The Google Maps of the Week

This week we saw two great examples of crowd-sourced Google Maps. AXS Map is a great resource for finding accessible buildings, whilst Bostonography are busy soliciting opinions on Boston’s neighborhood boundaries.



AXS Map is using the Google Maps API to crowd-source and review accessible buildings and venues.

You can search AXS Map for accessible venues by searching for a type of venue and a location, e.g. restaurants in New York or coffee in San Francisco. The results of each search are then displayed on a Google Map. Venues that have already been reviewed for their accessibility are displayed on the map with a green map marker.

If you click on a reviewed venue you can find out if the building has a wide entry and if it has ramped access. You can also discover whether the restrooms are accessible. As AXS Map is a crowd-sourced platform users can also contribute their own reviews of a venue's accessibility.


Bostonography is running a project to find out where Bostonians believe their neighborhood boundaries lie.

The project is using a Google Maps tool which allows participants to draw on a Google Map where they think Boston neighborhood boundaries run. This has allowed Bostonography to create a map of all the amalgamated responses so far. 

The results for each neighborhood are also being analysed to see which neighborhood boundaries participants have a strong agreement about and to highlight areas where there are contradictory opinions about which neighborhood they belong to.