Maps of the Week

Urban Layers is an incredible new mapped visualization of Manhattan's building history. The map uses building construction data from PLUTO with Mapbox GL to create a highly responsive and interactive tool to explore the history of building construction in central New York.

The time-line function provides a great tool to explore the building history of Manhattan. You can use the time-line to view how many buildings were constructed during any period of Manhattan's history. The time-line also includes a graph showing the number of buildings built in each year.

The use of Mapbox GL means that the data loads amazingly quickly on the map as you zip through the time-line. It also means that you can right click on the map to adjust the map orientation (when the map first loads West is roughly at the top of the map - which helps to fit most of Manhattan onto your monitor /screen).


Jet It Up is a great way to visualize your flight history and statistics. Log-in to Jet It Up with a Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or TripIt account and you can enter your flight history details and view a map of all your flights and access a host of statistics about your world-wide travel.

Once you have imported your flight history into Jet It Up you can view all your flights on a Leaflet map. The statistics dashboard provides you with details on the number of miles you have flown, the number of countries you have visited and the number of airports you have passed through, You can also view stats on the average hours, the average speed and the average distance of all your flights.

Jet It Up also includes a leader-board and points system which allows you to compare your flight history with your friends and other users. You get points for all the flights you have taken and the more you fly then the more points you earn. You can also earn badges when you reach certain milestones, for example by reaching 100 flights or flying with 50 different airlines.


This map of broadband coverage in Italy shows the percentage of people in the country without broadband. Il Digital Divide in Italia provides a choropleth visualization of 2012 broadband infrastructure down to commune level.

The map shows a picture which is probably common to a lot of countries. In Italy broadband coverage is very good in most large towns and cities and very patchy in more rural areas. However the map also reveals that some regions have far better coverage than others. For example Lazio and Apulia appear to have almost universal broadband coverage, while regions such as Piedmont and Molise have very poor coverage.