The Google Maps of the Week

This week the most shared map on social media has to have been the Racial Dot Map. The map is a fascinating visualisation of the geographic distribution, population density, and racial diversity of the USA. The map uses data from the 2010 US census, with each of the 308,745,538 dots representing the location of one American.

There has been a proliferation of dot maps recently, from Brandon Martin-Anderson's Census Dotmap, visualising the populations of the US, Canada and Mexico, to the Guardian Census Dot Map, showing the home location of every person in England and Wales.

The University of Virginia's dot map however goes beyond being just a visualisation of geographic distribution as it also visualises the distribution of race and ethnicity in the US.


Illustrator and graphic designer Abby Putinski has created a beautiful Google Map documenting her experiences and adventures in San Francisco.

You can view Abby's animated illustrations directly on the map. The scenes include a number of landmarks around the city, including the Golden Gate & Bay Bridges, the Ferry Building, China Town and the Palace of Fine Arts. 

This beautiful map is enhanced by using the Styled Maps feature of the Maps API and by the addition of a number of Abby's own drawings of well known sights in the city dotted around the map. 


Real-estate website Trulia continues to add incredibly useful local information to guide house hunters in finding the perfect neighborhood to move to.

The Trulia Local Google Map includes information about commuting times, local schools, nearby points of interest and local crime levels. Trulia Local now also includes three new options in their Natural Hazards heatmaps. The three new natural hazard zones relate to the natural hazards of hurricanes, wildfires, and tornadoes.

Using the heat map layers home buyers can see where their future home is located relative to where natural disasters historically strike. The Natural Hazard heatmaps also include the options to view earthquake and flood maps.