The Top 10 Posts of 2015

On the whole Maps Mania readers are idiots. Don't take my word for it - just take a look at some of the rubbish you've been reading this year on this ridiculous mapping blog.

These were the top ten most popular posts on Maps Mania in 2015. At least two of them were good maps. In 2016 we must all do better.


1. Pacman on Google Maps

Google Maps on the desktop may be slower than a folding paper map but Google do know how to create an amazing April Fools experience. I think this must be at least the fourth year running when Google's April Fools joke has been the most visited post on Maps Mania.

2. Ashley Madison Users Mapped

In August the Ashley Madison dating app for married cheaters was hacked. Malfideleco managed to exploit some of the news interest around this story with an interactive map showing the distribution of Ashley Madison users around the world. I managed to exploit the Malfideleco map with this second most read post of 2015.

3. Chennai Flood Map


In the number three spot we finally have a useful map. In November Tamil Nadu in southern India suffered the heaviest rainfall in over a century causing massive flooding. Flood Maps sprang into action creating a crowd-sourced interactive map to help identify inundated roads in the state capital of Chennai, the locations of open & closed flood relief camps and waterlogged locations in the city.

4. Landsat Maps Our Changing World


Landsat Lens is a great interactive mapping tool which allows you to explore how the Earth has changed by comparing Lansat satellite imagery from six different years. The map allows you to search for any location on Earth and then overlay satellite imagery of your selected location from 1975, 1990, 2000, 2005, 2010 & 2015.

5. Snowmaggedon Maps

In January the USA saw a lot of snow. Someone made a useless map of Twitter mentions of Snowmageedon. In turn loads of people visited my useless post about this useless map.

6. Close Encounters of the Mapped Kind

When Maps Mania is suffering from low traffic then a good old UFO map is sure to generate some traffic. This round-up of maps tracking UFO sightings was the sixth most visited post this year, Jeez!

7. The Medieval Digital Map


The Gough Map or Bodleian Map is the oldest surviving route map of Great Britain. The map probably dates back to the 14th or 15th centuries. You can now examine the map in close detail on The Linguistic Geographies interactive version of the map.

8. Battleground Britain

This year the UK had a general election. Back in January there still seemed some hope that the malignant forces of evil ruling this Septic Isle might be defeated. What fools we were. However this map of the UK's 50 'most interesting' marginal seats was a worthy start to a frantic few months of election mapping in the UK.

9. The Beautiful Hand Drawn Map of Reykjavik


This interactive hand drawn map of Iceland's capital was one of my favorite maps of the year, so I'm glad to see it just sneak into the top ten most read posts on Maps Mania. The Reykjavik Center Map is a hand-drawn watercolor map of the Icelandic capital made up of 186 A3 separate watercolor sheets, which took a team of architects and designers two years to complete. I love it!

10. The Witcher III Leaflet Map

What can I say? People like interactive maps of video game worlds. As maps of games go this isn't the worst I've seen. Why it made it into the top ten most popular posts on Maps Mania though, I cannot say.

Animated Cycle Accident Heat Maps

Traffic Accidents Involving Cyclists in the ACT is a heat map of traffic accidents involving cyclists in the Australian Capital Territory from 2012 to the end of 2015.

The map allows you to visualize the data in a number of ways. You can view animated heat maps of the data by month or by hour of the day. The map also include a useful tool to adjust the interval times of the animation, allowing you to adjust the speed of the animated playback of the heat map.

The animated heat map options are useful for looking for spatial patterns in the data. One pattern which becomes clear if you use the animated heat map options is that areas to the north of City Hill seem to be where many cycle accidents occur.

The map also includes a date range filter which allows you to adjust the data yourself by date. It is also possible to switch between the heat map view and a marker view. If you switch to the marker view you can select individual accidents on the map to view details about the date, time and severity of the accident.

Mapping the Rise of the Ku Klux Klan

Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1940 is an animated timeline map showing the rise of klaverns in the United States between 1915 and 1940.

The Virginia Commonwealth Library says that the first 'Klan of Reconstruction' and the third 'Klan of the Civil Rights era' were both mainly concentrated in the Deep South. This animated map shows how the second Klan spread across the United States.

If you press the play button on the timeline the map shows the opening of klaverns during each year during the period. You can also manually move the timeline to show the geographical spread of the klaverns which opened in any specific year.

It seems that you can only view the klaverns opened for a specific year. It would be useful to be able to also view the total number of Ku Klux Klan klaverns which opened during the entire period of the map. This option however is missing from the map.

Out of the Ice Age

CBC's three part documentary series The Great Human Odyssey explored the evolution and development of the human race. To accompany the series CBC created an online interactive documentary, Homo Sapiens - Child of the Ice Age.

The online documentary explores human evolution within the context of climate change over the centuries in which humans have inhabited planet Earth. At the heart of the documentary is an interactive map showing the extent of ice coverage of the Earth over thousands of centuries.

You can use the timeline slider control at the bottom of the map to view the changing climate of Earth over the centuries. Each date represented on the timeline includes an 'Explore' button which allows you to learn more about the human race at different stages in its history. If you click on the 'explore' button you can learn more about the evolution and development of Homo Sapiens and the changing climate of the Earth at different stages of our long history on Earth,

Vintage Map Styles - Remix Edition

Earlier this month Mapbox unveiled a new vintage map style created with Mapbox Studio. You can learn more about Mapbox's Vintage map and how it was created on the Mapbox blog.

The map uses background textures and bathymetry data to replicate how many vintage maps used detailed styling on the oceans surrounding bodies of land. The Vintage map also uses a color scheme designed to mimic the worn discolored paper of many antique vintage maps.


Jonah Adkins was inspired by the Mapbox Vintage map style to create his New Map of the United States (Github). You can view the map itself live here. Jonah is also responsible for the equally pretty Back 2 School interactive map. The Back 2 School map style is based on an old map of North America that Jonah found in Charlottesville.


Another remix of the Mapbox Vintage map style has been created by Nathan McKinley. The New Zealand Vintage Map style is based on an old Japanese map of New Zealand. I particularly like the interactive map insets of Wellington and Auckland on Nathan's map.

Street View Quest

Strap your huskies to the sled. It's time to play Street View Quest.

Street View Quest is a new adventure game in which you have to find explore the world hunting for hidden objects on Google Maps Street View. In Street View Quest you could be dropped in a busy city center, in the remote snows of the Arctic Circle or on a tiny jungle path near the hidden temples of Angkor Wat.

The aim of each quest is to walk around in Street View and find the five hidden stars. A handy Google Map shows you the location of the hidden stars. All you need to do is navigate around on Street View and collect the stars.

The quests get progressively harder so from the Street View Quest home page it is best to start with the first quest, called Shipwreck Bay.

Flooding & Fracking

Nearly 20% of the UK's new fracking license blocks are in flood risk areas. Luckily it hardly ever rains in the UK. It definitely never floods.

Greenpeace's Fracking map shows the locations of the new fracking licence blocks issued by the UK government. The map also contains data from the UK Environment Agency showing areas with a medium or high risk of flooding.

Greenpeace reports that 23 out of the 124 new blocks are in areas with a high or medium risk from flooding. They claim that almost all of the rest of the blocks are in areas with some risk of flooding.


Shoothill's UK Flood Alert map shows how little the UK government has to worry about flooding. The map does show that much of the country is currently on flood alert. However all of the current floods and flooding alerts are outside London and the southeast of the country. Therefore they don't really matter.

The government can rest easy in the knowledge that the country's media will continue it's relentless attack on the dangers of wind energy and continue its unqualified support of fracking.

The Food Map of Finland

Blood Pancakes made with blood and flour are a popular dish in Southern Ostrobothnian in Finland. The people of Pori, Finland, however prefer a dish of Crucified Whitebait, consisting of a whitefish nailed to a wooden board.

If these dishes are beginning to make your mouth water then you might want to take a closer look at this map of dishes popular in different regions of Finland. You can even get recipes for each of the dishes featured on the map.

The Flavours of Finland is a custom made map exploring the wonders of Finnish food. The map presents regional dishes and recipes which are popular, traditional or characteristic in different parts of the country. Select one of the regional dishes from the map and you can view the ingredients and a recipe for the dish.

Scratch & Sniff Vintage Maps

Urban Scratchoff is a clever way to compare vintage aerial imagery of New York with modern day imagery of the city.

At first glance Urban Scratchoff looks like a normal interactive map of New York. However if you click and drag on the map you can scratch away the modern aerial imagery to reveal historical aerial imagery of New York, from 1924, underneath.

You can even switch the layer order of the two sets of aerial imagery. Place the modern aerial map of New York on top and you can scratch the map to reveal the historical imagery below.

BTW - you can try sniffing your display screen if you want but I wouldn't advise it.

The Realtime Gondola Map

Everyone loves a good real-time transit maps. If you search through the real-time tag on Maps Mania you will find lots of examples of maps which track trains, buses, trams and all other types of vehicles in real-time. Now you can also watch gondolas moving in Venice in real-time.

The Venice Transport Map is a real-time map of the city's vaporetto (water buses). OK - you can't really see gondolas in real-time. However you can still see watch these vaporetti moving around on a beautifully styled map of Venice.

The map includes the different vaporetto route lines in the city. If you click on a vaporetto stop you can view the times of the next scheduled water bus. If you select one of the moving boat markers then you can view details of its schedule and the times for all its stops.

The Japanese American Internment Map

Yale University Library's Out of the Desert: Resilience and Memory in Japanese American Internment is an exhibition exploring the internment of Americans of Japanese heritage during World War II.

In the spring and summer of 1942 around 100,000 persons of Japanese heritage were forcibly relocated from the West Coast and incarcerated in inland internment camps. The Yale University Library's exhibition draws on the university's extensive materials related to the internment, including internee correspondence, artwork, and literature. The exhibition is continuing until February 26, 2016.

If you can't make it to the library you can explore some of the material from the exhibition on the Out of the Desert interactive map. The map shows the location of the temporary assembly centers and the internment camps. If you select an internment camp on the map you can view some of the university's extensive material relating to the camp, including historical photos, contemporary newspaper reports and letters and drawings from the camp's internees.

The UK Building Age Map

Over the last few years we've seen building age maps from all around the world. It is now possible to view maps showing the age of buildings in New York, Barcelona, Moscow, Reykjavík, Ljubljana, Vancouver and all of the Netherlands.

Despite the worldwide popularity of these types of maps there have been no UK building age maps. Until now! Now there is a map showing building age data for the whole of England & Wales. CDRC Maps has added a modal building age layer which allows you to study the geography of residential building ages in towns and cities throughout England & Wales.

The map reveals the fascinating history of residential building patterns in UK towns and cities. For example, if you zoom in on London, you can see how the West End has remained largely undeveloped since the nineteenth century. You can also clearly see the trend for building new residential properties along both banks of the Thames since the turn of the 21st century, as the old riverside docks and wharves have slowly been replaced with newer apartment buildings.

Elsewhere you can see the recent developments in the Isle of Dogs and, even more recently, around the new Olympic Park.


Zoom in on new towns, such as Crawley in West Sussex, and you can study the development of the postwar boom in new residential towns. In these new towns you can see the concentration of fifties housing stock in the town centres, with newer neighborhoods springing up in the suburbs as the decades pass.

These towns also often show a more recent pattern of brand new residential properties springing up in the town centres. The downturn in the high street retail sector has seen a trend for building new apartment blocks in what were once almost exclusively retail & commercial areas. This probably also reflects a rise in the popularity of city centre living for many people.

The Spanish Election Map

The two main political parties in Spain achieved historic lows in yesterday's Spanish elections. The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and the conservative People's Party (PP) still won the most votes but the anti-austerity Podemos party and the centre-right Ciudadanos party both managed to woo millions of voters away from Spain's two main political giants. The result means that neither the People's Party or the Socialist Workers Party will be able to form a majority government on their own.

This Spanish Election Map, created with CartoDB, shows which political party won in each municipality and the percentage of the votes that they won. The choropleth map provides a handy overview of which parties performed best in which areas of Spain.

However it is a shame that you can't filter the map by party. As the map is - it is a little hard to work out in which areas Podemos and Ciudadanos have done well. If you compare this map with the Spanish Safe Seats Map, it looks like the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and the People's Party managed to retain a lot of their votes in their traditionally strongest municipalities. I'm finding it a little harder to work out where in Spain they have lost ground to their new opponents.

An Oblique View of Colorado

The Atlantic has created a marvelous oblique satellite view map of Denver and the Colorado Rockies. The map is only possible because of a rare satellite image captured by WorldView-3.

DigitalGlobe's WorldView-3 satellite is equipped with a high resolution sensor. The sensor is capable of capturing the usual straight down satellite images of the Earth but can also capture high resolution oblique views of Earth. The Atlantic has taken one such oblique satellite view of Colorado and used it to create a Leaflet map.

The map allows you to zoom-in on details in this beautiful view of Colorado. The Atlantic article accompanying the map points out where you can look in the image to find Denver, Crested Butte and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. It is a shame that the Atlantic didn't use the Leaflet Hash plug-in with the map. This would have allowed the map's users to link and share some of their favorite finds in this WorldView-3 oblique view of Colorado.

The Video Map Background

A few weeks ago Muxlabs released Map Effects 100, a collection of cool user interaction effects for Leaflet maps. They have now added another effect to the collection which creates a video background for a Leaflet map.

You can see Map on Video in action here. The video shows the view from a car driving down Las Vegas Boulevard. In the foreground an animated car marker shows the position of the car as it drives down the street, while, in the background, you can actually watch the video play.

The effect is achieved simply by placing the map element on top of the video element and reducing the opacity of the map element. This makes the map see-through, allowing you to see the video playing behind the map. The effect works quite well with the Stamen Toner map tiles used here, because the dominant white color of the map becomes completely opaque, just leaving the roads visible on top of the video.

The History Maps of the Week

It has been a good week for fans of history maps, with the release of two interactive maps dedicated to mapping the world's history.

First out of the blocks was Chronas. Imagine Google Maps with a date control which allows you to view an atlas of the world for any period in history. That is the ambitious aim of Chronas.

Chronas allows you to view an interactive map of the world showing the country boundaries for any date from the year 1 AD to the year 2000. If you select a year from the time slider, running along the bottom of the map, the map will update to show how the world looked at the chosen time.

Each of these historical maps is fully interactive. If you click on a country or geographical area on the map a Wikipedia article on the selected historical region will open in the map sidebar. For example, if you select the year 573 AD from the time slider, you can select the Visigoths region on the map to learn more about the Visigoths from Wikipedia.


Also released this week was American Panorama, a superb new historical mapping project from the University of Richmond.

You may remember that last year the university released an interactive mapped showcase of the nearly 700 maps in the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. That interactive map allows you to view maps from Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, published in 1932. The Atlas contained hundreds of maps covering a vast range of social, economic and political aspects of life in the Untied States, all of which can now be viewed on top of an interactive Leaflet map on the university's website.

Richmond University has now unveiled a new project to map important themes and events in American history. American Panorama currently has four interactive maps exploring the early history of the United States. The first four maps from the project so far are; The Forced Migration of Enslaved People, The Overland Trails, Foreign-Born Population and Canals.

There will be many more maps to come exploring other aspects of American history.


Two Thousand Years of Urban Growth is a 3D globe visualizing the history of population change around the world over the last 2,000 years. The map was made by Esri using their new ArcGIS API for JavaScript with D3.js.

City populations around the world are shown on the globe with 3d bar charts placed over each city. The timeline slide control allows you to adjust the date in order to view the city populations for different dates throughout history. If you select a city's bar on the globe you can also view a line chart showing the city's population over the last 2,000 years.

3D Maps of Saturn's Moons

The New York Times has created WebGL globes of all of Saturn's moons. Mapping Saturn's Moons uses imagery captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Since 2004 the Cassini orbiter has been collecting data on Saturn and its 62 moons. The Times has used some of this data to create WebGL globes of Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan and Iapetus.

If you have a WebGL enabled browser you can interact with each of these seven Saturn moon globes. You can rotate the globes and view the names of major craters and regions on each of the moons. Each of the WebGL globes is accompanied with a brief introductory text about the selected moon.

Google Ship View

Cruise line operators Royal Caribbean have created an impressive Street View tour of one of their majestic cruise liners. Google Ship View allows you to take a virtual tour of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship using Google's 360 degree panoramic imagery.

The tour includes Street View imagery of the ship's facilities, shops, restaurants and passenger cabins, giving you a great insight into what you can expect on a Royal Caribbean tour. There is also a little Christmas present hidden on board the ship. Find it on Google Ship View and you could win yourself a free cruise.

If you find the Christmas present hidden in Google Ship View you could win a free 7 night cruise on Harmony of the Seas. Residents of the United Kingdom and Ireland have until the end of Thursday 31st December 2015 to find the present and to enter the competition.

Hat-tip: Google Street View World

The 100 Best Maps of the Year

You can now view all of the 100 Best Interactive Maps of 2015. These 100 interactive maps are Maps Mania's choice of the most outstanding maps of this past year.

The collection features maps created with the Google Maps API, Mapbox, CartoDB, Leaflet, Esri and a number of other JavaScript libraries. You can sort the maps by mapping platform using the menu at the top of the page.

If that isn't enough maps to whet your cartographic appetite then you might also want to check out Visualoop's round-up of the 100 Outstanding Maps of 2015. Part one of Visualoop's collection can be viewed here. Part two is here.

Historical Global Polluters

In 1793 the United Kingdom produced 95% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. By 2010 they had managed to reduce their proportion to only 1.6% of the world's total CO₂ emissions. This could be a considered a resounding success - if only they hadn't increased their total CO₂ emissions over the same period by over 70 MtCO₂.

The Global Historical Emissions Map shows how much carbon dioxide countries around the world have emitted from 1750 until 2010. Using the timeline slide control you can view the historical CO₂ emissions produced by countries per capita, in total and as a proportion of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions.

Animated Optimal Road Trips

This year optimal road trips have been a popular theme for map developers. In its most basic form the 'optimal road trip' provides the shortest journey around a country (or any list of destinations), while also visiting each and every region at least once.

Here are some example maps, showing an Optimal Road Trip Across the United States, an Optimal Road Trip Across Europe and an Optimal Road Trip Around India.

You can now view three optimal road trips in which the routes have also been animated. The VROOM Optimized Road Trips Gallery includes three animated maps; a coast to coast U.S. roadtrip through 48 state capitals, a tour of the 244 biggest towns in metropolitan France and a trip around 2232 Irish pubs.

The optimal routes for each trip were calculated using VROOM, an optimization engine for vehicle routing problems. The animated polylines for the routes were created using the new SnakeAnim plug-in for Leaflet maps.

Mapping 2000 Years of Population Change

Two Thousand Years of Urban Growth is a 3D globe visualizing population change around the world over the last 2,000 years. The map was made by Esri using their new ArcGIS API for JavaScript with D3.js.

City populations around the world are shown on the globe with 3d bar charts placed over each city. The timeline slide control allows you to adjust the date in order to view the city populations for different dates throughout history. If you select a city's bar on the globe you can also view a line chart showing the city's population over the last 2,000 years.

The globe is an impressive demonstration of Esri's ArcGIS API for JavaScript. However this is one case where I think the data doesn't need to be mapped. Using a 3D globe is probably not the best way to visualize historical population growth. I think the information could be more easily conveyed with just a simple dynamic bar chart and timeline control.

The Atlas of American History

American Panorama is a superb new historical mapping project from the University of Richmond.

You may remember that last year the university released an interactive mapped showcase of the nearly 700 maps in the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States. That interactive map allows you to view maps from Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, published in 1932. The Atlas contained hundreds of maps covering a vast range of social, economic and political aspects of life in the Untied States, all of which can now be viewed on top of an interactive Leaflet map on the university's website.

Richmond University has now unveiled a new project to map important themes and events in American history. American Panorama currently has four interactive maps exploring the early history of the United States. The first four maps from the project are; The Forced Migration of Enslaved People, The Overland Trails, Foreign-Born Population and Canals.

There will be many more maps to come exploring other aspects of American history.

Star Wars Street View - Part Two

You can now sit inside the cockpit of an X-Wing on Google Maps Street View. You can also visit Yoda on Dagobah, stroll around an Ewok village and visit Jabba's Palace.

For the Love of the Force is an independent Star Wars Convention. At this year's convention in Manchester trusted Street View photographers See Inside Group captured Street View images of a number of the conventions exhibits. These Street View images can now be seen on Google Maps.

You can also explore all these Star Wars Street Views on a special For the Love of the Force Star Wars Tour. The tour allows you to walk around and even sit inside the cockpit of a full-siz X-Wing. You can also visit the Cantina Bar, meet Yoda on Dagobah, explore an Ewok village and stop inside Jabba's Palace.


If you are a fan of Star Wars you can now also fly around the world in either a Millennium Falcon, in Darth Vader's Tie Fighter or on board Luke's X Wing. Star Wars Street View allows you to explore Google Maps Street View from inside your choice of these three Star Wars spacecraft.

I'm fairly sure Tie Fighters used to be a lot faster when I fought for the Dark Side. However, despite the lack of speed of these three machines, you can use the handy Google Map provided to quickly hyper-jump to new locations around the world. All three spacecraft also come fully fitted with their own in-craft Star Wars sound systems.


It's time for you to decide whose side you are really on. Are you going to fight for the Dark Side or will you take up arms in support of the Rebel Android forces?

Street Wars: Episode 1 - The Platform Menace is a new Google Maps game which also has a Star Wars theme. In this game you get to choose between fighting for the Imperial Overlord Siths (iOS) or for the Android Rebels. After deciding which side you are on you will be asked to enter your location. You will then be presented with a short introductory report presented on top of a nearby Street View scene.

The game itself is simple to play. You will be shown a number of Street View images. All you have to do is click on the map to show where you think the Street View is located. You will then be awarded points based on how close you guessed to the real location.

Esri Has Joined the Dark Side

I can only assume that Esri has joined forces with the dark side. Why else would Esri release a map showing where every Jedi Knight lives?

In the last census over 170,000 people in England & Wales said that their religion was Jedi Knight. Esri UK's Jedi Knights in England & Wales is a choropleth map showing where all those Jedi Knights live.

According to the map the highest concentration of Jedi Knights seems to be in the south of the country. If you click on an area of the map you can find out exactly how many Jedi Knights are living there and what proportion they are of the total population. Thanks to Esri Darth Vader has never had it so easy.

The NRA Funding Map

The Guardian has released an interesting map which reveals how much money your representatives have received  in political donations from the National Rifle Association and where your representatives stand on gun legislation.

The Gun Deaths in Your District map shows how many gun deaths there have been in every congressional district. If you select a district on the map you can find out how many gun deaths there have been in the district.

Below the map you can view details about the district's three political representatives, including information on how much money they have received from the gun lobby and how they have voted on gun rights and gun control legislation.

The Siege of Sarajevo

During the siege of Sarajevo a half mile long tunnel was built under Sarajevo Airport to link the city of Sarajevo (which was entirely cut off by Serbian forces) with Bosnian-held territory on the other side of the airport. The tunnel was used to smuggle food, war supplies, and humanitarian aid into the city and to help citizens escape the siege.

Sarajevo Under Siege is a web documentary about the siege of Sarajevo and its effect on the people trapped in the city. The documentary includes a Story Map (labelled 'Interactive' in the site menu), which looks at the military strength and positions of the Yugoslav People's Army and the defense offered by the Bosnian government defense forces (ARBiH).

Sarajevo Under Siege also includes a Torque powered Siege Map. This animated map plays through the constant artillery bombardment of the city. The map also contains interactive markers showing the locations of many of the massacres carried out during the siege.

The 'Tunnel' section of Sarajevo Under Siege website consists of a series of connected panoramic photos of the Sarajevo Tunnel. This Street View tour allows you to explore the entrance of the tunnel, in the home of the Kolar family and explore a little way into the tunnel itself.

Vintage Map Styles.

This month we have been treated to two new vintage map styles.

Two weeks ago Thunderforest released a new Pioneer map style inspired by early American railroad maps. Thunderforest's new Pioneer map tiles are based on their Transport vector map tileset. The Pioneer map uses "Western fonts, verdigris buildings and a limited colour palette" to replicate the style of early railroad maps.


Yesterday Mapbox unveiled their own vintage map style. Mapbox's Vintage map style was created in Mapbox Studio and the Mapbox blog has a useful post on how the map was created.

The map uses background textures and bathymetry data to replicate how many vintage maps used detailed styling on the oceans surrounding bodies of land. The Vintage map also uses a color scheme designed to mimic the worn discolored paper of many antique vintage maps.

The Gangs of New York Map

The Daily News has mapped the territories of gangs and street crews in New York City based on data from the New York Police Department's Juvenile Justice Division.

The Gangs of New York is a simple interactive map showing the areas in which street gangs operate within the city. The map shows 'active' and 'inactive' gang territories on the map with colored polygons. You can click on any of the shaded areas on the map to reveal the name of the gang and the precinct in which they operate.


If you find the Gangs of New York Map worrying then you might want to reassure yourself by looking at how much worse New York gangs were in the past. My own Gangs of New York story map recounts the famous street battle between members of the Dead Rabbits gang and the Bowery Boys in the Nineteenth Century.

Martin Scorsese's film the Gangs of New York retold the story of the gang war between rival groups in the Five Points district of Lower Manhattan in the mid-Nineteenth Century. The film was based on the true gang wars which took place in the area. One of the most notorious battles between the gangs was the Dead Rabbits Riot, a two-day battle which took place on July 4–5, 1857. You can see how the battle progressed simply be scrolling down on this story map.

The Smelly Map of London

This new interactive map reveals the dominant smells on each of London's streets. SmellyMaps maps the prevailing smells on London's roads by analyzing all the negative smell-related words tagged on Flickr photos or in Twitter messages.

London streets are colored on the map to show four different smells, 'emissions', 'nature', 'food' and 'animals'. When you click on a colored street a circular chart appears, revealing the percentages of tags posted on social media related to these four different types of smell.

If you explore the map you will find that nature and animal related smells seem to occur predominantly in parks. Unsurprisingly London Zoo (in Regents Park) is completely dominated by animal smells.

The History Map

Imagine Google Maps with a date control which allowed you to view an atlas of the world for any period in history. That is the ambitious aim of Chronas.

Chronas allows you to view an interactive map of the world showing the country boundaries for any date from the year 1 AD to the year 2000. If you select a year from the time slider, running along the bottom of the map, the map will update to show how the world looked at the chosen time.


Each of the historical maps are fully interactive. If you click on a country or geographical area on the map a Wikipedia article on the selected historical region will open in the map sidebar. For example, if you select the year 573 AD from the time slider, you can select the Visigoths region on the map to learn more about the Visigoths from Wikipedia.

In the next development phase for Chronas the plan is to make the map editable in the style of OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia, so that users can directly contribute to the map.

Maps of the Week

There is some beautiful map making and some beautiful looking maps in Roads to Rome. For this impressive project Moovel Lab took 486,713 starting points across the whole of Europe and then worked out the quickest route from each of those points to the eternal city of Rome.

They then created an interactive map showing all the routes, with the the most used streets shown larger on the map. The result is a very pretty map (which you can even purchase as a poster).

Roads to Rome also includes an 'Explore' section which lets you create a similar map centered on your own location, Just enter an address and a travelling time and Roads to Rome will create a similar beautiful looking map, highlighting all the roads leading to your home.


The Racial Dot Map of Brazil is a Google Map showing the racial distribution of the Brazilian population. Each dot on the map represents one person. There are over 190 million dots on the map, with each dot colored to show the person's race.

The location and racial status of the dots on the map comes from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics census 2010. The smallest geographical unit of the census is the census sector and each of the dots are randomly distributed within each census sector.


Back in the day a large map of the world adorned nearly every classroom wall.

Jonah Adkins has recreated the style of one of these classroom maps with his Back 2 School interactive map. The Back 2 School map style is based on an old map of North America that Jonah found in Charlottesville. The map uses elevation data from ETOPO, which is shaded on the map to recreate the topographical style of the original map.

The map itself was styled in Mapbox Studio. You can view more interesting map styles created with Mapbox Studio in Mapbox's new Mapbox Studio Gallery.


Solar Impulse is a plane attempting to fly around the world powered purely by the sun's energy. Flying on the Wings of Twitter is a mapped visualization of Tweets from around the world sent in support of Solar Impulse.

Flying on the Wings of Twitter uses CartoDB's Torque library to show an animated timeline of Tweets being posted around the world in support of the flight. A lot of Torque powered Twitter maps are little more than flashing dots on a map. Flying on the Wings of Twitter however moves a little beyond this by actually sending the Tweets into flight themselves.

As you progress in the timeline the Tweets actually fly from their origins to the location of Solar Impulse at the point the Tweets were sent. If you quickly move through the timeline the flight path of the Solar Impulse is revealed on the map as all the Tweets descend upon the plane.