Mapping Mythical Islands & Imaginary Lands

Hy-Brasil is a mythical island, which was once believed to be located west of Ireland. According to legend, the island was typically shrouded in mist and only visible once every seven years. It appeared on several maps from the 14th to 16th centuries, often depicted as a circular island divided by a central river or strait.

Hy-Brasil is also shown in the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland on Map Myths, an interactive atlas exploring historical cartographic errors, myths, and misconceptions, such as phantom islands, mythical cities, and imaginary features. The site examines the origins of these legends, why they were included on maps, and how exploration eventually corrected these inaccuracies.

Map Myths is a captivating exploration of mythical and legendary locations, combining history, geography, and storytelling to uncover the origins of cartographic anomalies. The map provides detailed historical context and plausible explanations for these errors, revealing how myths like phantom islands and mythical cities were often products of misreported sightings and folklore. 

Map Myths earns lots of bonus points for being one of the first interactive maps I've seen which offers Arctic and Antarctic map projections. You can actually choose from five different projections (including Mercator, Mollweide and Robinson) but the Arctic and Antarctic projections are particularly useful for visualizing the locations of mythical lands in the extreme north or south. This includes Rupes Nigra, a legendary magnetic rock at the North Pole (believed to explain why compasses point north).

You can follow Map Myths on Bluesky, for regular updates on historcial cartographical anomolies. Maps Mania is also on Bluesky at @mapsmania.bsky.social

The World's Changing Climate Zones

Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time. It is more important than ever to visualize and understand its likely impacts. The new Köppen-Geiger Explorer hopes to meet this challenge by providing a powerful and interactive way to visualize climate zones and their transitions over time, based on the widely used Köppen-Geiger climate classification system.

The Köppen-Geiger climate classification system is one of the most widely used frameworks for categorizing the world's climates. It classifies climates based on observed temperature and precipitation patterns, dividing the Earth into five primary climate types, each with several subcategories.

The Köppen-Geiger Explorer is a new, innovative interactive map that visualizes how the world's climate zones are likely to change based on various climate model predictions. This tool allows users to explore past, present, and future climates, offering valuable insights into global and regional climate patterns. The map features two main filter controls that enable users to select a date range and explore different climate change scenarios. These controls make it possible to visualize how different scenarios might affect global climate zones at specific future dates.

For a country-specific perspective, the tool provides an intuitive Sankey diagram, summarizing past and future changes in climate zones. By selecting a country on the map, the diagram visualizes the flow of transitions between different climate categories, offering a detailed understanding of how these changes play out on a national scale.

The Pudding’s Climate Zones map also utilizes the Köppen climate classification to help visualize the global and local impacts of climate change. In Climate Zones - How Will Your City Feel in the Future? an  interactive map highlights the current climate zones of 70 global cities and projects the climate zones these cities will inhabit after global warming takes effect.

The Pudding’s Climate Zones map divides the world into the Köppen system’s five main climate zones -Arid, Tropical, Temperate, Cold, and Polar - along with their subcategories. At the end of the presentation, you can explore a detailed list of the 70 global cities categorized by their current climate zones. Selecting a city from this list reveals how it transitions into its future climate zone, accompanied by insights on how average temperatures in the city are expected to change due to global warming.

Your Global Local Radio Map

I'm currently listening to XEFO-AM from Mexico City, a radio station that seems to exclusively play classic, early 20th-century Spanish-language songs. The station is just one of about 100 local radio stations in Mexico City that appear on the Radiocast interactive map.

Radiocast is an interactive globe featuring over 7,000 radio stations broadcasting from around the world—all of which can be tuned into directly from the map. While Radiocast isn’t the first map to let you select radio stations by location, it boasts several features that might make it your go-to radio map.

One standout feature of Radiocast is its tag system, which lets you filter the 7,000+ radio stations by mood and genre. This makes it much easier to discover stations that match your personal tastes. If you’re not particular about mood or genre, you can use the ‘random’ feature to uncover a station from anywhere in the world. Radiocast also allows you to save your favorite stations, which are displayed as red hearts on the map.

My personal favorite feature is the sleep timer, which lets you set a timer for 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes—perfect for falling asleep to your favorite station.

However, one feature Radiocast seems to lack is the ability to share links to your favorite radio stations directly from the map. That’s a shame because the world truly needs to experience XEFO-AM. To find it, zoom in on Mexico City and look for the marker labeled ‘1030 AM’ (as that’s how it’s listed on the map).

Other Radio Maps

Radio Garden - (includes unique URLs which directly link to individual stations)

Radiooooo - no radio stations - but discover music by location and decade

Drive & Listen - watch driving videos from cities around the world while listening to a local radio station 

The Butterfly Superhighway

Every year, millions of Monarch butterflies undertake an epic journey across North America, traveling thousands of miles from their breeding grounds in the United States and Canada to their wintering habitats in central Mexico. In the spring, they then return to their northern locations in the United States and Canada.

What makes this migration even more astonishing is that no single butterfly completes the entire round trip. The Monarch migration is an extraordinary multi-generational journey, a relay race across generations, with each butterfly passing the baton to its offspring. The entire migration is too long for a single butterfly to complete in its lifetime and it takes multiple generations of Monarch butterflies to complete the journey north. Although a super-generation does make the entire return journey from North America to the wintering grounds in Mexico.

The Butterfly Superhighway invites you to join these incredible creatures on their long journey. The Butterfly Superhighway uses Google Earth and Google Street View to create a series of virtual Monarch butterfly migration journeys. By selecting one of the white route-line maps shown on the homepage, users can follow each incredible migratory journey across North America through a sequence of Street View panoramas and transitional 3D fly-overs captured on Google Earth.

I suspect there is no real map-coding involved in the Butterfly Superhighway. It seems that each migratory journey is simply a series of connected screen recordings made on Google Earth. Despite this, Butterfly Superhighway offers a visually engaging and accessible introduction to the Monarch butterfly's migration. However, "introduction" might be the operative word here, as the Butterfly Superhighway feels like a landing page for a broader website on Monarch butterflies - a website that has yet to be fully developed.

Via: Webcurios

Welcome to the Metaverse

Imagine a digital world layered seamlessly over our own, where every street corner and landmark is brought to life in 3D by a global community of gamers. This is Niantic’s vision for the real-world metaverse, and it’s already starting to take shape.

For several years, AR gaming company Niantic has been leveraging its hugely popular games, such as Pokémon GO and Pikman Bloom, to gather location data from around the world. Now, it has begun building the "real-world metaverse" with the help of its global network of active players.

Niantic’s real-world metaverse isn’t just a digital playground - it’s a collaborative effort to map the entire planet in 3D. High-level Pokémon players are now being enlisted to scan Niantic Wayspots, a vast network of points of interest that includes everything from iconic landmarks to hidden neighborhood gems. By simply walking around these sites with their phones, players capture detailed 3D meshes, which are then added to Niantic’s growing virtual map. By scanning local landmarks and hidden gems, players are effectively shaping a shared virtual world, one 3D model at a time. 

You can explore and browse Niantic's emerging real-world metaverse on Niantic Lightship's Geospatial Browser (requires free registration). The Geospatial Browser is an interactive map showcasing Niantic's Wayspots across the globe, many of which have now been turned into 3D models by Niantic volunteers.

The Geospatial Browser already appears to be populated with a vast number of user-submitted 3D scans of real-world locations. If you zoom in on your home on the map, you should be able to view several nearby locations as fully interactive 3D models (you can see me browsing my local neighborhood in the screen recording above).

If you'd like to build your own version of the metaverse, you can download any of the 3D meshes displayed on the Geospatial Browser as an FBX file (although I am uncertain about the licensing terms for using these models in your own projects).

Via: Digital Digging: Pokemon players create AR world

AI for Spatial Data Search

Aino claims to be 'the world’s first AI tool tailored specifically for retrieving and analyzing spatial data'. In essence, Aino is an AI-powered platform that allows you to search and (supposedly) download spatial data from over 10,000 datasets across more than 400 cities, covering points of interest (POI), urban infrastructure, social data, and much more.

How Easy is Aino to Use?

I found Aino fairly intuitive. In the free trial, you only get 10 queries, so I wasn’t able to explore Aino’s capabilities for very long. However, during my limited trial, I was able to define an area on the map and add various local points of interest, road linestrings, and building footprints within the search area.

Aino stands out for its use of natural language queries. Compared to Overpass Turbo, searching for spatial data with Aino is far more intuitive, as it doesn’t require knowledge of Overpass' complex query language. However, during my brief trial, I couldn’t test more advanced and complex spatial queries—an area where Overpass truly excels.

Can You Download the Data?

Aino includes a "Download and Share" button, which reportedly allows you to download your data as a GeoJSON or CSV file. However, no matter how many times I attempted to download my data as GeoJSON, I failed. This may well be user error, but whenever I asked Aino to show me data within a polygon area, all I could download was the polygon itself - not the actual data. Even when selecting "Export only visible layers" and hiding the polygon, Aino would still only export the hidden polygon instead of the visible data layers I wanted.

I may be missing something simple, but without the ability to download the data you’ve searched for, there isn’t much point in using Aino. It might be that Aino just needs to update their help guide on How to export the project in JSON to explain how to export spatial data from the map and not just the defining search polygons.

NYC's Subway Stories

New York City's subway network is a bustling artery that connects millions of New Yorkers to their daily lives. A new interactive map, Subway Stories, developed for the 2024 MTA Open Data Challenge, visualizes some of the stories and patterns that emerge from the rich flow of New York's subway ridership data. Drawing on comprehensive data from 2023, the visualization provides an unprecedented look at how the subway system functions as the lifeblood of the city, ferrying nearly four million passengers every day. 

The map is built on the MTA's Subway Origin-Destination Ridership dataset, a detailed collection of estimates that track the journeys of millions of riders. Although the MTA cannot directly record where each person exits, they use sophisticated algorithms to infer destinations based on where commuters start their next trip. This approach captures the complex network of journeys throughout the city, revealing the ways neighborhoods, work schedules, and events shape the daily rhythms of the subway system. By visualizing this information, Subway Stories paints a detailed portrait of New York's commuters, from the early morning rush of suburban workers pouring into Midtown to the late-night rides of performers and night-shift workers.

At the heart of the map are five stories: Fans at Flushing Meadows, A Tale of Five Chinatowns, Nightlife Along the L Train, The Weekend Shift, and How New York City Works. Each story looks at a subsection of the MTA data to reveal the unique rhythms and distinct communities that make New York's subway system so vibrant. From the surge of sports fans flocking to Flushing Meadows during the US Open, to the bustling activity of the city's diverse Chinatown neighborhoods, the narratives explore how different events, cultures, and industries shape the daily flow of commuters. Whether it’s the nightlife crowd hopping on the L train or essential workers heading to their weekend shifts, each story offers a glimpse into the heartbeat of the city, painting a detailed picture of how millions of people move through and interact with the subway system every day.

There are eight million stories in the naked city; these are only five of them. The map's creators are keen to learn if you also have a story to tell using the MTA's subway ridership data. If so - there is a short form that you can complete to share your story on the Subway Stories map.

If you are interested in creating your own scrollytelling data story then you might want to explore Mapbox's Interactive Storytelling: A low-code template to help you tell your map-based story. Alternatively you can start with Maplibre's Fly to a location based on scroll position demo map.

No Local News

"There are 206 counties in the United States with no news outlets. There are 1,561 counties with only one. More than two newspapers a week are closing, and print frequency is shrinking. Some 7,000 newspaper jobs were eliminated in the past year, almost 2,000 of them in newsroom positions." - The 2024 State of Local News Report

The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University has released its 2024 State of Local News Report. Every year, the report provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolving local news landscape in the United States. This year's edition highlights the growing challenges faced by local news outlets, including the continued decline of local newspapers, the spread of news deserts across communities, and the rapid rise of mergers and acquisitions as regional chains dominate the market. 

The Maps and Data section of the report features an interactive map that visualizes the number of news outlets in each county, including newspapers, digital sites, network sites, ethnic outlets, and public broadcasting. In counties that are not complete news deserts, users can click through to view the names of all local news outlets.

The report is not entirely focused on bad news. The Bright Spots in the Local News Landscape section includes a map highlighting some local news startups that are successfully navigating the challenges faced by traditional newspapers, websites, and broadcasters.

The Reemergence of Nuclear Power

When I reviewed the Nuclear Stations Map in August, I was surprised to see that, a little over a decade after the Fukushima disaster, Japan appears to be building at least three new nuclear power plants on its coastline. The Nuclear Stations Map shows all the nuclear plants in the world, whether decommissioned, in operation, or under construction. Currently, the map highlights over 60 new nuclear reactors being built around the globe.

After the Fukushima disaster, Germany decided to phase out nuclear power, a process completed in 2023. At the time, the environmental and human cost of the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 seemed to signal the decline of nuclear power as a viable energy option for most countries. However, the war in Ukraine and the subsequent surge in energy prices appear to have sparked a renewed interest in nuclear energy.

The Straits Times directly addresses this resurgence in its scrollytelling story map On the nuclear trail: The dawn of a global renaissance in nuclear energy. Poignantly, this guided tour of the world’s renewed interest in nuclear power starts with just three locations highlighted on the world map: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima - the sites of the world’s three worst nuclear disasters.

The recent announcement that Microsoft had signed a deal to purchase nuclear power from Three Mile Island is emblematic of how energy security now seems to outweigh lingering fears of nuclear accidents. The Straits Times story map goes on to show the large number of nuclear power stations currently under construction across many countries. According to the accompanying article, “25 countries – including France, Japan, and the United States – have pledged to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050.”

The article is also illustrated with an interesting gridded cartogram that visualizes how much of each country’s electricity generation comes from fossil fuels, renewables, or nuclear energy. As you scroll through the article, individual countries are highlighted on the cartogram to explain the reasons behind their energy mix. For example, “In France, nuclear energy powers up to 70 percent of the country’s electricity needs. However, it has not built a new reactor since 1999 and is now planning to construct 14 more reactors by 2050.”

The reemergence of nuclear power signals a pivotal moment in the global energy landscape. Faced with the dual crises of climate change and energy insecurity, countries are increasingly turning back to a power source many had once sworn off. However, while the promise of clean, reliable energy is alluring, we shouldn't forget that past nuclear disasters have left parts of Chernobyl and Fukushima uninhabitable.

The European Cycle Map

Cycling in Europe just got easier with the launch of VeloPlanner, a new interactive map that aims to simplify route planning for cyclists by highlighting 'signposted' cycling routes across the continent. By leveraging detailed data from OpenStreetMap (OSM), VeloPlanner offers a comprehensive view of designated bike routes, helping cyclists of all skill levels find paths that suit their needs. 

VeloPlanner is essentially powered by OSM data. It uses the bicycle route network tag to show whether a bike route is designated as an 'international' route, a 'national route', a 'regional' route, or a 'local' route. In my part of East London, the routes tagged as 'regional' (shown in green) tend to feature segregated bike lanes, while the 'local' routes appear to be regular roads with less motor vehicle traffic. However I am not sure whether this pattern applies across the whole of Europe. In my opinion, the map would benefit from an additional filter utilizing the OSM tag 'highway=cycleway', which would show only dedicated cycle paths that offer a separate, safer space for cyclists.

One significant advantage of using OpenStreetMap data is the incorporation of local knowledge from the OSM community. In my neighborhood, for example, a dedicated cycle lane is currently closed for an extended period of 18 months. Thanks to the vigilance of local OSM contributors, VeloPlanner not only reflects this closure but also displays the recommended diversionary route, marked as 'local' - indicating that it is not a separate cycleway. This kind of up-to-date information is invaluable for cyclists, helping them navigate disruptions and choose the safest available paths.

VeloPlanner is already proving to be a useful tool for planning cycling routes, even in its current form. However, the homepage suggests features like the ability to download GPX files and access detailed route information, both of which appear to be missing at the moment. Presumably, these features are still under development and will be added soon. Additionally, while VeloPlanner currently focuses on European bike routes, there are plans to extend coverage globally in the near future.

Dressing Miku

tldr: miku-earth is an interactive map of people's drawings of the virtual idol Hatsune Miku dressed in the national costumes of countries and subcultures around the world.

I like to imagine that Hatsune Miku is just the first step in a new era of virtual celebrities, paving the way for the likes of William Gibson’s Rei Toei to suddenly emerge as real virtual beings. Both Miku and Rei Toei embody the concept of digital stardom, blurring the boundaries between the real and the virtual, and challenging our notions of what it means to be a celebrity.

While Hatsune Miku was initially created as software, she has evolved far beyond that. She has become a global phenomenon, adored by fans who treat her almost like a mythic figure, similar to the way Rei Toei is idolized in Gibson’s Bridge trilogy. Miku’s rise, driven almost entirely by her community of users, contrasts with Rei Toei’s fictional world, where digital personas possess self-awareness and agency. Yet, in a sense, Miku’s popularity hints at our growing comfort with digital companions, inching closer to the kind of future Gibson envisioned. We are now living in a world in which the line between human and digital virtual star continues to blur.

miku.earth shows how a digital celebrity can transcend cultural boundaries and take on a global identity. Fans from around the world have taken to drawing Hatsune Miku in their own national costumes, and this fan-driven project demonstrates how Miku can be personalized and reimagined by different communities, making her a universal figure that exists in the digital ether - while having a very real presence.

In 2025 the Canadian singer Grimes announced her engagement to the virtual idol Hatsune Miku ... (to be continued)

Via: Webcurios

The Indigenous Treaty Map

The Yellowhead Institute has released The Treaty Map, a comprehensive historical overview of land treaties "negotiated" between Indigenous Nations and the Canadian federal government (and previously, with colonial governments and the British Crown). The Institute aims to use the map to foster a deeper understanding of Indigenous land rights and the ongoing disputes surrounding these treaties.

The interactive Treaty Map includes an historical timeline control which can be used to filter the treaties by date (1725 – 2012). The treaties can also be filtered by type (or historical period):

1. Pre-Confederation Treaties (1763-1867): Early agreements primarily focused on trade, peace, and military alliances between Indigenous Nations and European settlers, including the Peace and Friendship Treaties and the Royal Proclamation of 1763.


2. Confederation-Era Treaties (1867-1921): Also known as the Numbered Treaties, these were agreements negotiated as Canada expanded westward, aimed at acquiring Indigenous lands in exchange for promises of land reserves, education, and other support.


3. Modern Treaties (1975-Present): Often referred to as Comprehensive Land Claims Agreements, these address land rights in areas where historical treaties were not signed, including notable examples like the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and the Nunavut Agreement.

Clicking on a treaty boundary on the map reveals a summary offering Indigenous perspectives on the treaty’s context, key negotiators, terms (often with differing interpretations), and subsequent events. These entries are informed by extensive research, with input from advisory committees of Indigenous treaty experts.

If you are interested in Indigenous nations and their lands then you might also want to refer to the Native-Land interactive map. This map visualizes information on Indigenous territories, languages, and treaties across the world.

The map is designed to increase awareness and education about Indigenous histories, territories, and the diversity of Indigenous cultures, encouraging users to consider the ongoing significance of land acknowledgment and Indigenous land rights.

How Big is Your Country's CO2 Footprint?

Jo Wood, a professor of visual analytics, has released an impressive cartogram visualizing each country's annual CO₂ emissions over the past 200 years. The map was created for the #30DayMapChallenge.

Press 'play' on the Global C02 Emissions map to view an animated timeline of annual CO₂ emissions by country, from 1800 to 2022. This dynamic visualization offers fascinating insights into the history of global pollution since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution

At the start of the visualization, in 1800, the United Kingdom stands out as the highest emitter of CO₂. The UK's central role in the Industrial Revolution, which began in the late 18th century, led to extensive coal consumption, far outpacing most other countries at the time. Belgium is also notable on the map as an early high emitter of CO₂. As one of the first continental European countries to industrialize, Belgium followed closely in the UK's footsteps. The country’s southern region, particularly Wallonia, had abundant coal deposits, making coal a primary energy source for its industrial activities.

For much of the 19th century, Europe stands alone as the world’s great polluter. Kuwait appears to be an outlier, with some unexpectedly high per capita emissions throughout the 19th century. From the middle of the century, the United States also began to emerge as a global leader in air pollution.

The 20th Century

As industrialization spread worldwide during the 20th century, CO₂ output became a near-global phenomenon. In the early part of the century, the U.S. emerged as the largest per capita emitter of CO₂. The Global CO₂ Emissions cartogram illustrates how, in the latter half of the century, oil-rich Middle Eastern states became some of the highest per capita CO₂ producers. The cartogram also highlights how most African countries have maintained relatively low per capita emissions of CO₂ over the last 200 years.

There is much to admire in this historical cartogram. The use of distinct colors for each continent not only helps users locate individual countries on the map but also provides added context for the accompanying streamgraph. This streamgraph emphasizes the significant "cumulative effect of increasing (though now gradually decreasing) CO₂ emissions" over time. The colored bands correspond to the five continents and depict the cumulative CO₂ output of each continent over time.

The growth of the blue band on the streamgraph reveals the rise of Asia as an industrial powerhouse in the late 20th century. Notably, while China has become one of the world’s largest emitters of CO₂ in total, its per capita emissions remain much lower than those of the United States and many other 'western' countries.

The 2024 US Election Maps

The winner of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election is becoming clear, as shown by today's newspaper election maps. Donald Trump has secured two key battleground states, North Carolina and Georgia, and leads over Kamala Harris in several states already called in his favor.

In U.S. elections, traditional choropleth maps - where regions are shaded to represent the winning or leading candidate - can often be misleading. These maps color each state or county based on the majority vote, creating expansive areas of a single color that distort the geographic distribution of voter support. This approach tends to exaggerate the dominance of one party in states with large but sparsely populated regions, while densely populated urban areas, which may vote differently, occupy smaller spaces and are visually minimized.

As a result, choropleth maps can misrepresent the actual balance of voter support, making it challenging for readers to accurately grasp election outcomes. Alternative visualizations, such as cartograms and dot-density maps, offer a more accurate reflection of the electorate by resizing regions or representing individual votes, providing a clearer and more informative view of the political landscape.

For instance the New York Times has used a proportional symbol margin map to illustrate the strength of support for each candidate across counties. In this map, colored circles are “proportional to the amount each county’s leading candidate is ahead,” effectively visualizing the size and distribution of margins.

Additionally, the Times includes a traditional choropleth map (with states colored by the leading candidate) and a "swing map," which visualizes the shift in the margin of votes cast for Democrats and Republicans in each county. On this swing map, if more voters have chosen the Democratic candidate compared to 2020 (in percentage terms), the arrow is colored blue - even if Trump is currently leading in the total percentage of votes (and vice versa for a Republican shift).

The “Shift from 2020” map perhaps provides the clearest picture yet of the 2024 election dynamics. As seen in the provided screenshot, there has been a significant swing toward Trump in a large number of counties that have already been called.

The Washington Post's Presidential Results 2024 offers a cartogram view as an alternative to its traditional choropleth map. In this cartogram, each state is represented by a number of squares, corresponding to its electoral votes. The squares are colored by the leading candidate, and hovering over a state reveals the vote count for each candidate and an estimate of the votes counted.

The Guardian's scrollytelling cartographical analysis of the 2020 Presidential Election was produced before all the results were in, however the map still provides a fantastic overview of where and how Trump won and the Democrats failed. As you scroll through The key swing states and counties that handed Trump the White House different map visualizations explore some of the key geographical and demographic areas which swung the election for the Republicans.

Using a series of arrow swing map views The Guardian shows how the Republicans made gains in both urban and rural areas; made gains in both majority-Black counties and heavily Latino counties, had strong support in areas with lower levels of educational attainment; and that there was little impact of the abortion issue on voting patterns.

Your Hour-By-Hour Guide to Election Night

Even though the results of the election may not be known for days, many people will still be glued to the news overnight. If you're one of those who will be tracking every rumor for clues about the outcome of the U.S. Presidential Election, you might want to bookmark these interactive maps from The New York Times and The Washington Post, which show when polls close and when to expect updates from the key battleground states.

The Washington Post's When will we know the election results? includes a helpful map displaying when polls close in every county across the country. The accompanying article also offers predictions on when you can expect results from the seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The New York Times' What Time Do the Polls Close? also provides a mapped visualization of poll closing times by state. The article is divided into half-hour intervals, with maps showing which states' polls will close in each block up to midnight (Central Time).

For the actual 2024 U.S. Presidential Election results maps, check back tomorrow!

Vintage Street View Imagery

Imagine if Google Maps offered a way to view Street View panoramas of cities as they looked in the past. Unfortunately Google only began capturing Street View images in 2006 and 2007. Photography itself, however, was invented in the 19th century, which means we can explore vintage photographs to glimpse our cities as they used to exist.

In fact, one American photographer, Ed Ruscha, practically pioneered Street View photography. In the 1960s he mounted a motorized 35mm camera on top of a pickup truck and drove up and down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, capturing a unique photographic record of this iconic street. He repeated this project in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The result is an incredible time capsule, documenting the evolution of Sunset Boulevard across five decades.

Sunset over Sunset presents Ed Ruscha’s photographs of Sunset Boulevard across five decades, stitched into continuous photostrips that capture the changing landscape between Doheny Road and North Alameda Street. Using a strip map of Sunset Boulevard you can browse all five complete historical photostrips of the street from each of the five decades. 

Sunset Over Sunset integrates Ruscha’s images with historical data, such as city directories, census records, and local newspapers. Using the strip map, users can explore specific addresses, and uncover their history through their associated historical data. A 'Stories' section also picks out and explores some of the most interesting urban developments which have taken place on the 'Strip' since the 1960s.

The 12 Sunsets website also allows users to explore Ed Ruscha's photographs of the Sunset Strip overlaid on an interactive map. In this presentation, an interactive map is flanked by Ruscha's vintage photos of each side of Sunset Boulevard. Simply click on a year to change the date of the street-view photos shown on the map, and use the "Flip" button to rotate the page 180 degrees.

Los Angeles isn’t the only city that can be explored through vintage street-view photography; New York City also boasts extensive collections of historical street imagery.

1940s NYC and 80s.NYC are two fantastic interactive maps that let you explore vintage photographs of New York City street scenes. These photos, captured by the New York City Finance Department in the early 1940s and again in the early 1980s, document every building across the city’s five boroughs. Originally taken to assess property values, these images now serve as invaluable time capsules of New York’s urban landscape.

These interactive maps allow you to explore New York’s streets as they appeared in the 1940s and 1980s, giving you the chance to see how your favorite neighborhoods have transformed (or perhaps remained the same) over the past eighty years.

Scrambled Hex Maps

Fresh from creating a mobile friendly update for Scrambled Maps, Tripgeo has now released an even trickier puzzle, called Scrambled Hex Maps.  

If you love puzzles that challenge your spatial reasoning and problem-solving skills, Scramble Hex Maps is a game you won’t want to miss! This engaging daily challenge invites players to rearrange scrambled hexagonal maps into their correct configurations. With its unique twist on the traditional jigsaw puzzle format, Scrambled Hex Maps offers a refreshing and enjoyable way to test your wits and spatial awareness.

The game challenges players to rearrange hexagonal map tiles to reveal the correct order. As you dive into the world of hexagonal scrambled maps, you’ll soon find that the shapes and configurations offer a distinct challenge compared to the original version of Scrambled Maps.

Disclaimer: Having created the original Scrambled Maps I am a little biased. TripGeo is also kind enough to host my other map games Map Snake and Nightmare on View Street, as well as some, like Scrambled Hex Maps and TripGeo Trivia, that were not made by me.

The Interactive Map of Ambridge

The Archers is the world's longest-running drama series and yet it has taken 73 years for someone to finally create an interactive map of Ambridge.

The Archers is a long-running British radio drama, broadcast on BBC Radio 4, that first aired in 1951. This radio soap opera is famously billed by the BBC as "an everyday story of country folk". The series follows the lives of the residents of Ambridge, a fictional rural village in the English Midlands. 

Like many English villages, life in Ambridge revolves around the pub (The Bull), the village green, the community-run shop, and the parish church. The new interactive Ambridge Map, created by the Archers Wiki, is powered by Leaflet.js, allowing listeners to explore and understand the village’s geography.

Currently a work-in-progress, the map notably lacks St. Stephen's Church, though it includes the River Am, which recently featured in the jailing of George Grundy. Absent as well are key farms: Brookfield Farm (owned by the Archers family), Home Farm (owned by the Aldridge family), Bridge Farm, and Grange Farm (run by the Grundy family). Hopefully, markers indicating these essential locations will all be added soon.

Other interactive maps of fictional locations include:

• The Lord of the Rings Project's Map of Middle-Earth
• The Interactive Game of Thrones Map

Map Snake

I'm sure you remember playing the classic game of Snake. This simple yet addictive game required you to maneuver an ever-growing snake while eating pixels and avoiding collisions with the external walls and the snake's own tail. Now, imagine taking that nostalgic gameplay and placing it in the wonderful world of cartography - welcome to Map Snake!

Map Snake takes the cherished arcade experience and enhances it by integrating the gameplay with the interactive maps of major global cities. Now, you must guide your snake through a city landscape, collect markers, and avoid your own tail. This fresh take on a classic game combines the much-loved gameplay of Snake with the unique geography and culture of cities around the world. Get ready to slither your way through an exciting blend of nostalgia and cartography with Map Snake!

I coded Map Snake this morning for the #30DayMapChallenge. Utilizing the powerful MapLibre library, the game animates a linestring on top of OpenFreeMap map tiles. The animated linestring is controlled by keyboard event listeners that follow the player's directions. The game includes a simple collision detection system to determine when the snake interacts with its own tail and utilizes localStorage to keep track of a player's highest score. Each time a new game starts, the map shifts to a random location chosen from an array of seven global cities.

At the moment, the game is very simple, but I have a few ideas for improving the gameplay. For now, I have just one game tip: if your snake moves out of the current map view, don’t panic! Just perform a blind U-turn, and your snake should soon slither back into view.

Cryptic Cross World

My #30DayMapChallenge entry for 'Lines' is a fiendish treasure-hunt map game.

The premise of Cryptic Cross World is simple: you’re presented with a series of cryptic crossword clues, each leading you to a new location as you solve them. Points are awarded based on the distance you travel. To aid you in solving these clues, you can reveal letters in the answer - but beware, revealing letters comes at a cost. The first letter you reveal will deduct 1,000 miles from your score, and each subsequent reveal doubles in cost. So, the second letter will cost 2,000 miles, the third 4,000 miles, and so on.

While the rules of Cryptic Cross World are simple, the game itself is fiendishly hard. For now, there’s a built-in cheat to help players along. If you enter an incorrect answer, a prompt will reveal the correct solution, allowing you to proceed to the next clue.

I think Cryptic Cross World is currently very challenging, especially for those unfamiliar with cryptic crosswords. I have a few ideas to make gameplay slightly less demanding (which I didn’t manage to implement in time for the #30DayMapChallenge). In the future, I’d like to add three "clue" cards to give players additional hints on particularly tough clues. I also plan to introduce a limited number of "skip" cards, allowing players to bypass a clue entirely if it feels impossible to solve.

For now, if you’re stuck, you can simply enter random letters, and a prompt will reveal the correct answer.

Free Map Data Grabbers

The Overture Maps Foundation, founded in 2022 by Microsoft, Meta (formerly Facebook), Amazon, and TomTom, aims to provide accessible, interoperable open map data. 

At the time of its launch I remarked that 'hopefully in the future the Overture Maps Foundation will develop more user-friendly methods to access the data'. The Overture Maps Explorer (Beta) is exactly that. The Explorer allows developers to zoom in on any location in the world and download a GeoJSON file of any combination of 'Land', 'Transportation', 'Buildings', 'Places', or 'Addresses' map data.

Using the Explorer couldn’t be simpler: just center the map on your desired location, select the layers you need, and hit ‘Download Visible.’ Instantly, you’ll receive the selected data for the current map bounds as a GeoJSON file.

Another similar tool is Evan Applegate’s Overture Data Grabber, which also simplifies the process of downloading Overture Maps data. After centering on your area of interest and choosing the desired data, simply draw a polygon around your selection. The Data Grabber then downloads the requested data as a GeoJSON file, ready for use.

To test out the Overture Data Grabber, I used it this morning to map the Brighton Lanes. I downloaded building footprints and place data, then paired it with road polylines from Overpass Turbo. Within minutes, I was able to create an interactive MapLibre map showcasing shops, bars, and restaurants in the Brighton Lanes - which, by lucky coincidence, also happens to qualify as my 'Points' map for the #30DayMapChallenge.