Thursday, March 23, 2017

A World Map Without Highways


During the 2012 London Olympics the streets around my home were closed to traffic. For over a month I got a wonderful glimpse of a world without noisy, polluting combustion engines. As I walked around the car free streets I would often imagine what the neighborhood would look like if all the tarmacked roads could be replaced with green grass and flower beds. Unfortunately once the Olympics were over the streets were reopened and I never got the chance to replace all those ugly roads.

If the idea of a world without highways appeals to you then you will probably like No Highways NYC. Jeff Sisson's new site allows you to see what your local map would look like without all those ugly highways. The name of the map is a bit of a misnomer as it actually works for any location in the world (not just New York!).

Use the map's search facility and you can view the map for any location in the world with the 'highway' layer removed. This is possible thanks to Mapzen's ability to add or remove different map elements. This allows No Highways NYC to provide a handy little button which allows you to view the map with or without highways.


If the thought of a world without cars and highways makes you uncontrollably angry then ignore Jeff's map and head over to the Connectivity Atlas instead. Here you can view a world map which consists only of roads.

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