Maps of the Week

In the year 1 C.E. the population of planet Earth was around 170 million. It is expected to reach 10 billion by the year 2100. You can explore the history of this world-wide population growth from 1 C.E. to 2050 on World Population : An Interactive Experience.

World Population : An Interactive Experience is a world map and timeline which visualizes global population trends over the last two thousand years. The map itself shows locations throughout history where more than 1 million people have lived. The map also includes a wealth of information about historical landmarks important to population trends. This information includes historical developments in science, food production, health, the environment and in human society.

The timeline running along the bottom of the map allows you to explore the data by year. Select a year from the timeline and you can see where the major centers of human population were and the important historical developments around the time of the selected year


GoodCityLife has mapped the soundscapes of a number of major cities around the world based on the tags used in Flickr photographs

Chatty Maps includes interactive Leaflet based maps of New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Washington, Miami, Seattle, London, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan and Rome. In each city map the roads are colored to show the dominant sounds on the street, based on tags used in social media.

If you select a street on the map you can view a data visualization which explores the relationship between the street's soundscape and emotions. For example streets with music sounds are often associated with strong emotions of joy or sadness, while those with human sounds are more usually associated with joy or surprise.


Virot Chiraphadhanakul has created a neat mapped interface to explore Bay Area bike sharing data. The Bay Area Bike Share Data allows you to explore trip statistics on the Bay Area Bike Share network and the average availability of bikes at docking stations.

Bike Area Bike Share Data is split into five maps which allow you to visualize data in San Francisco, Redwood City, Palo Alto, Mountain View and San Jose. If you select a bike docking station on any of the maps you are presented with four options to explore 'trip stats', 'availability', 'bike routes' and 'nearby photos'. The data view for each of these choices is displayed in the map sidebar.

The map itself uses map tiles from Stamen. However what I really like in this map are the beautiful circular pop-up windows which appear when you click on a map marker. Not only are these really attractive pop-ups I also like the way that they are highlighted on selection, while at the same time the map itself is slightly masked.