Maps of the Week

My favorite interactive map this week was Esri's A Hillshade Everyone Can Use. Esri Story Maps can be a little formulaic and so they don't feature very often in my weekly round-ups. However this introduction to hill-shade maps and to Esri's own next generation hillshade layer is beautifully put together.

The map compares Esri's new multi-directional hillshading to traditional hillshading (swipe left & right on the map to compare old with new). It also provides some great examples of how a hillshade layer can provide a clearer context to topographical map features and other mapped data. In particular there is a great example map showing how a hillshade layer reveals some of the effects the landscape can have on wind turbine placement.


This week I really also liked NYPL Lab's Street View, Then & Now: New York City's Fifth Avenue. This little application allows you to take a virtual stroll down Fifth Avenue in Street View while comparing today's New York to photos taken at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

The application was designed to promote the New York Public Library's release of more than 180,000 items into the public domain in its Digital Collections. The items include maps, photographs, letters, posters, manuscripts, sheet music, drawings and other texts, all of which you can download in high-resolution and without restriction from the Digital Collections website.


Maps made with Google Fusion Tables also don't often make it into the Maps Mania Maps of the Week post. I'll make an exception this week for CityMetric's map of UK car ownership. Mapping census data doesn't always pay off but this CityMetric map clearly shows the geography of car ownership in England & Wales.

The CityMetric map of car ownership shows that in towns and cities across England & Wales many people have decided to live without a car. If you look at any UK city on the map (only England & Wales is covered) you will see that the lowest percentage of car ownership is in inner city neighborhoods. As you move out, into the city suburbs, car ownership grows. Once you get out into the rural areas then nearly every household owns a car,