The Names of Singapore's Streets

In 2013 Noah Veltman released an interactive map which explored the History of San Francisco Place Names. The map explained the meaning behind every San Francisco street name. This fascinating map began something of a trend for people and organizations mapping the meanings behind street names in cities around the world.

Since then there have been far too many interactive maps of street names to list them all. However I have to mention Zeit's incredible analysis of 450,000 German street names. I also have to mention  the amazing ongoing project of Geochicas, Las Calles de las Mujeres, which maps out streets named for men and women in a number of Latin American and Spanish cities.

The latest map to explore the meanings of city street names comes from Singapore's Straits Times. The names of Singapore's streets reveal the influences of both its British colonial past and the influences of the cultures of China, India and Malay. As you scroll through On a little street in Singapore … A road map of history, culture and society an interactive map continually updates to highlight the different influences in the names of the city's streets.

Around a quarter of Singapore's streets are named in English and around a quarter of these are named for British towns, cities or landmarks. The historical center of Singapore is almost completely dominated by streets with these English names.

More than 800 of Singapore's streets have been named for men. Only 41 of the city's streets are named for women. Those women are mostly wives or royalty. An interactive chart organizes all the streets named for people into different categories, such as politicians, royalty and businessmen. At the end of the article is a drop-down menu which allows you to select from 150 of Singapore's streets to discover the meaning of individual street names.

The Scenic Routing Engine

Sight Safari is a routing engine which will find you the most interesting and picturesque route between two points rather than the shortest route. Everybody has used Google Maps to find directions - which is great for showing you the quickest route from point A to point B. What Google Maps doesn't do is show you the most scenic or interesting route.

Sight Safari uses data from OpenStreetMap to provide routes which take you past nearby sights, parks, and other points of interest. It doesn't necessarily show you the quickest route but it does show you the most interesting. When you ask for directions using Sight Safari your suggested route is displayed on an interactive map. Points of interest along your route are also shown on your map and in the map sidebar. These points of interest also include links, where available, to the location's Wikipedia entry.

I particularly like the 'Circular Route' option on Sight Safari. If you share your location with Sight Safari it will generate a circular walk around nearby points of interest. Just tell Sight Safari how long you wish your walk to take and it will create a route taking in tourist attractions, parks, historic and cultural monuments and other places of interest. You can even filter the results by selecting the categories which most appeal to you. If you are interested in how Sight Safari generates these circular routes you can read an explanation at We Walk Around Wisely (in Russian).

Via: weeklyOSM

Boat Traffic on Amsterdam's Canals

A Summer Day In Amsterdam's Canals is an animated map which visualizes a whole day of boat traffic on Amsterdam's canals. The map allows you to observe the different types of boats which navigate Amsterdam's canals and the ebb and flow of boat traffic over the course of a typical summer's day.

The interactive map of Amsterdam's canal traffic is a little hidden away. To view the map wait until the opening video has played to its end when a 'Go to Visualization' button will appear. Click on this button and you can view the interactive map. Once the map loads it can also be a little difficult to spot the 'play' button. A very small play and pause button can be found in the square menu (to the left of the map). If you press the play button you can watch as all the boat traffic from August 12th, 2017 is animated on the map.

As the day's boat traffic plays out on the map you can view the tracks of individual boats moving around the city's canals. The boats and tracks are color-coded on the map to show whether they are cargo or passenger boats. You can actually filter the map to only show the cargo or passenger boats on the map. If you stop the animation you can view a map showing the tracks of a whole week of boat traffic and a chart showing the number of boats in the canals by day of the week and hour of the day.

A Summer Day in Amsterdam's Canals uses data from MarineTraffic. MarineTraffic uses AIS data to show the live real-time position of ships around the world. Last year Alasdair Rae used data from MarineTraffic to map out the tracks and routes taken by different types of ships around the UK. In Watching the Ships Go By Alasdair created a series of maps to visualize the paths taken by different marine vessels in UK coastal waters. These maps show the different shipping routes taken by cargo ships, passenger ships, fishing boats, high speed craft, military vessels, tankers and recreational craft.

Medieval Streets, Modern Roads

Last week I discovered that there is only half a road in the City of London. There are lots of Streets, Lanes, Avenues and Alleys within the square mile of the City of London. However the only street that is called a 'Road' is Goswell Road. The boundary of the City runs down the middle of a small section of Goswell Rd. So there is just half a road in the City of London.

The reason why the City of London doesn't have any streets named 'Road' is that this sense of the word as a through-way only emerged in the late Sixteenth Century. The streets of the City of London were constructed and set-out a long time before this.

Since discovering that there are no roads in the City of London I've been wondering if this is true of other UK cities. It occurred to me that any UK cities which still have street systems dating back to Medieval times would also have very few streets named 'Road' in their centers. So for the last few days I've been mapping out the distribution of streets named 'Road' and roads named 'Street' in a number of UK cities.

In the small multiple maps (shown at the top of this post) all roads named 'Street' are colored red. All streets named 'Road' are colored yellow. Rivers are colored blue. You can see in all nine of the cities I mapped there is a strong cluster of roads named 'Street' in the historical centers. In these centers there are very few streets called 'Road'. However, outside of these historical centers, you find the opposite - very few roads named 'Street' and lots of streets called 'Road'.

At some point in our history it appears that there was a huge switch from naming our roadways 'Street' to naming them 'Road'. There is however one caveat to this conclusion. The Wikipedia article on Street argues that "a street is characterized by the degree and quality of street life it facilitates, whereas a road serves primarily as a through passage for road vehicles". According to this definition we would therefore expect to see more 'streets' in busy urban environments and more 'roads' in more rural areas. This may be why there are more 'Streets' in the center of cities and more 'Roads' in the outskirts.

If this Wikipedia definition is correct then we should notice the same distribution pattern of 'Streets' and 'Roads' in new towns as distributed in the UK's oldest cities. New towns should also have lots of roads named 'Street' in their centers and lots of streets called 'Road' outside of the center. The difficulty is that there are very few new urban developments in the UK which haven't developed around an existing smaller urban core (such as an existing village or small town). However there are a few towns which are almost completely new.

The town of Bournemouth, on the south coast, was founded in 1810 by Lewis Tregonwell. Before the town was built the area was mostly deserted heathland with very few existing roads. A search for roads called 'Street' in Bournemouth returns one result - 'Orchard Street'. So in this town, built entirely after 1800, there is only one road called 'Street'.


Orchard Street marked in red

Letchworth Garden City, in Hertfordshire, is another new town. The town was built in the first decade of the Twentieth Century as part of the Garden City movement. Letchworth emerged about a century after Bournemouth. Like Bournemouth is has only one street - 'Cross Street'.


Cross Street in Letchworth

From the lack of roads called 'Street' in towns built since 1800 we can probably conclude that there was an historical switch in the names we give our thoroughfares - some time after the late Sixteenth Century. Cities and towns in the UK which emerged around medieval towns seem to have centers with lots of 'Streets'. Towns which were built after 1800, and haven't evolved from existing medieval villages and towns, appear to have very few roads which end in the name 'Street'. We just hardly call roads 'Street' anymore in the UK.

16 Thousand Flights to Mecca

Every year millions of Muslims around the world fly to Mecca to perform the Hajj. The Hajj is the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. It is something that every Muslim must do at least once in their lifetime, if they are capable.

Flying to Hajj is an interactive story map by Al Jazeera which visualizes and explores the 16,888 flights made to Mecca during this annual pilgrimage to Mecca. The map shows the thousands of flights from all around the world which converge on Mecca during the  Hajj.

To reach Mecca pilgrims fly to Jeddah, the nearest airport which is 80 km from Mecca. Alternatively pilgrims fly to Medina to visit the Prophet's mosque at al-Masjid an-Nabawi, before then completing the 450 km trip south to Mecca. The Flying to Hajj map visualizes over 10 million individual GPS co-ordinates from all inbound flights to Jeddah and Medina over the Hajj period. On the map you can view the tracks of individual planes arriving from all around the world as they approach and land at Jeddah and Medina.

The country with the most flights to Jeddah and Medina during the Hajj was Egypt, with 1,618 flights. The UAE, Pakistan, Turkey and India, in that order, sent the next most flights to Mecca. The top three airlines (by number of flights) were Saudia, Turkish Airlines and EgyptAir. In order to avoid overcrowding the Saudi government actually allocates the number of visitors permitted from each country. This number is mostly determined by the number of Muslims in each country.

Mapping Swiss Inequality

The Swiss broadcaster Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF) has released an interactive map to show the Unequal Distribution of Income in Switzerland. The broadcaster uses an interactive bivariate choropleth map to visualize both average incomes and income inequality across Switzerland.

Bivariate choropleth maps show two variables at once. Therefore sometimes they can be a little difficult to read. The two variables visualized on the SRF map are average incomes and income inequality. Here is what the colors represent:

• Purple: areas with a high average income but a large gap between the low and high earners
• Red: areas with a low income and a large gap between low and high earners
• Grey: areas with a low income and a small gap between low and high earners
• Blue: areas with a high income and small gap between low and high earners.

If you still find this too confusing you can simple hover over an individual canton on the interactive map to view the level of income inequality (expressed as a Gini coefficient score) and the average income.

According to the SRF analysis of the map areas with an average low income and low inequality (grey) are often found in rural areas. Areas with a low average income and high inequality (red) are often found in the areas of the country with high levels of tourism.

If you are interested in learning more about bivariate choropleth maps and how to make them then a good place to start is Joshua Stevens' Bivariate Choropleth Maps: A How-to Guide. Joushua's guide looks at the concept of making bivariate maps rather than provide a method for creating them with a specific tool.

If you want to know how the bivariate choropleth map above was made and how you can make your own then you might like Bivariate Maps with ggplot and sf. In this how-to guide Timo Grossenbacher and Angelo Zehr explain how the Unequal Distribution of Income in Switzerland map was made and provide a step-by-step guide to creating the map.

America is Becoming More Diverse

The Brookings Institution has used recently released U.S. Census Bureau estimates for 2018 to map out where America is becoming more diverse. Six Maps that Reveal America's Expanding Racial Diversity looks particularly at the metro areas where the white, black, Hispanic and Asian populations have shown marked growth.

The article starts with an interactive map which shows where minority groups are highly represented by county. 'Highly represented' is determined where the percentage of a county population for a minority group is higher than its percentage of the US population as a whole. I don't think that this map reveals anything new about areas where racial groups are highly represented. Black Americans are highly represented in the black belt and Hispanic Americans are highly represented in states bordering Mexico. The map is more revealing on the racial diversity in each county. If you hover over a county on the map you can view the percentage of the total population made up by each racial group.

The Brooking Institution has also mapped out the metro areas where each racial group has seen the most growth. Individual maps for each racial group visualize the towns and cities where a racial group has shown the largest growth from 2010-2018. These maps are quite revealing. For example many southern cities have seen the highest growth in the black population mirroring a trend in recent decades of strong growth in the black population in southern states.

The towns and cities with the strongest growth in the Hispanic population are spread across the United States. Metro areas which have shown the highest growth in the Asian population are mostly "located in interior parts of the country, especially in the Midwest and Northeast". Metro areas which have seen a growth in the white population are mostly in Florida, Texas and the Mountain West.

The Orientation of UK Runways

The orientation of airport runways are normally determined by prevailing wind directions. Aircraft find it easier to land without a crosswind and planes can more easily take-off and land upwind. Aircraft also need a lower ground speed at both landing and take-off when they are pointing into the wind. As a consequence runways are usually built to point in the prevailing wind direction. In fact compiling a wind rose showing local wind directions is often one of the first steps taken when building a new airport runway.

In the UK the wind blows more from the the west or south-west than from any other direction. These prevailing winds come from the the Atlantic Ocean. Because of this south-westerly prevailing wind direction we would expect more airport runways in the UK to run west-east (or southwest to northeast) than north-south.

You can explore the predominant UK runway orientations for yourself on my new Runway Orientation interactive map. This map plots all the runways in the UK using data from OpenStreetMap. The map also includes a dynamic compass rose. This compass rose plots the distribution of all runways in the current map view. If you zoom the map out to show the whole of the UK this compass rose shows the distribution of all runways in the UK by direction. Because the compass rose is dynamic if you zoom in on different areas of the UK the chart will update to show the distribution of runways currently shown on the map.



If you are interested in the orientation of airport runaways elsewhere around the world then you can refer to the beautiful Trails of Wind map. This interactive map colors airport runways around the world based on their orientation. Blue lines indicate runways on a north-south axis and yellow lines show runways on an east-west axis. If you zoom in on the central states in the USA you can clearly see a majority of runways have a north-south orientation. The UK, France and Germany seem dominated by east-west orientated runways, while around the Mediterranean runways appear to be constructed along a north-south axis.

My map was of course inspired by the brilliant Trails of Wind map. It was also heavily inspired by and built on Vladimir Agafonkin's fantastic Road Orientation Map. I simply hacked Vladimir's Road Orientation map to show the orientation/bearing of UK runways rather than global roads.

Mapping the Off-Shore Tax Scam

Nearly 10% of the world’s wealth is hidden in offshore tax havens by a few individuals. Multinational companies hide nearly 40% of their profits in these same tax havens. You can find out how much each country around the world is losing in corporate tax revenue on the Missing Profits interactive map. Losses that you and I have to pay for in our own tax bills.

Researchers from the University of California and the University of Copenhagen have estimated the amount of money hidden in tax havens by multinational companies and how much each country loses in tax revenue from this tax avoidance. Countries on the Missing Profits interactive map are colored to show the percentage of tax revenue lost because of money hidden in tax havens.

The United States loses 17% of corporate tax revenue. If you click on a country on a map you can find out in which offshore tax havens the corporate tax revenue loss ends up. The interactive map also shows the locations of these offshore tax havens around the world.

One result of this massive tax avoidance racket by mutational companies is that countries around the world are in a race to the bottom. In order to persuade multinationals not to shift profits to tax havens individual countries have been slashing their corporate tax rates. Between 1985 and 2018, the global
average statutory corporate tax rate has fallen by more than half, from 49% to 24%. In 2018 the United States cut its rate from 35% to 21%. So the corporations have effectively been rewarded for their larceny and the rest of us have to pay even more for the subsequent loss in tax revenue.



In 2015 the leak of the Panama Papers revealed information on 214,488 offshore shell companies created to avoid paying tax. The papers provided an unprecedented insight into how individuals use off-shore tax havens in order to avoid paying tax.

An Esri UK map, the Panama Papers: Mapped, uses scaled circle markers to show the number of companies in each country mentioned in the Panama Papers database. You can click on a country's marker on the map to view the number of clients, beneficiaries, and shareholders mentioned in the papers from the selected country.

One thing that the map clearly reveals is the large role that the three UK Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man play in offshore tax evasion.

Brian Kilmartin's map (which I think was the first map of the Panama Papers) is very similar to the Esri UK map. It also uses scaled markers to visualize the number of companies in each country mentioned in the database. The Panama Papers: Where the Money is Hiding map also reveals the number of clients, beneficiaries, and shareholders mentioned in each country.

Make 3D Models in Seconds

The DEM Net Elevation API can help you create your very own 3D terrain models for any location on Earth. Dem Net has a fantastic tool which allows you to create your own 3D models simply by selecting an area on a map. It really is that easy.

To create a 3D model all you have to do is draw a square on an interactive map around the area that you wish to model. Within seconds DEM Net will create a 3D model of the area that you selected. You can then rotate and zoom in & out on your model directly in the browser. You can also download the model in two different formats.

DEM-Net includes a number of options. These include a choice of different satellite imagery sources or map tile sources for your model. You can adjust the height or your model - to exaggerate the elevation levels. You can also choose to generate your model from a range of different elevation models.

Whaling Voyages of America

Before the development of oil refineries in the mid-nineteenth century whale oil was one of the main sources of fuel for lighting and the lubrication of machines. Whaling was therefore a huge industry. In 1858 America alone had 199 ships participating in the capture of whales. These whaling ships and their crews would make voyages which would last 6 months to three or four years, during which time they would travel vast distances all around the globe.

You can a great overview of the scale of American whaling and the extent of whaling voyages on American Whaling Journeys. This map uses data from whaling ship logs to visualize whaling journeys undertaken by American ships between 1784 and 1920. On the map individual whale sightings and strikes have been plotted by location. The colors of each dot on the map relates to the species of whale spotted or caught.

You can filter the data shown on the map by sightings, strikes and by date range.



If you visit the maps section of Whaling History you can actually view the tracks of individual voyages made by named whaling ships. These maps are very effective in showing the huge global journeys undertaken by whalers in hunt of their prey. The ship's routes are determined by mapping the individual locations made in each log entry. On the map the individual markers are also color-coded to show whale sightings, locations where whales were caught and the locations where no whales were spotted. You can also click through to view the logbook data and the names of the crew.

.

American Whaling Journeys isn't the first map to use historical ship log data. Wooden Ships is an interactive map which allows you to explore European maritime activity from 1750 to 1850. The visualization is based on digitized shipping logs from the Climatological Database for the World's Oceans 1750-1850.

Using the map menu you can view a mapped visualization of the marine journeys undertaken by British, Dutch, French and Spanish ships. You can use the time-line at the bottom of the map to select any range of years from 1750 to 1850. The map also allows you to filter the data by wind speed patterns and by other weather and climatic conditions. If you click on a hexbin on the map you can also read entries from the ship logbooks yourself.



Skip forward another 150 years and there really are very few areas of the world's oceans and seas which aren't a part of the global shipping trade. Shipmap.org is an outstanding animated interactive map visualizing the movements of the global merchant shipping fleet over the course of 2012.

The map uses AIS shipping data from exactEarth. This data is presented on a Leaflet powered map using custom designed map tiles. The map tiles include bathymetry and major river data from Natural Earth.

The Streets and Avenues of New York

In many American cities the street grid system is often reflected in the names of the city's streets. For example in some cities you might find that all roads called 'Avenue' run north to south, while all roads called 'Street' run west to east (or vice versa depending on the city).

It is possible to visualize this pattern very effectively with an interactive map and a radial chart. My Street Orientations map visualizes the directions of all roads called 'avenue' and 'street' in Manhattan. On the map all roads named 'Avenue' are colored gold and all roads named 'Street' are colored blue. Simply by looking at the map you can tell that streets and avenues run in distinctly different directions. The radial chart on top of the map visualizes this more explicitly, showing the overall orientation of all the streets and avenues in the current map view (zoom into Lower Manhattan and see how the orientation of avenues and streets becomes less strict).

By exploring the map you can see 'streets' in Manhattan run almost exclusively west to east while 'avenues' run north to south (obviously because of the directions of the Hudson and East Rivers these are offset from the true cardinal directions).

My interactive map shows the orientations of both 'streets' and 'avenues'. Here is a screenshot of just the roads named 'street' with a radial chart showing the orientations of all 'streets' in Manhattan:




Making the Road Orientations Map

All the code for my map comes from Vladimir Agafonkin's fantastic Road Orientation Map. Vladimir's map visualizes the orientations of all roads in the current map view. The map can be used to explore the orientations of roads anywhere in the world.

For my purposes I just needed to tweak the code to only show the orientations of roads named 'avenue' and 'street' and to ignore all the roads called 'lane', 'avenue', alley' etc. This actually proved far simpler than I expected.

The Road Orientation map fetches all the roads in the current map view with a single line of code:

var features = map.queryRenderedFeatures({layers: ['road']});

In effect it queries the layer named road in a Mapbox map. This means we can simply change the layer name to fetch different data. For example we can easily change the query to fetch the layer which displays waterways:

var features = map.queryRenderedFeatures({layers: ['waterway']});

Simply by changing 'road' to 'waterway' we can alter the map to display the orientations of all rivers and canals rather than the orientations of roads.

The Road Orientations Map will work with any map layer in which the mapped feature is of the type 'line' (so map data which is in the form of polylines). Therefore to create my map I only needed to upload two GeoJSON files to a Mapbox style:- one GeoJSON file with the data of all 'avenues' in Manhattan and one GeoJSON file with the data of all 'streets' in Manhattan.

In Mapbox Studio I named these two layers 'avenues' and streets'. All I needed to do then was change the JavaScript to query my two layers rather than the 'road' layer:

var features = map.queryRenderedFeatures({layers: ['avenues', 'streets']});

The Witches of Scotland

The University of Edinburgh has released a series of interactive maps visualizing the nearly 4,000 women and men accused of being witches in Scotland from the 16th to 18th centuries. The Witchcraft Act was in force in Scotland between 1563 and 1735. Under the Witchcraft Act the practice of witchcraft and the act of consulting with witches could be punished by death. It is not known exactly how many women and men were executed for being witches but the Survey of Scottish Witches estimates that around two-thirds were killed. About 84% of those accused of witchcraft in Scotland were women.

The University of Edinburgh's Witches project includes a number of different maps of the Survey of Scottish Witches data. The Residences with Timeline map is among the most interesting of the maps in the project, as it allows you to explore the data using a number of different filters. Using these filters you can view the location of only females or only males accused of witchcraft, you can explore the numbers accused by social class or by occupation. You can also explore the numbers of people accused of witchcraft during any selected date range.

Obviously an interactive map means that you can also explore the numbers of people accused of witchcraft by location. According to the Survey of Scottish Witches around 32% of those accused were accused in the Lothian region of Scotland. The Survey of Scottish Witches says that the Scottish population during this period was more evenly distributed than it is today. Therefore the numbers of people living in Scotland's central belt who were accused of witchcraft is very striking.

See the Space Station Tonight

James Darpinian's See a Satellite Tonight can tell you when the International Space Station is flying over your house. It can also tell you where to look in the sky if you want to see it for yourself.

Share your location with See a Satellite Tonight and you can view an interactive 3D Cesium Earth, showing your current location highlighted on the globe. The globe also shows an animated ISS passing over your home. The map menu (running down the left-hand side) tells you at what time tonight the ISS will be flying overhead. It also includes a few options which allow you to see the next times the ISS will be overhead tonight and tomorrow night.

And the magic doesn't stop there!



If you click on the 'See where it will appear in your sky' and you can view the track of the ISS overlaid on top of the Google Maps Street View panorama of your house. A little animation plays showing the International Space Station moving over your house - exactly where it will be flying tonight. This means that you now know exactly when and where to look in the night sky tonight if you want to see the ISS with your naked eye.

And the magic still doesn't stop there!

See a Satellite Tonight also includes a weather forecast which tells you how cloudy it will be tonight. Unfortunately for me London will be 100% cloudy both tonight and tomorrow, so See a Satellite Tonight warns me that clouds may block my view of the ISS.

Back in 2009 a Japanese website called ToriSat had a very similar application which showed the position of the ISS on top of Google Maps Street View. ToriSat has since transformed into SpaceStation AR, a mobile phone app (possibly without the Street View option). You can read my brief Maps Mania review of Torisat (and a video of it in operation) here.

The Streets of London

The most interesting fact I know is that there are no roads in the City of London. I've been repeating this fact for years. This weekend I finally decided I should actually check for myself to see whether it is actually true or not.

To find out if there are any streets called 'Road' in the City of London I ran the following query in Overpass Turbo:

[out:json][timeout:185]; area["name"="City of London"]->.boundaryarea; ( way(area.boundaryarea) ["name"~" Road"];
);
out body;
>;
out skel qt;

This query searches the area of the City of London on OpenStreetMap for any streets which end with 'Road'. The results turn up three roads; a section of Gray's Inn Road, a tiny bit of Farringdon Road and a section of Goswell Road.

I think both Farringdon Road and Gray's Inn Road can be dismissed as errors on OpenStreetMap. The terminating end of these roads seem to have been plotted to just a little bit within the boundary of the City of London. They therefore show up in a search of Overpass Turbo but the roads should really end at the border of the City. Goswell Road is a little more interesting as a small section of the road actually makes up the boundary of the City of London.

According to Londonist half of this section of Goswell Road is within the jurisdiction of the City of London,

"The Square Mile survived for hundreds of years without any Roads, right up until boundary changes in 1994. At that time, the eastern half of Goswell Road was brought — reluctantly we're told — under the jurisdiction of the City, while the western half remained in the Borough of Islington".

So since 1994 I've been repeating a false fact. The answer to the question:

"How many roads are there in the City of London?"

should in fact be:

"Half a road."

Having discovered that there was a half a road in London I decided to carry on and see how many 'avenues', 'streets', 'alleys', 'courts', 'lanes', 'rows' and 'hills' that there are in the City of London. I therefore ran Overpass Turbo queries for all of these different types of road within the City.

I've created an interactive map to show the results of those queries. On the Streets of London map all the roads in the City of London are colored by type. The map also includes a menu which allows you to select to view just an individual type of road on the map. So, for example, you can just select to view all the roads ending 'Street' in the City of London.

Using the map you can tell that many of the major thoroughfares in the City are called 'Street'. Lots of these major 'Streets' are connected by smaller 'Lanes'. The other types of roads appear to be less common. The roads ending in 'Hill' are quite interesting. The City of London has two small hills - Ludgate Hill to the west and Cornhill to the east. However there are lots of small roads whose names end 'Hill' running up from the River Thames. Presumably before the building of the Embankment the streets running up from the river had steeper inclines than they do today.

How Climate Change Will Affect You

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology have produced guides to show how each region of Australia is likely to be affected by climate change. The Guardian has released an interactive map which allows users to click on any region of Australia to view how it will be affected by global heating.

If you enter a postcode or click on the How the climate crisis will affect you interactive map you can see how your region's temperatures, rainfall, sea levels and fire risk will be affected by future climate change.

If you are interested in the effects of future climate change in Australia you can view the CSIRO and Australian Bureau of Meteorology prediction in more detail on the government's Climate Change in Australia website. The Climate Change in Australia website also includes an interactive map which allows you to access the future climate change affects by region. These include more detailed predictions, such as the degree of temperature rises in the near future (2030) and for the end of the century (2090).



The Guardian's map is part of a growing trend to map the future impact of climate change around the world. A number of organizations have released maps which allow you to view future climate change by showing you which town or city your home will resemble after global heating. For example in the year 2100 summers in New York will be as hot as Juarez in Mexico is today and Los Angeles can look forward to summers that are as hot as the current summers in Belize City.

Climate Central's interactive map tells you how hot your city will be in the year 2100 if carbon emissions continue as currently predicted. Shifting Cities allows you to choose from a large number of major cities around the world to find out how hot they will get in 2100. When you select a city on the map you are shown the current summer temperature in your city and a city which now has a temperature that your city can expect in the year 2100.

You can find your 2080 climate twin using The Summer of 2080 Will Be This Warm interactive map. If you enter your location or click on your location on this map you can view the town or city in the world which has a climate now which is similar to the climate you can expect at your location in the year 2080. The map uses two different climate models, showing you your climate twin for a global warming scenario of 4.2 degrees or 1.8 degrees.

The World's Worst Climate Sinners

If we want to avoid a climate change catastrophe then every person on Earth needs to restrict their CO2 output to 2.7 tonnes a years. For comparison, if you took a return flight from Vienna to New York in economy class, you would consume about 2.8 tonnes of CO2.

Moment has created an interactive map which shows which countries around the world are currently exceeding the 2.7 tonnes of CO2 output per person, and in which countries the population are outputting less. On the World Map of Climate Sinners the countries colored red/pink are largely responsible for climate heating. The countries colored green have reasons to be very upset with the rest of the world.

If you select a country on the map you can view the per capita annual CO2 output. For example, in the USA the average person produces around 15.74 tonnes of CO2 every year. This is around 6 times more than the 2.7 tonnes per person which would limit global heating to around 2 ° C by 2050.

America isn't alone in causing global heating. People in most of the developed world are exceeding the target 2.7 tonnes of CO2 output. In fact the developed world is even more guilty than the map shows. On this map CO2 output from manufacturing is shown in the country of manufacture. Much of the consumption in the developed world is the consumption of products developed in the developing world. Therefore on this map a lot of consumption in the developed world is shown as developing world CO2 output.

The target of 2.7 tonnes of CO2 output per person was calculated by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna. This target, it is estimated, would limit global heating to 2 ° C by 2050.

France's Nuclear Paradise

Between 1960 and 1996 France carried out 193 nuclear tests in French Polynesia in the South Pacific. The tests have had a devastating and long lasting impact on the area's islands and people. You can learn more about France's nuclear testing program in Nuclear Dissent, an interactive multimedia report into the effect of France's nuclear testing in French Polynesia during the second half of the Twentieth Century.

The documentary uses a combination of video, photos and audio to tell the story of where and when France carried out nuclear tests in the South Pacific. The documentary also explores the legacy of this nuclear testing, including the spread of cancer, the damage to the food chain and the irreparable harm caused to the environment.



In order to bring the story a little closer to home Nuclear Dissent also includes an interactive map which allows you to see the effects of dropping a nuclear bomb in your own backyard. Enter your address into the map and you can explore the fallout that would result from dropping a selection of different sized nuclear weapons on your home.

A number of concentric circles are displayed on the interactive map, centered on your address, to show the fallout range of your selected nuclear bomb. The outer circle shows the thermal zone, the radius within which people will receive third degree burns. Inside this, the next largest circle, is the air blast zone. In this radius buildings will be knocked over from the pressure of the bomb's air blast. Inside this zone is the radiation zone, inside of which 50-90% of people will die from radiation. The smallest circle represents the fireball zone, inside which temperatures reach as high as the sun.



Nuclear Dissent has a very long loading time. If you are impatient, or your device struggles loading Nuclear Dissent, then you can always explore the effects of nuclear bombs on a number of other interactive maps. Both NUKEMAP and Ground Zero allow you to view the potential damage that a wide choice of nuclear weapons would have when dropped on locations around the world. You can also use Outrider - Bomb Blast - which comes with some realistic looking nuclear fallout effects.

Outrider - Bomb Blast allows you to choose from a range of different types of nuclear weapon and select whether you want to detonate the bomb at ground level or as an air burst. You can then view the likely damage on an interactive map. The map shows the likely radius of the fireball, radiation, shock-wave and heat zones. It also provides an estimate of the number of fatalities and injuries your nuclear weapon would cause when dropped on your location.

The Papua Environmental Atlas

The Papua region, which makes up the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea, is largely undeveloped. While this lack of development is wonderful for the environment it also means that 53 percent of the population doesn't have access to electricity. More than 25% of people living in the Papua region also live below the poverty line.

The government of Indonesia has decided to accelerate infrastructure development in the Papua region. This may have some positive benefits for some of the indigenous population. It could also have a hugely negative effect on the environment. The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) has therefore released a new interactive mapping tool which it hopes will help planners, officials and policymakers monitor the environmental effects of new infrastructure projects.

The Papua Atlas allows users to view forest loss, plantation & mine development, and road construction. The map uses satellite data dating back to 2001 which can be used to create time-lapse animations which show the impacts of logging, plantation development and road building. It includes a number of different tools for exploring how infrastructure projects are impacting on the local environment. For example you can visualize forest loss for 1 km on either side of public roads to visualize the impact of road development on the immediate environment.

So far the Papua region has managed to avoid the fate of the island of Borneo. In 1973 three quarters of Borneo was covered in tropical forest. Since 1973 over one third of that forest has been lost due to industrial logging and the spread of industrial oil palm and pulpwood plantations. CIFOR's original interactive deforestation map, the Borneo Atlas, shows where Borneo's tropical forests have been lost and the incredible scale of this continuing deforestation. Hopefully CIFOR's new Papua Atlas will help the Papua region avoid the same levels of deforestation.

What's in a Streetname?

Inspired by Data Stuff's The Beautiful Hidden Logic in Cities the mapping team at the City of Amsterdam has been mapping out the street names of Amsterdam. What's in a Streetname? is an interactive map which colors Amsterdam's streets based on their name endings (i.e. whether they are streets, roads, lanes, alleys etc.).

Streets in many American cities are often organized into a grid system with street names decided by compass direction. So most roads running south-north might be called 'streets' while streets running west-east would be called 'avenues' - or vice versa. You probably won't be surprised to learn that in Amsterdam, a city which has grown up around canals, water seems to play a very large role in determining the name endings of many of the city's streets.


streets whose name endings relate to water and canals

The roads on either side of the canals in Amsterdam's famous canal ring (the light blue lines on the map) are all named for the canals which they follow  ('gracht' = 'canal'). As well as having streets named for canals Amsterdam has lots of streets which are named for quays (kade), dikes (dijk), waterways (gouw), and a large encircling canal (singel).

You can explore the frequency and distribution of the different types of street in Amsterdam for yourself by using the filters in the map legend. Using the legend you can select to view any type of street (or any combination of different types of street) on the interactive map.

Killing Child Mortality

The New York Times has published an interactive map which shows how child mortality rates are improving around the world. According to the Times Almost Everywhere, Fewer Children are Dying. In fact since the beginning of the 21st Century child mortality rates have been cut in half.

The Times' interactive map visualizes the reduction in child mortality from 2000-2017. The red patch on the map outlines the four regions of Syria where the rate of child mortality has actually grown during this period. Since 2000 child mortality rates have dropped in all but one of the 97 countries with the highest child mortality rates. The one exception, Syria, has been beset by a devastating civil war.

If you mouse-over individual countries on the NYT map you can view the percentage by which child mortality rates have dropped (or risen in the case of Syria). You can also view a chart showing the child mortality rate in the selected country for every year since the turn of the century.

The Times article takes a close look at how child mortality rates have been improved in a number of different countries and regions. Malnutrition is a contributing factor in nearly half of all child deaths. Therefore they can be prevented. Economic inequality and political unrest often seem to be the biggest stumbling blocks in those countries which are struggling the most to lower their rates of child mortality.

A Real-Time Map of the Galaxy

NASA's Your Galactic Neighborhood is a digital orrery which shows the real-time position of the planets in our solar system. Like a traditional mechanical orrery Your Galactic Neighborhood provides a model of the Solar System that shows the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons.

As well as visualizing the position of the planets and moons Your Galactic Neighborhood shows the real-time position of some of NASA's spacecraft. For example you can see the current position of the Parker Solar Probe, which is on target to pass through the Sun's atmosphere closer to the Sun's surface than any spacecraft before. 



If you select a planet or moon on NASA's digital orrery you can view a 3D model of the planet. This close-up view includes information on the planet, its moons and distance from the sun. It also includes a link to NASA's dedicated page on the selected planet.

NASA don't seem to have a direct link to its digital orrery. To access Your Galactic Neighborhood you need to click on the small animated solar system graphic in the header of NASA's Solar System Exploration website.

Segregating San Francisco

According to the Haas Institute the San Francisco Bay area is more segregated now than it was 50 years ago. The Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley has analysed levels of racial residential segregation in the Bay Area since 1980 and concluded that seven of the Bay Area’s nine counties have become more racially segregated.

You can explore the results of the Haas Institute's research on the Racial Segregation in the San Francisco Bay Area interactive map. Census tracts on the map are colored to show whether they have a low, moderate, or high level of segregation. The map includes a simple timeline control which makes it very easy to see which neighborhoods in the Bay Area have become more or less segregated over time. The map also includes filters which allows you to view how 'isolated' a specific racial group is in each county.

The interactive map is just one tool released as part of the Institute's three part investigation into Racial Segregation in the San Francisco Bay Area. This investigation explored US Census data to see how residential racial segregation has changed in each decade since 1980. While most counties in the Bay Area have become more segregated, counties, such as Napa, Sonoma, and Marin, are now dramatically more segregated than they were in 1980.

The Timeline of American Universities

Founded in Massachusetts in 1636, Harvard University was the first college of higher education in America. In fact for 57 years Harvard was the only university in America - until the founding of the College of William & Mary in 1693. Yale University was the fourth university to be founded, opening in 1701.

Nine universities in total were founded before the United States of America became a sovereign nation in 1776 after the American Revolution. These nine are collectively known as the colonial colleges. Seven of these nine are part of the Ivy League athletic conference. The eighth Ivy League college, Cornell, was founded after the American Revolution, in 1865.

You can explore when all American universities were originally founded on the Timeline of Higher Education in America interactive map. This map plots the location of every American university based on its foundation date. Adjust the timeline on the map and you can see universities opening up across the USA, sweeping from the east with the westward expansion of the United States.

According to the map America's youngest universities are Indiana University Fort Wayne and Northern Vermont University, both of which were founded in 2018.

Saints & Sinners of America

Having explored the spatial distribution of towns and villages named for saints, in my Saints Of Europe interactive map, I was intrigued to see which towns in the USA have been given the names of saints.

Saints and Sinners shows the location of towns and villages in the USA which include the prefixes 'St', 'Saint', 'San' or 'Santa'. To add a little spice to the map I also added the location of all roads which include 'devil' in their name. There don't appear to be any towns or cities in the U.S. which have the word 'devil' in their name - but there are a few streets which have been inspired by the devil.


Towns starting with the words 'St' or 'Saint' are mostly found in the eastern states.

As you might expect there is a distinct difference in the spatial distribution of towns with the Spanish prefixes of 'San' and 'Santa' and those with the English prefixes 'St' and 'Saint'. Towns and cities which start with 'San' or 'Santa' can be found almost exclusively in California and in states bordering Mexico (particularly Texas and New Mexico). Towns and cities starting with the words 'St' or 'Saint' are mostly found in the eastern states.

All the data for the map comes from OpenStreetMap. To get the data I used Overpass Turbo. I queried Overpass Turbo to find towns and cities in the USA which included the words 'St', 'Saint', 'San' and 'Santa'. You can see how the Overpass Turbo query is formed in the example below:

[out:json][timeout:185];
area["name"="United States"]->.boundaryarea;
(
node(area.boundaryarea)[place=town] ["name"~"Santa "];
node(area.boundaryarea)[place=city] ["name"~"Santa "];
);
// print results
out body;
>;
out skel qt;

To search for roads named devil you just need to change the word 'node' to 'way' in the query and delete the filter to search for towns and cities (e.g. delete '[place=town]').

The Difference Between Streets and Roads

In the UK you won't find many roads in the centers of many towns and cities. This isn't because they are pedestrianized. It is because the word 'road' was rarely used as part of a toponym before the late 16th Century. Up until the 17th Century roads were called something else, such as 'streets' or 'lanes'. For this reason any city or town in England, which still retains its medieval street patterns, will probably have very few 'roads' in its center. For example the City of London famously has no roads.

Because of the relative modernity of America as a country I wouldn't expect to see the same lack of streets named 'road' in American cities. However, judging by the maps in The Beautiful Hidden Logic in Cities there appear to be very few roads in lots of American cities as well. Data Stuff has created a series of maps on which city roads are colored to show whether they are called 'Avenue', 'Boulevard', 'Street', 'Road' etc. Most cities in these maps seem to be dominated by streets and avenues.

In the USA I know that lots of cities have organized their grid systems by compass direction. So south-north streets might be mostly called 'streets' while east-west streets are called 'avenues' - or vice versa. However this doesn't explain the lack of roads. This 'compass grid' convention could still be maintained by having 'roads and 'streets' or 'roads' and 'avenues'. Besides in some cities this naming convention isn't used. For example in San Francisco (pictured above) we still have mostly roads called 'streets' and 'avenues' however these are split geographically rather than by compass direction. So in San Francisco we find that streets in the west of the city are mostly called 'Avenue' and roads in the west of the city are mainly called 'Street'.

There must therefore be another reason why cities in the USA don't appear to have many streets named 'Road'. The Wikipedia article on Street argues that "a street is characterized by the degree and quality of street life it facilitates, whereas a road serves primarily as a through passage for road vehicles". According to this definition we would therefore expect to see more 'streets' in busy urban environments and more 'roads' in more rural areas. This rural-urban distinction between 'roads' and 'streets' is new to me (and I'm not sure it is true of UK 'roads' and 'streets') however it may be supported by another map from Data Stuff.

Road Suffixes in the USA contains a number of choropleth maps showing the density of road names in U.S. counties. Data Stuff's analysis of road names suggests that roads named 'road' are by far the biggest number of roads by mileage in the USA - with three times as many roads (by mileage) called 'road' than the next most popular name of roads called 'street'. The lack of streets named 'road' in American cities and the fact that there are more 'roads' than any other form of street in the whole of the U.S. suggests that there is a huge urban-rural split in the location roads named 'road' and 'street'.

Someone needs to carry out a spatial analysis of the distribution of streets named 'road' and 'street' in comparison to population density.

The Street Names of Vancouver

Golf courses are more likely to have roads named after them in Vancouver than women. In Vancouver more streets have been given the name of famous golf courses from around the world than have been named for famous or notable women. There are 26 streets bearing the name of a famous golf course and only 16 streets in the whole city which have been named for women. Of Vancouver's 651 streets 276 have been named for men.

CBC News has been investigating how streets have been named in the city of Vancouver. If you discount numbered streets and duplicate names Vancouver has 651 unique street names. These 651 streets are named for people (mostly men), golf courses, geographical features (e.g. 'beach') and lots of dead Europeans (again mostly men).

You can view an interactive map of Vancouver's streets organized into categories of different types of name on the City of Vancouver Open Data Portal. On the map roads are colored and organized by categories such as UK places, people from the UK, the works of Walter Scott, geography etc. You can read CBC News' analysis of the map in The origins of all 651 street names in Vancouver.

Of course Vancouver isn't the only city which has mostly ignored women when naming its city streets. Geochicas in Las Calles de las Mujeres has mapped out streets named for men and women in a number of Latin American and Spanish cities. In Germany Zeit Online has also mapped out streets named for men and women. In Streetscapes: Mozart, Marx and a Dictator Zeit Online  looks at the trends of naming streets for people and historical events.

An analysis of the Street Names in Vienna reveals that 4,269 streets have been named for men. Only 356 have been named for women. Mapbox has also created an interactive map showing the distribution of male and female street names in major cities across the world. According to Mapping Female versus Male Street Names streets in Bengaluru, Chennai, London, Mumbai, New Delhi, Paris, and San Francisco are all much more likely to be named for men than women.

London Squared

The City Intelligence Unit at the London Datastore has released a really interesting visualization of London Commuting Flows. The visualization uses an interactive cartogram to show where the residents in each London borough travel to work within London.

The cartogram repesents every London borough as a small square. Each of these small squares is a mini choropleth map showing where in London the local residents commute to work. In other words the visualization consists of small multiple maps organized geographically. You can actually mouse-over the smallest borough squares within each individual borough square to view the number of commuters who commute between the two boroughs (which makes the cartogram sound a lot more complicated to use than it really is).

I like this visualization a lot. As a static image it would be an effective visualization on its own of the spatial pattern of commuting in London (the majority of commuters from each borough tend to work in central London or in neighboring boroughs). As an interactive visualization, however, it allows you to drill down and explore the commuting flows of individual boroughs and view how many residents from each borough travel to every other borough in the capital.

The  London Commuting Flows visualization was created using After the Flood's London Squared D3 module. This module allows you to easily create your own similar looking interactive cartograms of London.

The Hooky Map of America

The Hamilton Project at Brookings has created an interactive map which visualizes the rates of chronic absence at every school in the country. Chronic absence is when a student misses 10% or more of school. Students who miss this amount of schooling are academically at risk.

Individual schools on the Chronic Absence Map are colored to show the percentage of the students who have a record of chronic absence. The red markers show the schools with the highest percentage of chronic absence and the yellow markers those with the lowest. If you click on individual schools on the map you can view the school ratings for a number of other educational outcomes, for example math / English proficiency, the student / teacher ratio and the rate of teacher attendance.

The map also looks at community factors that affect learning in each zip-code area. On the map zip-code areas are colored to show the level of community support for learning. Zip-code areas colored light blue have more supportive community conditions and zip-codes areas with a darker blue have less supportive community conditions. The level of community support is defined by such factors as the share of children living in poverty, household medium income and local employment rates.



One community factor that the Brookings' map doesn't consider is the rate of school funding. The amount of money that schools have can obviously effect levels of learning. To find out how much each school district spends on education you can instead refer to another interactive map. NPR has created a map which visualizes how much each school district in the USA spends on individual students. Why America's Schools Have A Money Problem colors each school district based on the level of school spending in the district per individual student.

The map shows that local funding is usually dependent on the levels of local property taxes. If a district has a number of successful businesses contributing a lot of money through property taxes then the school district is more likely to have higher levels of school spending per student. In essence schools in affluent areas are likely to be much better funded that schools in less-affluent areas.

Unfortunately the data on the NPR map is a little old now. The NPR map shows spending per student for each school district in the 2013 fiscal year.

D.C. Under Water

A new interactive map shows the projected flooding which could affect America's National Parks in 2050. Reveal has used data from the National Park Service to show the areas which could be inundated if a category 3 hurricane hit one of America's most popular National Parks.

The interactive map allows you to view the affect of a storm surge on ten of the U.S.'s most popular National Parks. The map includes a slide control which allows you to switch between a visualization of the current high tides and the likely storm surge in 2050, after a category 3 hurricane. The map sidebar includes quick links which will zoom the map to points of interest within the selected National Park.

Maps like this can be very powerful illustrations of the disastrous future effects of climate change. For example the screenshot above shows how the map can be a dramatic visualization of the effects of a storm surge. However I think that this particular map might be more effective with a little more information on the data used to calculate the storm surge levels. I also think some explanation is needed on why the year 2050 was chosen and why a category 3 hurricane could have more disastrous consequences for National Parks in that year as compared to now.

If you want to know how sea level rises will effect all locations in the USA then you can refer to Surging Seas. Climate Central's Surging Seas is one of the best interactive mapped visualizations of the likely effects of climate change. This particular map also includes a much better explanation of what is being shown and why this data is being visualized.

The Eel Rents of England

In my childhood jellied eels were a reasonably common part of the diet in East London. You can still find a few Pie, Mash and Jellied Eel shops dotted around the East End. However cafes that sell jellied eels are now a much rarer sight in the East End and the consumption of eels has largely gone out of fashion.

The demise of eels as a staple of the English diet is on the face of it very odd. For centuries eels have been a cheap and nutritious food source, readily eaten by the English. In fact for centuries eels were so much a part of the diet that many landlords would accept rent in the form of eels. This isn't as strange as it sounds. In pre-industrial times rents were often paid in livestock, fish, ale or other types of foods. Eels were therefore no less strange a method of receiving or paying rent than any other common goods or produce.

You can learn more about eel rents on the fascinating Eel-Rents Project. This project includes an interactive map which shows where the mention of eel rents can be found in original documents from the late 10th Century through the 15th Century. On the maps the number of eels mentioned in the rent is represented by the size of the marker and the color of these marker indicates the century of the historical record.

The map comes with a note of caution that this isn't a complete record of eel rents but just a map of where they have been revealed by surviving historical records. Therefore the cluster that seems to exist around the Cambridgeshire fens may just be a result of where the historical record has best survived. Or it may reflect the fact that eels were once plentiful in the fens and were a staple part of the local diet for thousands of years. In fact eels are so much a part of the culture of the fens that they even named one of their most important cities 'Ely'.

Two Degrees Hotter

The 2016 Paris Agreement on Climate Change set a long-term goal to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. Unfortunately many places across the globe have already exceeded a 2 °C rise in average temperatures.

The Washington Post has used data from Berkeley Earth to map the global rise in temperatures compared to the average temperature in the years 1880-99. An animated map at the beginning of the article, Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world, visualizes how the planet has heated since the end of the 19th Century. Another map, later in the article, takes a closer look at where temperatures have risen the most. According to the Post around 10% of the planet has already heated by more than 2 °C. Around 20% of the planet has heated by 1.5 °C.

Of course this level of global heating is having an effect on environments around the world. The Post's article takes a closer look at some of the most extreme environmental changes taking place across the globe and how these changes are affecting the lives and livelihoods of the people being affected by climate change.



Last month the Washington Post explored in more detail where in the United States the average temperature had risen above 2 °C. and where climate change is having the most visible effects in the country. In 2°C: Beyond the Limit - Extreme climate change has arrived in America the Post uses historical temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration temperature to map where temperatures in the U.S. have already exceeded two degrees Centigrade.

According to the Post's analysis seventy-one counties have already experienced a rise of 2 degree Celsius. The Post's story includes a more detailed look at some of the regions of America which are experiencing extreme global warming and the effect that this warming is having on local environments. In particular the Post's story concentrates on the North East, where extreme warming has led to rising seas, loss of land, warmer winters and many other environmental problems.

The Wealth Divide in Spain

Spanish newspaper El Pais has mapped out the average income per person across the whole of Spain. The map shows a stark divide between the north and south of the country.

The Map of Spanish Incomes, Street by Street visualizes the average income in every neighborhood in the country. If you hover over an individual neighborhood on the map you can view the average income in the area. Immediately below the map you can also view in which percentile the neighborhood's income resides compared to the whole of Spain. This allows you to compare the local average income to the average income across the country.

The article accompanying the map includes an analysis of the income levels in a number of Spanish cities. For example in the northern city of San Sebastian all the city's neighborhoods have an average income in the top 30% of earners. In Madrid there is a larger wealth divide between some neighborhoods. This divide is marked by the M-30 orbital road. With those living inside the orbital earning, on average, significantly more than those living outside the ring-road.

The city of Almeria, in the southeast of Spain, has a number of neighborhoods with some of the lowest average incomes in the country. Like Madrid there is also a stark wealth divide between some of the city's  neighborhoods. Many of Almeria's poorer areas are immediately adjacent to some of the town's richest neighborhoods.