The Atlas of American Gun Violence

The Trace's An Atlas of American Gun Violence is an interactive map that uses data from the Gun Violence Archive to visualize gun homicides and assaults across the contiguous United States.

The map has drawn a fair amount of criticism on the MapPorn subreddit, with many dismissing it as “just a population density map.” I think this criticism is somewhat unfair.  If you were to zoom in on a similar map of most European cities you would not see the same density of shooting. Even in European cities with higher population densities than most U.S. cities, the level of gun violence is nowhere near as intense. 

That said, it is true that raw counts of shootings will naturally correlate to some degree with population - areas with more people tend to have more incidents simply because there are more potential interactions. However, the degree of concentration of gun violence in certain U.S. cities, and even within particular neighborhoods of those cities, points to factors beyond mere population density.

The ability to zoom into individual cities can reveal stark differences in the distribution of shootings between neighborhoods in the same metropolitan area. If the visualization were just a proxy for population, we’d expect a much more uniform spread within each city. Instead, the data exposes clear geographic patterns -some neighborhoods suffer disproportionately high levels of gun violence, while others in the same city remain relatively unaffected.

Finally, the map’s interactive filters allow users to explore incidents by location, date range, fatal versus non-fatal shootings, and categories such as mass shootings, accidental discharges, officer-involved incidents, and those involving children. These features make the map more than just a static population density map; they turn it into a powerful tool for understanding the scale, nature, and distribution of gun violence across the United States.

European Death Zones

Tages-Anzeiger’s data team has published a striking interactive map that visualizes one of Europe’s most profound demographic challenges: in most of the continent's regions, more people are now dying than are being born.

In Europe is becoming a “net death zone”: What the future would look like without immigration the newspaper uses regional data from Eurostat and national statistics offices to show where natural population decline is most acute. The choropleth map shades European regions according to whether they have a birth surplus (more births than deaths) or a death surplus (more deaths than births). It reveals that large swaths of Eastern and Southern Europe, are witnessing falling birth rates.

Only a handful of areas in Northern and Western Europe - such as parts of France, Sweden, Norway, England, and Switzerland - still record more births than deaths. The simple two-color scheme used by the map (blue for birth surplus, red for death surplus) conveys this stark divide at a glance.

The conclusion from the map is clear. Population growth in much of Europe is now entirely dependent on immigration. Without immigration most of the continent faces a future of an aging population without enough younger workers to sustain its economies, support its welfare systems, or maintain current levels of social and economic vitality.

Tages-Anzeiger's map follows quickly upon a similar themed map published by The Guardian. The Guardian's map, Europe's population crisis, is a similarly effective and stark visualization of the continent's emerging demographic problems. This map's primary purpose is to highlight the dramatic difference migration makes to Europe's population projections by 2100. It successfully achieves this by comparing Europe's projected population "With migration" and "Without migration".

The map reveals that without migration nearly all of Europe is going to see a massive fall in population. By 2100, the proportion of people aged 65 or over is projected to rise significantly, leading to slower economic growth, increased tax burdens, and a greater demand for health and social care services. 

Via: Datawrapper's Data Viz Dispatch

The World is Your Canvas with PaintMyMap

Creating a truly beautiful and customized map can be a frustrating experience, requiring either expensive software or deep coding knowledge. Enter PaintMyMap, a new online custom map maker that lets anyone - from educators to professionals - design, style, and export custom maps in minutes, and all for free.

What is PaintMyMap?

PaintMyMap is an intuitive web-based editor designed to simplify the map creation process. It strips away the complexity of traditional GIS tools, offering a clean interface focused on styling and customization.

The platform provides a variety of base maps, including world, continent, and country outlines. The real power, however, lies in its ability to handle user-uploaded data. You can easily drag and drop your own geographic data files - including common formats like GeoJSON, TopoJSON, Shapefiles, KML, and CSV - right into the editor.

Once your data or base map is loaded, the customization begins. You can "paint" regions with different colors, add labels, and use a draggable legend to clearly present your information. For those who need specific cartographic standards, the tool also offers a selection of popular projections like Mercator, Robinson, and Winkel Tripel.

It literally took me less than 5 minutes to create the map at the top of this post. That time included downloading U.S. state boundaries as a GeoJSON file, uploading the data into PaintMyMap, editing the map legend, color-coding each state, and exporting the final graphic as a PNG file.

Overall I would say that PaintMyMap excels at creating clear, publication-ready, static maps for data visualization, presentations, and print media. It is superb at quickly creating and coloring static regional maps (particularly for creating choropleth-style map visualizations).