three different measurements of gentrification.

It can be a little difficult to compare neighborhoods across the three different maps in order to see which neighborhoods have gentrified under all three definitions. If you want to see which neighborhoods have been deemed to have gentrified under two or more definitions then you can select 'Two Measures' or 'Three Measures' under the 'Overlap in Gentrified Tracts' heading in the map sidebar. This will highlight on the map only those neighborhoods which have gentrified under more than one definition. For example, in Seattle in the first decade of this century only one census tract (in West Seattle) has gentrified under all three measures.

The UK's Most Stressful Commutes

If you hate your morning journey to work just be thankful that you don't have to commute from Westhoughton to Manchester. The Co-op have ranked this journey as the most stressful commute in the UK. The 33 mile round-trip commute from Westhoughton to Manchester would take you 3 hours and 40 minutes to drive during the evening and morning rush hour.

The Co-op's Rush Hour Routes is an interactive map which can calculate the stress levels of your daily commute and how your journey to work compares to the most stressful commutes in the UK. If you enter the postcode of your home and your workplace into Rush Hour Routes you can view the Co-op's estimation of how long your commute should take during rush hour and how long it would take during a clear run. It will also rank your commute in terms of how stressful the journey is compared to other commutes in the UK. The Co-op calculates the stress level of a journey based on the time increase percentage of your journey during the rush hour. The longer your journey takes during rush hour, compared to your journey time on a clear run, then the higher the stress score.

Rush Hour Routes uses the latest data on travel times from the Google Maps API. This means that the data and the predictions are regularly changing. In general the most stressful routes are usually in London and Manchester. The Westhoughton to Manchester commute, mentioned above, is usually in the Rush Hour Routes top 5 most stressful commutes. Golders Green to Central London and Elephant and Castle to Central London are also normally in the top 5 most stressful commutes.

Berlin's Bike Plans

Berlin's 'Vision Zero' mission plans to eradicate all fatalities on the city's streets. As part of this mission it is planning to greatly extend Berlin's cycling infrastructure. Tagesspiegel has
looked at Berlin's current provision for cyclists and where it plans to build new bike paths and protected bike lanes. The paper has also looked at where in the city drivers overtake cyclists too closely.

In Radmesser the German newspaper has mapped out where Berlin will build new cycling infrastructure. You can click on individual roads on the paper's new new cycle paths map to learn more about what is planned and what already exists in terms of protected bike lanes on each of Berlin's roads.

As part of its Radmesser series Tagesspiegel is also exploring the distance that car drivers give cyclists when they overtake. The police recommend that drivers leave at least 1.5-2 metres space when overtaking someone on a bicycle. Tagesspiegel has fitted one hundred bikes with sensors to find out how much space car drivers really give bike riders and where in the city cars give the most and least space to cyclists when overtaking. The cyclists chosen for the experiment live in 99 different zip-code areas in the city.

The 100 sensors have been on Berlin's roads since October and the data they record is collected everyday. So far these bikes have measured over 16,000 cars overtaking bikes. On over half of these occasions (9,402) the cars did not leave the legal 1.5-2 meter space. On 3,019 occasions cars left less than 1 meter when passing cyclists. Radmesser not only maps out where drivers in Berlin are not leaving the prescribed space when overtaking cyclists it has also looked at the time of day (between 10-12 am) when drivers pass the closest.