New York's Skyscrapers of Crime

The New York skyline on this map is dominated by the city's skyscrapers of crime.

The NYC Felonies Map shows the rates of the seven major felonies for each city block in New York City. The felonies are shown at the midpoint of each street segment by stacking map markers for each felony. The taller the stack the more the crime.

The map stacks are essentially bar charts. I'm not usually a fan of using bar charts on maps but it actually works very well here. The normal problem with placing bar charts on an interactive map is that the bars can obscure the view of the data to the north behind the stacks to the south. This isn't a problem on this map as you can zoom in very close on the map until all the marker stacks become clearly visible.

The map could be improved however by allowing users to filter the data. I'd like to be able to select the seven felonies individually to see if there are different crime hot-spots for the different types of major felony.