Where the Money Comes From

73% of the total money given to House candidates in the 2018 midterm elections comes from outside each candidate's district. You can now find out where your candidate's contributions come from on a new interactive map from Axios.

Axios' map Outside Money Floods House Campaigns allows you to see where every House candidate's money comes from. If you select a candidate's name from the drop-down menu you can view a map of the USA which includes flow-lines showing all the money flowing into the candidate's election campaign. The flow-lines on the map are also colored to show where each donation comes from. The blue lines show donations which have come from within the candidate's district. The green lines show money that has been donated from within state and the grey lines show all the donations coming from other states.

The total money donated to the candidate is shown above the map. This total is also broken down to show the percentage that came from within the candidate's district, the percentage from within the candidate's state and the percentage that came from the rest of the USA.


The MapD Political Donations map visualizes 25 years worth of political donations data on a Mapbox GL powered interactive map. Using the map you can explore where and how much Americans have donated to the Democrats and Republicans since 1990.

Zoom-in on the map and you can see locations where political donations have been made. Blue dots on the map show donations made to Democratic candidates and red dots show donations to Republicans. The size of the dots represent the relative size of each donation.

Beside the map you can see charts showing the amounts made to each party and to individual candidates. One of the most impressive aspects of this visualization is the speed that it responds. Move the location on the map and both the map and the charts almost instantly update to show the data for the current map view.

The NFL Maps of the United States

The NFL Shoppers on SeatGeek interactive map shows the most popular NFL team in every U.S. county. Popularity for an NFL team is determined on this map by the number of customers for game tickets on the SeatGeek ticketing website for each football team.

SeatGeek's map is only the latest map of NFL fandom and NFL fans might be interested in  comparing the map with previous efforts to map the geographical fan bases of football teams.


In 2014 Facebook released a NFL American fandom map. The map shows the most 'liked' NFL teams in each county of the USA. The Atlantic has a large image of the map in its Geography of NFL Fandom article. On the Facebook map every county is colored to show the NFL team which has the most likes on the social network.

Earlier this year Google released their own map of NFL fandom. Ahead of Super Bowl 2018 Google Trends created the NFL Playoffs 2018 interactive map, which shows the most searched playoff team in each United States county. Google's map is restricted to show only those teams who reached the playoffs.

Of the two teams in the 2018 Super Bowl the New England Patriots were the most searched team in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and the eastern part of New York. The Philadelphia Eagles weren't even the most popular team in Pennsylvania. More counties in Pennsylvania seem to support the Pittsburgh Steelers than the Philadelphia Eagles. However the Philadelphia Eagles are the most supported team in the eastern counties in Pennsylvania. They are also the most popular team in New Jersey and Delaware.


Fans of college football will be more interested in the College Football Fan Map from the New York Times. The College Football Fan Map divides the USA into new regions based on the Facebook 'likes' of college football teams. Not content with splitting the US into college football fan regions the Times has also created a map of The Places in America Where College Football Means the Most.

The College Football Fan Map provides a heat-map view of where college football is most popular in America. By selecting a county on the map you can view what percentage of the county's residents are Facebook fans of the different college football teams.

Building Age Posters

Bert Spaan's Netherland's Building Age Map visualizes the age of a staggering 9,866,539 buildings in the Netherlands. He has now created a new interactive map which allows you to create a building age static image for any location in the Netherlands. This means that you can create a customized building age poster for anywhere in the Netherlands. You can even choose the colors of the buildings on your very own custom poster.

All Buildings in the Netherlands can show you the ages that all buildings were constructed anywhere in the country and save the map as a PNG or SVG image. This is great for those who are interested in creating building age posters for their neighborhood in the Netherlands.

The new map uses Mike Bostock's new data visualization tool Observable. The fact that All Buildings in the Netherlands is an Observable notebook means that you can actually change the colors of the buildings shown on the map. If you look under the map and expand the 'bands' section of the notebook you can see the colors that have been assigned for the different years of building construction. If you want to change the colors you can just change the hex color codes for each date.

This means that you can not only create a building age poster for any location in the Netherlands you can also choose the colors of your customized building age map poster.

The USA's Longest Commutes

The average American will spend over one year of their life commuting to work. The average American spends 408 days commuting to and from their workplace. You can find out how long people in your town take commuting to work on this new interactive map.

EducatedDriver.org has worked out how many days people across the United States spend commuting to and from work over the course of their lives. The Average Commute Time interactive maps shows the average time spent commuting in nearly 1,000 locations across the United States. The amount of time spent commuting is shown by colored map markers. The colors of the circles show the average amount of time spent each day traveling back and forth from work. The size of the circle represents the number of days lost over a lifetime to the daily commute.


The average commuting time for the residents of Liguori, Missouri is 1.2 minutes. This is quite a lot quicker than the national average. If you want to know what the average commuting time is in your zipcode area then you can use Auto Accessories Garage's interactive map of Average Commute Times.

If you enter your commute time and zipcode into the map you find out how your commuting time compares with that of your neighbors. You can also discover how your commute compares to the average in your city, state and in the whole country. The Average Commute Times map uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau.


A couple of years ago Mark Evans used the Google Maps API to create a hypnotic visualization of commuting flows, showing the distances and 'journeys' that American's make to and from work. Using the ACS Commute Map you can zoom in on any U.S. county and view an animated map showing where people live and work.

Mark Evans' maps don't show the actual journeys that commuters make but do give a great sense of how town and city centers suck in commuters from surrounding suburbs. The data for the maps comes from the American Community Survey. You can learn more about how the map was made from this data on Mark's blog post ACS Commuter Data Visualizations. Mark's ACS Commute Map was originally inspired by Alasdair Rae's mapped visualizations of commuting in the Bay Area.

How Katrina Flooded New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina made landfall over southeast Louisiana and Mississippi on August 29 2005. The result of the hurricane on the city of New Orleans was devastating. Floodwalls and levees failed to hold back the resulting storm surges and 80% of the city ended up being flooded.

Dan Swenson has created a story map exploring how the city of New Orleans was inundated. Filling the Bowl - How the New Orleans Area Flooded During Hurricane Katrina provides a chronological overview of the major events on Monday August 29th. As you progress through the timeline the map shows how the tides and storm surges breeched the levees and floodwalls which were meant to protect the city. By September 1 some neighborhoods in the city were submerged in over 10 feet of water.

The map is based on a number of post-hurricane reports and eye witness accounts. You can view more of Dan Swenson's maps and interactive visualizations produced for NOLA.com and The Times-Picayune here.

Where House Prices are Rising & Falling

This week many UK newspapers carried a story about the record number of people from London selling their homes and moving to the north of England. The news was based on a report by estate agents Hamptons International claiming that the proportion of London home owners selling up and moving to the north or to the Midlands has tripled since 2010. This may well be true but it doesn't seem to be having any effect on the ever rising cost of properties in the capital.

House Prices: 2010 to Present is an interactive map showing where house prices have risen and fallen in England and Wales since 2013. The map reveals that there are very few places in London and the south-east where house prices have fallen. In the north and the Midlands, despite all the newly arriving Londoners, there are many areas where house prices have fallen, although in both regions there are still many postcode areas where house prices have actually risen

The map shows how and where house prices have changed since 2013 in different postcode areas. It does this by comparing the differences in the price of houses that were actually sold between 2010-2013 and then sold again since 2014. It therefore looks at the changes in individual house prices that were actually sold twice, once in each period of time. The result shown on the map is the median house price fall or rise for all such houses in a postcode area. If you select a colored dot on the map you can view the median house price for each period in the selected area and the percentage that house prices have fallen or risen.

I can think of one caveat to the data shown on this map. As the house price data is based on homes that have sold twice in a very short period of time it may well contain a large number of homes which have been flipped. That is houses that have been bought relatively cheaply had money spent on renovations & improvements and then sold at a profit. This might tend to inflate the number of areas where house prices have risen.

The United States of Global Trade

This week Donald Trump negotiated a 'really good' trade deal with Mexico and said that he is now "working on Canada". These new trade deals with the USA's closest neighbors will effect trade in every state in the USA. According to the Wilson Quarterly the trilateral trade between the USA, Canada and Mexico is worth around $1.2 trillion.

You can explore the American side of this trilateral trade on Wilson Quarterly's new interactive map. The United States of Trade is an interactive map which provides a brief introduction to the type of goods that each U.S. state imports and exports to both Mexico and Canada. Click on a state on the map and you can view the state's main imports and exports from both of the US's neighboring countries.


The United States also imports and exports goods to every other country in the world. You can explore this global trade on Data Labs' 3d visualization of imports and exports around the world. Global Corridors for Trade - Imports and Exports by Country shows how goods and services travel around the globe as a result of international trade.

Using the drop-down menu you can select to center the map on a country of your choice. The map will then show you the total amount your selected  country spends and makes on importing and exporting goods (in minerals, machinery and agriculture).The flow lines on the map show the countries around the world that your chosen country has trade deals with.

You can select to view either imports and exports on the 3d globe. You can also break this trade down to show imports and exports of minerals, machinery and agriculture. The date tool at the bottom of the page allows you to view the trade figures for individual years and to view a graph of import and export totals over time.


You can also explore how trade operates around the world using Chatham House's global resource trade database, which includes 20 million points of data on global trade spanning 270 countries and 1,300 commodities. The online database also allows you to map the trade flow of individual commodities around the world.

Using Chatham House's resourcetrade.earth you can track and visualize how natural resources are traded around the world. This interactive map allows you to view the global trade of individual commodities, the global trade of individual countries and how trade by these countries in all these commodities has changed over the years.

For example using the map's filter controls you can see all the countries where the USA imports sugar from. As well as the map showing the countries that export sugar to the USA resourcetrade.earth shows the total value of trade from each of these countries and information about the fastest growing and fastest declining countries in the trade of sugar to the USA. You can also then progress to view information and the value of the international trade of sugar and explore where other countries around the world import or export sugar to and from.

Searches carried out using resourcetrade.earth can be visualized, shared, embedded or downloaded. This means that you can use resourcetrade.earth to illustrate reports and stories about individual commodities and global trade on your own website or blog. Chatham House uses this feature of resourcetrade.earth themselves to illustrate and visualize their own investigations into the international trade of natural resources. You can read these investigations in resourcetrade.earth Stories.

Yale Climate Opinion Maps

Americans now overwhelmingly believe in global warming. In fact there are only three counties in the whole of the United States where a majority of the population still believe that global warming is not happening. These counties are Emery County in Utah, Heard County in Georgia and Grant County in West Virginia.

70% of Americans in total believe that global warming will harm future generations. 70% of Americans also believe that protecting the environment is now more important than economic growth.

Every year Yale surveys the opinions of Americans, aged 25 and over, about their attitudes, beliefs and policy preferences towards global warming. You can view the results of this year's survey at Yale Climate Opinion Maps. You can view the results of each of the survey questions on an interactive map. The maps visualize the results at the state, congressional district, metro area, and county levels, allowing you to view how climate opinion in America breaks-down geographically.

Politicians might be interested in the finding that 66% of registered voters think President Trump was wrong to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. In fact 70% of registered voters believe that the United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of what other countries do.

The Free Market in North Korea

Despite North Korea's centralized and state-controlled economy there are 436 officially sanctioned markets located across the country. Since the 1990's famine, and against the backdrop of the collapse of financial support from the Soviet Union, the North Korean economy has begun to rely more and more on the private enterprise of street markets.

Beyond Parallel has created an interactive map showing the locations of General Markets in North Korea. If you select a market on the interactive map you can view the number of stalls in the market, its physical size and the annual rent paid to the government. The map also includes a slide control which allows you to filter the markets on the map by the amount of rent paid to the government. You can even view aerial imagery of the larger markets by switching to the 'Satellite Image' map layer.

The Beyond Parallel interactive map only shows the locations of officially recognized general markets. These markets must pay rents to the government. The map doesn't show unofficial or black markets. The unofficial markets are harder to map because they are often less permanent and often use makeshift or temporary structures and spaces.

The 2018 Fall Color Map

Every year SmokyMountains.com release an interactive map which shows when you can expect to enjoy the full technicolor experience of America's autumnal foliage. The map uses historical weather records from all 48 continental states to predict the arrival of fall at the county level across the contiguous United States.

The 2018 Fall Foliage Prediction Map has a date control which allows you to view the leaf color you can expect for any date this fall. Move the date back and forth and the map automatically updates to show the predicted fall color in each county. The prediction is based on an analysis of several million data points of historical weather patterns and historical leaf trends.

Wes Melton, co-founder and CTO of SmokyMountains.com, says that,  "historical data drives our model to become more accurate each year. Each year, we use a proprietary algorithm to process millions of data pieces and output accurate predictions for the entire country. Once the data is processed, the map outputs over 50,000 pieces of predictive data and then displays it on an interactive map."

This year the Fall Foliage Prediction Map is accompanied by a chart which shows the average US temperature since 1990. Wes Melton explains that, "The temperature data supplied by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration is one of the most important factors (in predicting fall foliage colors) and now leaf map users can easily visualize the impact of regional precipitation on peak fall dates."

Internal Migration in the USA

American Migration is an interactive map showing where people are moving to in America. The map shows the towns and cities where people who have recently moved from a town have moved to.

If you hover over a city on the map you can see all the other cities where people moved to, according to the Census Bureau's 2011-2015 American Community Survey. The map uses the Metro to Metro Migration Flows from the survey, which asks respondents if they've moved in the last year where they lived one year ago. As well as the flow-lines on the map, which show all the cities people have moved to, a top 5 list shows the most popular destinations for people moving from the selected city.


If you are more interested in the state-to-state migration flows of the United States then you might like the US Migration Flow Map. This map shows that Texas is the most popular destination for Californians moving out of the Golden State. The love that Californians have for Texas is reciprocated, as California is the most popular destination for Texans moving out of state.

This interactive map by Oregon State University allows you to see which states are the most popular destinations for Americans moving house. The US Migration Flow Map uses flow lines to visualize the numbers of people moving between different states in the USA from 2009-2013. The map includes options to see which states have the biggest exchanges of citizens and to view the most popular state destinations for each individual state.

The size of the flow lines on the map is representative of the number of people moving between two states. You can mouse-over a line to view the total number of people moving to or from each state. The menu at the bottom of the map allows you to switch between the top 50 state-level total flows, the top 50 state destinations for individual states and the top 50 state origins for migration flows into individual states.

The US Migration Flow Map is actually an illustration of a "force-directed method to automatically lay out migration flows". This method has been designed to reduce clutter and improve readability when using flow lines on a map. You can read more about the design principles behind the method in Automated layout of origin–destination flow maps: U.S. county-to-county migration 2009–2013 in the Journal of Maps.

Hong Kong Land Reclamation

A new interactive map shows how Hong Kong has grown over the last 180 years through a steady process of land reclamation. Land reclamation in mountainous Hong Kong has been an important tool to expand the limited supply of usable land. Over 35% of the area of present day Hong Kong is land which has been reclaimed from the sea.

The History of Land Reclamation is a visualization of how land in Hong Kong has been reclaimed from the sea since the mid-Nineteenth Century. The blue line on the map shows the historic coastline of Hong Kong. The reclaimed land is colored on the map by the date of reclamation. The map also includes a time control slider which allows you to view time reclamation projects in the city by date. If you click on the 'visible layers' menu you can add historical photos of Hong Kong to the interactive map.


You can also explore Hong Kong's ever expanding coastline by exploring the old maps on Hong Kong Historic Maps. This collection of vintage maps of the city includes maps dating from the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Hong Kong Historic Maps also includes the option to overlay the historic coastlines of Hong Kong on top of the vintage maps. These coastline overlays show the coastline of the city after major reclamation projects throughout the last 180 years.

The California Crop Map

The California Department of Water Resource has carried out the most detailed survey of crops and land use ever competed in California. You can view an interactive map of the survey on Stanford University's Where California Grows its Crops.

The interactive map provides a snapshot of where different crops were grown in California in June-July 2014. Different crops are shown on the maps using different colors. For example the red color in the Salinas Valley shows the abundance of salad crops (e.g. lettuce, broccoli, peppers) grown in the valley.

A crop filter at the top of the map allows you to filter the crops shown on the map. A number of quick links are shown beneath the map which zoom and center the map on some of the state's most important agricultural areas. As well as a link to the salad crops of the Salinas Valley there are links to the California wine growing region and to the rice crops & olive crops grown in the Sacramento Valley.

Where California Grows its Crops also includes a chart which shows the number of acres given over to each type of crop grown in California. The biggest crop (in acreage) is deciduous fruits and nuts. The second biggest crop in the state is pasture (alfalfa, grasses etc). California's vineyards are the fifth biggest crop in size of acreage.

The Mass Shooting Map of America

When I last posted a link to Vox's Mass Shootings Since Sandy Hook Map (in May) there had been 101 mass shootings in the US in 2018. There has now been 235 mass shooting incidents this year and an incredible 1,822 mass shootings since Sandy Hook.

The Vox map uses data from the Gun Violence Archive, who collect data on gun-related violence in the US. The Gun Violence Archive has a Charts and Maps section which includes a number of static maps of their gun violence data. This includes a map of all 9,535 people killed by guns in the United States so far this year. In 2017 there were 15,637 people killed by guns.


The New York Times reports that on an average day 96 Americans die after being shot by firearms. Individual suicides and homicides don't get as much news coverage as mass shootings but they still contribute a significant proportion of the total number of gun killings in the United States.

In On an Average Day, 96 Americans Die By Firearms the NYT explores some of the data behind the daily toll of gun violence. This analysis uses data from the Gun Violence Archive to illustrate the incessant routine violence perpetuated by gun owners. This includes a timeline showing the number of people injured and killed by guns every day since the start of 2014.

Since 49 people were killed at the Pulse nightclub in 2016 there have been been at least 87 shootings in just a three mile area around the club. The NYT illustrates this point with a clever interactive map. As you scroll through the article an expanding circle shows an ever increasing area around the Pulse nightclub in Florida. As the circle expands more and more shootings are revealed on the map of Orlando. By the time you get to a circle showing 14 miles around the club the number of shootings has risen to 383.

Monday's Mappa Mundi

Henricus Martellus Germanus was a German geographer and cartographer who lived and worked in Florence from 1480 to 1496. In around 1490 Martellus created a world map. The Martellus world map is said to have been an inspiration for the Waldseemüller map of 1507.

The only surviving copy of the Martellus Map was found in the 1960's and donated to Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Unfortunately the map is extremely faded, which makes a lot of the map's text illegible. This is why the Lazarus Project at the University of Rochester has been examining the map using multispectral imaging.

Multispectral Imaging is used to capture digital images of manuscripts, maps and texts which can then be digitally processed to help recover faded or damaged text and images. You can view the success of the Lazarus Project's work on this before & after interactive Martellus Map. This Leaflet map allows you to directly compare the digitally restored map with the original faded Martellus Map.


The Lazarus Project's before & after interactive was created on Leaflet.js using Jack Reed's Leaflet-IIIF plug-in. This is the same plug-in which I used to create my Mappae Mundi collection of historical world maps. You can view the Waldseemüller map of 1507 on Mappae Mundi by clicking on the 1507 button. If you compare the Waldseemüller map to the earlier Martellus map you can see the influence that Martellus had on Waldseemüller.

Of course a few years after Martellus created his world map Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the Americas. That western land mass is therefore missing from the Martellus Map but is famously included on Waldseemüller's 1507 map of the world (the first world map to include the word 'America').

The Sexist Streets of Brazil

São Paulo based data visualization company MedidaSP has released an interactive map which colors all of Brasil's streets based on whether they have male or female names. The Gender of (almost) All the Streets of Brazil is an impressive data visualization exposing what is obviously a thoroughly sexist approach to naming roads in Brazil.

All streets named for men are colored blue on the map and all the streets named for women are colored red. A bar plot running down the left-hand side of the map visualizes the percentage of all the roads in the current map view named for men, all those named for women, and those without a gendered place-name. In São Paulo alone of the 70,000 streets in the city only 5,000 have female names, while 27,500 have been named for men.You can move the map to any town or city in Brazil to explore how many roads have been named for men and for women in the selected area.

You can find out more about how the map was made and how the male and female street names were extracted from OpenStreetMap on the map's GitHub page.

Also See

Street Names in Vienna - a map of all streets named for men and women in Vienna
Female versus Male Street Names - a map of male & female named streets in a few global cities
Las Calles de las Mujeres - an interactive map which shows all streets named for men and women in Asuncion, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Cochabamba, Lima and Montevideo. You can read more about this project (in Spanish) at Geochicas.

The World's Biggest Exporters of Arms

The SIPRI Arms Transfers Database is a record of all major arms deals around the world since 1950. The database can be used to determine which countries are the biggest exporters of weapons and which countries are the biggest buyers of arms. It can also reveal where individual countries buy their arms and where countries sell their weapons around the world.

With data on the world's arm trade going back nearly 70 years SIPRI is a great resource for interesting mapped visualizations. For example in 2016 The Independent used data from SIPRI to map the five biggest exporters and importers of arms over the previous five years (2011-2015). The Independent map reveals that the biggest seller of weapons was the USA and the biggest importer of arms was India.


Big Think also used the same data (from 2011-2015) to map the largest exporters of arms. Big Think created a series of maps showing where the major sellers of arms sell the most weapons. So for example the USA, who are the largest exporters of arms, sold the most weapons to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. Russia, the second biggest exporter of weapons, sold the most weapons to India. While China and Vietnam were the second and third buyers of arms from Russia during this period.

The Price of War is another mapped visualization of SIPRI arms trade data. The Price of War visualizes the role that the United States plays in the global arms trade by mapping where the U.S. exported arms around the world between 2001 and 2015.


The Price of War interactive map colors countries across the globe based on the amount of arms each country bought from the the United States. The darker the shade of blue then the more arms were bought. You can hover over individual countries on the map to view the total number of dollars spent on buying arms from the USA.

The Small Arms and Ammunition Chrome Experiment is probably the best visualization of the SIPRI database. This interactive globe allows you to select countries around the world to view who they buy and sell weapons from and the size of their trade in arms.


If you click on an individual country on the interactive globe you can see all the countries it is involved with either for buying or selling arms. You can click on the imports and exports button to view which countries it buys arms from and which countries it sells arms to. The data shown on this map is from 1992 to 2010.

You may have noticed that all the above maps are using rather old data. SIPRI was last updated in March 2018 so there is huge scope for someone to map the latest arms trade data around the globe.

Wildfire Smoke & Air Quality Maps

The devastating wildfires burning in western Canada and the northwestern USA are contributing to poor air quality conditions, sparking air quality advisories throughout British Columbia and the northwestern United States.

You can view the extent of the smoke across north America on NOAA's Smoke Forecast map. NOAA's High-Resolution Rapid Refresh Smoke Interactive map identifies locations with intense fires and forecasts how smoke is likely to disperse based on the latest weather forecasts. The smoke forecast map is experimental. It is prone to errors from cloud cover preventing satellite detection of wildfires and to errors weather forecasts.

You can check the latest satellite imagery for yourself on NASA's Fire and Smoke website. Fire and Smoke is a collection of satellite images revealing wildfire and smoke cover around the world. NASA's Fire and smoke page also links to NOAA's latest fire outlook forecast.


The effect of all the wildfires in America can be clearly seen in PurpleAir's interactive map of air pollution. PurpleAir uses the Environmental Protection Agency's Air Quality Index (AQI) scale to show air pollution across North America. At the moment the PurpleAir map shows the effect of wildfire smoke on the air quality of British Columbia and all along the U.S. West Coast.

You can find where the National Weather Service has issued air quality alerts on their Watches, Warnings & Advisories page. You can also check the National Weather Service's Air Quality Forecast Guidance, which provides ozone, particulate matter and other pollutant forecasts.

Global Heat Records Broken this Summer

The record breaking heat experienced in most of the northern hemisphere this year may not have convinced the world that it is actually worth doing something about global warming but at least it has inspired us to create some nice data visualizations. On Monday Map Mania posted a small round-up of some of the work created by the BBC, the Washington Post and the Berliner Morgenpost while visualizing this long hot summer.

Axios has now also got in on the act with an animated map of All the heat records broken this summer on one map. Axios' map uses data compiled by Berkeley Earth (a nonprofit group that monitors global temperatures) from May 1 through July 31. The map animates through this time period plotting all the locations around the world which experienced a daily, monthly or all time temperature record. The overall picture at the end of the animation, showing all the records at once, is a stark illustration of how practically the whole of the northern hemisphere has experienced record breaking temperatures this year.

Mapping the Native Communities of California

When the Spanish invaded western California in AD 1769, there were more than 150,000 native people already living in the region. The San Francisco Bay Area was home to around 15,000 people, living in more than 40 different communities and speaking many different languages. The whole purpose of the Spanish missions in California was to convert the indigenous people to Christianity and to steal their land on behalf of the Spanish Empire.

However the Spanish Mission weren't immediately successful in completely eradicating the native ways of life. Despite the imposition of forced manual labor, severe punishments and new diseases, over half of the native communities in the San Francisco Bay Area remained independent for more than twenty years after the first Spanish mission in 1776. You can learn more about how the indigenous communities fared in the early years of the Spanish missions in a new story map, Visualizing Indigenous Persistence during Spanish Colonization of the San Francisco Bay Area.

One way in which the map attempts to visualize the persistence of the indigenous communities is by mapping baptismal records. By tracking the number of baptisms in native communities it is possible to view the spread of the Spanish missions' control over the indigenous people and to see the areas where native communities were initially outside of the missions' sphere of influence. The map also uses archaeological evidence to demonstrate where native communities persisted. This evidence includes radiocarbon dating of indigenous sites after the Spanish missions arrived and the lack of non-indigenous artifacts (glass, metal and ceramics) to show where the exchange of goods with missions was limited.


The arrival of the Spanish missions was only the first step in the continual persecution of Native Californians by non-native invaders. This story map by attempting to show where native communities persisted after the arrival of the Spanish missions begins to show how many of the cultural traditions of the Native Californians have been able to survive despite suffering over 200 years of attacks.

If you want to learn more about the native Californian people and their languages then Native Land is a good place to start. Native-Land is an interactive map which shows the 'territories' of indigenous people and indigenous languages around the world. If you zoom-in on the San Francisco Bay Area you can see the native communities which lived in the area and the native languages which were spoken around the bay. If you click on an area on the map you can usually find links to the website of the selected tribe.

Roady McRoadface

If you allow politicians to name streets and roads then they will undoubtedly give them the names of  men (definitely not women). Usually these will be men whose main claim to fame is that they have killed a lot of people.

The best way to avoid ending up with a road map which is dominated by the names of male psychopaths is to crowd-source the naming of your streets and roads. By doing this you can ensure that your road map is instead a delightful wonder of surreal humor. At least that is what happened in Belgium.

In Brussels city officials decided that the public could propose the names of the streets in a former industrial district which is undergoing regeneration. The public were invited to suggest the names of 28 streets and squares in the new Gare Maritime neighborhood. A jury then chose the winning names from all the entries. Allowing a jury to make the final choice for the district's new road names was obviously intended to ensure that the city didn't end up with controversial, offensive or overly ridiculous street names.

However I am happy to announce that the new Gare Maritime neighborhood will have a selection of surreal and wacky road names. My favorite is 'Ceci n'est pas une rue' (this is not a road), which is an obvious homage to Magritte's famous surreal painting 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe. You can view the new road names for yourself on the Discover the New Street Names interactive map.

Among my other favorites in these new road names are Place of Great Men (a new public square obviously dripping with irony). There are also a number of roads and paths which give the promise that they might lead to a better place.There is a Happiness Way, a Better World Path and a Dreams Drive. There are also two streets named for famous Belgian women. They are the film director Chantal Akerman and the first Belgian woman to become a doctor, Isala Van Diest.

Ich Bin Kein Berliner

Less than 47% of people who live in Berlin were born in the German capital. The vast majority of Berliners were born outside of the city. You can view where all these newcomers to Berlin originally came from in a new interactive map from the German broadcaster RBB.

The Cities and Countries Where Berliners Come From is a dot map showing the places around the world where Berliners were born. Each dot on the map represents 10,000 people, so obviously it only shows locations where more than 10,000 Berliners were born. If you click on a location on the map the graph below the map updates to show the percentage of Berliners who were born in that town or city.

Brandenberg is the top region where Berliners come from. As it is the federal state surrounding Berlin that isn't too surprising. The German city which exports the most of its citizens to Berlin is Hamburg. 22,779 people born in Hamburg are now living in Berlin. Poland and Turkey (in that order) are the top two countries of birth (outside of Germany) where people in Berlin were born. Poland is a special case - over a third of Berliners born in Poland were born before 1946 - so many of them were actually born as Germans.


Two years ago the Berliner Morgenpost also mapped out where people in Berlin were originally born. Their interactive map, Zugezogenen Atlas, also allows you to explore where these newcomers to Berlin were originally from.

The map shows locations around the world where at least 100 Berliners were born, based on the population register of June 2015 (the RBB map is more up-to-date and is based on the 2017 data). Hamburg, Dresen and Leipzieg are the top three German cities where non-native Berliners were born according to the newspaper's map. When you rank cities around the world by the number of people now living in Berlin, then the top foreign city is Szczecin (Poland), followed by Wroclaw (Poland) and Moscow. Paris is ranked 82nd, London is 96th and New York is 123rd.

Before & After Imagery of the Carr Fire

Redding GIS has created a couple of interactive maps which use drone imagery to document and assess the damage to property caused by the Carr fire in California. The Carr fire destroyed over 1,500 buildings, at least 1,000 of which were people's homes. Within 48 hours of the fire Redding GIS was able to release an interactive map which residents could use to check whether their homes had been destroyed or not.

The Carr Fire: Before and After map uses drone captured aerial imagery of Carr captured after the fire side-by-side with aerial imagery from before the area was devastated by the wildfire. This side-by-side before and after imagery provides a stark visualization of the damage caused by the fire. Building plots on the map are interactive so you can select individual plots to view a building's address, value and the physical size of the plot.

The Car Fire: Before and After map includes a number of aerial 360 degree panoramic views of the area after the fire. These views are similar to Google Maps Street View imagery, except that they were captured by drones and show a panoramic view of the ground from the air.

You can also view these 360 degree views of Carr after the Carr fire on the Carr Fire 360 Aerial Views map. If you select a marker on this map you can view a 360 degree aerial panorama of the area. These aerial drone views were collected as part of a multi agency collaboration, including the Menlo Park Fire District, the Alameda County Sheriff, the Contra Costa Sheriff and other City agencies.

Exploring Ancient Rome

Heritage Daily has created an interactive map providing information on some of ancient Rome's most iconic buildings. The map shows the footprints of some of ancient Rome's surviving buildings. Buildings which you can still visit today.

Heritage Daily's Ancient Rome map shows the location of major ancient Roman roads and some of the city's surviving ancient monuments. These ancient buildings are listed in the map sidebar. They can also be found by using the map's search option. If you click on an ancient monument's building footprint or marker on the map then an information window opens providing a detailed history of the selected building.


You can also use Milestone Rome to find the locations of historic ancient buildings in Rome. Milestone Rome is particularly useful if you are actually in the eternal city, as it is very good at finding all the nearby monuments and points of interest.

One of the fantastic things about Rome is that wherever you are in the city you are never more than a few meters away from some amazing sites of historical importance. Using the Milestone Rome map you can quickly discover the nearest historical sites to your current location. The Milestone Rome interactive map allows you to discover the location of nearby events and sites of historical interest.

Just enter your location into the map and categorized markers will show on the map all the buildings of interest within 1,000 meters of your current location.


If you are interested in Ancient Rome then you should also check out the Pelagios project. The Pelagios project's Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire is an interactive map of the Roman Empire. The map uses the Pleiades gazette of ancient place-names to recreate the world as known to ancient Romans.

The Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire is also used by Vici.org. Vici.org is an interactive that lets you find the location of buildings and artifacts from the Roman Empire. The map doesn't just feature the ancient buildings of Rome but shows the location of ancient buildings, monuments and artifacts throughout the entire old Roman Empire.

If you want to continue exploring the Roman Empire then you will probably need the ancient Rome route planner. Omnes Viae: Itinerarium Romanum is a route planner that lets you navigate the Roman Empire using the roads and shipping lanes available to the ancient Romans.

Omnes Viae is based on an ancient Roman map known as the 'Tabula Peutingeriana' and allows you to plan a route that contains all the main roads and cities of the Roman Empire. Routes generated by Omnes Viae list the towns and cites and also the river crossings on your trip in the map sidebar and displays the actual route on an interactive map.

Harry Beck's Live London Tube Map

Mathew Somerville's Live London Tube Map has been tracking the real-time movements of London Underground trains since 2010. It provides an incredible live view of the tube, showing all the network's trains moving in real-time on a map of London.

Over the years the Live London Tube Map has had a few updates. Most significantly it shifted from using the Google Maps API to Leaflet.js. It also now has two new basemaps for you to enjoy. A 'schematic' view allows you to watch tube trains moving around London in real-time on top of Harry Beck's iconic London Underground schematic map. The Live London Tube Map also now has a James Bond themed 'Skyfall' base map. This view mimics the live London tube map seen in the movie Skyfall.

If you enjoy the Live London Tube Map then you might also like Mathew's other live real-time maps, the Live London Bus Map and the epic real-time map all UK Train Times. If you want to see trains moving in real-time in other cities then you should have a browse through the hundreds of real-time maps listed under the Maps Mania real-time tag.

Taxis are the New Pizza

In the early days of online mapping the go to demo for any new mapping platform was an interactive mapped visualization of pizza restaurants. These days the go to demo map appears to be New York taxi data. Here are just a few of the interactive maps which have visualized taxi journeys in New York.

NYC Taxi Rides is a comprehensive data visualization of New York yellow cab taxi rides. The map was created to demonstrate the capabilities of the MapD Extreme Analytics Platform. Using the NYC Taxi Ride visualization it is possible to explore patterns in New York taxi journeys in a number of ways.

The data dashboard consists of a number of connected components. These include components for payment types, days of the week & time of day and an interactive map. The components allow you to filter the data shown on the map and, if you select data from one of the components, will automatically update all the other charts and the map. So, for example, if you select Tuesday on the 'Records by Day' component you can view just the locations of Tuesday's taxi pick-ups on the map and the updated charts for the other record types for Tuesday's taxi data.

The NYC Taxi Rides map uses taxi data from December 2015.


The NYC Cab Rides map is an interactive map visualizing Yellow Cab trip data in New York City from July 2015 - June 2016. The map allows you to see where the most New York cab rides begin, the pick-up locations where cab drivers can expect the largest tips, where in the city passengers pay in cash & where they pay by credit, the number of passengers and the length of journeys.

The map uses hexagonal binning to provide a spatial histogram of New York taxi ride data. The hexagons represent the number of rides in each location on the map in two different ways. It uses both a color ramp and the size of the hexagons themselves to indicate the total number of rides at each location on the map.

If you hover over a hexagon on the map you can view the exact number of rides as well as the average length & cost of the rides and the percentage of passengers that paid by cash and credit card. If you click on a hexagon on the map then the map changes to visualize the taxi rides to or from that location from everywhere else in the city.


The NYC Cab Rides Map was made to partner John Nelson's story map which also explores Yellow Cab trip data in New York City. In Taxi Cab Terrain Nelson examines how different New York boroughs use and pay for taxi cab journeys. He then looks at the underlying socio-economic data in those neighborhoods to see if they help explain the differences in how inhabitants of different New York neighborhoods use and pay for cabs.

In Taxi Cab Terrain Esri has mapped out the locations where the most New York cab rides begin, the pick-up locations where cab drivers can expect the largest tips, where in the city passengers pay in cash & where they pay by credit, the number of passengers and the length of journeys.

Back in 2014 Chris Whong also created an impressive interactive map using New York taxi data. Chris' map provided a great insight into the daily life of one New York taxi driver. Chris' NYC Taxis: A Day in the Life is a MapBox visualization of the journey of one New York taxi over the course of 24 hours.

You can also explore New York taxi journeys in the NYC Taxi Holiday Visualization, which animates taxi journeys from New York's airports over the course of a month and half, and Hubcab, a mapped visualization of 170 million taxi trips over one year in New York.

Mapping One Long Hot Summer

The Berliner Morgenpost has visualized the effects of the record breaking heat this summer in a series of satellite images. The record temperatures in Germany this year has silted riverbeds, turned green parks into seeming deserts and parched arable land.

In Drought in Germany - Satellite Image Comparison the newspaper has used before & after satellite images to show the effects of the extreme heat on the environment. The visualizations use satellite imagery from May and July / August of the same locations to provide a series of before & after comparisons. Each visualization includes a slide control which allows you to swipe between the two sets of aerial imagery.

In the UK nearly every major media outlet has reported on the previously undiscovered archaeological sites being revealed by the effect of the relentless sun on the landscape. The outlines of prehistoric features are suddenly emerging in aerial imagery. Normally these ancient features are hidden by lush vegetation.


The BBC's Hidden Landscapes the Heatwave is Revealing includes aerial imagery from around the UK which reveals some of these newly discovered prehistoric sites. These images includes stone-age ditches and post-holes, the footprints of demolished mansions and even the outlines of old Victorian gardens.


The Washington Post has visualized this record breaking summer in its Red Hot Planet: This Summer’s Punishing and Historic Heat in 7 Maps and Charts. As the article's title suggests the Post has compiled a number of maps and charts which document the record breaking temperatures which have been recorded around the world this year.

Across the northern hemisphere countries have been experiencing sustained extreme temperatures. The Posts' published maps and charts show how this summer has broken previous temperature records in North America, Europe and nearly everywhere else on the planet.