The Lyrical Map of Hip Hop

The Pudding has analyzed the lyrics of about 50,000 songs in order to discover the most common words used in Hip Hop. From this analysis they were then able to make an interactive map which groups Hip Hop artists by lyrical similarity.

The Words That are Most Hip Hop interactive map organizes the faces of Hip Hop artists based on the overlap between the words they use in their lyrics. You can hover over the faces on the map to reveal the name of each artist. The map reveals distinct etymological families in Hip Hop. For example there is the Wu-Tang branch of the language of Hip Hop whose members share a very similar lexicon.

The different dialects of Hip Hop that emerge on the map may owe a lot to the physical geography of the Hip Hop artists. Further study is needed to see if the lyrical similarity between artists correlates to geographical closeness.


To prove a link between Hip Hop dialects and geography you might want to explore the Geography of Hip-Hop interactive map. The Geography of Hip-Hop documents the history and geography of Hip Hop. The map (and accompanying essay) explore how Hip Hop has spread around the world and how different cites have developed their own distinct sounds and styles of Hip Hop.

The interactive Hip Hop map allows you to browse and listen to Hip Hop music by location. The map features 955 songs, most of which you can listen to directly from the map. The size of the markers on the map reflects the number of artists featured from that location. In this way you can get a rough idea about the size of the Hip Hop communities in these different urban locations.

By listening to the songs listed in one city you may begin to get a feel for the sound and style of Hip Hop from that location. You can learn more about the development of Hip Hop in the accompanying essay, The Syncopated Geography of Hip-Hop. The essay explores the influence of geography on Hip Hop communities & styles and how Hip Hop music reflects the influence of the different urban locales where it is made.

Watch New York Being Built

A new animated map shows the major periods of construction in New York since 1880.The map provides a great insight into which areas of New York were developed in each decade of the Twentieth Century. New York Construction allows you to select any year since 1880 and view all the buildings in New York which were built in the 50 years immediately before your chosen date.

There are lots of other examples of building age maps which show the different ages of buildings in cities around the world. We've even seen animated building age maps before. For example, this Amsterdam Growing Over Time map shows how the city of Amsterdam developed and grew from a few houses in the 17th century into the dynamic city it is today. However this animated map only shows when Amsterdam's current buildings were built.

The New York map works a little differently. As the animation plays out the map only ever shows at any one time the buildings constructed in the previous 50 years of the current date on the map. In this way the map shows the major areas of construction in New York over the last 50 years from the date selected. The buildings are color coded on the map by how near to the selected date that they were constructed.

If you want to view the age of all of New York's current buildings on one map then you can check out the NYC's Pluto Data Map. This map color-codes all the buildings by their year of construction. You can therefore use this map to see which neighborhoods have the oldest buildings in New York and which neighborhoods are made up by predominantly new buildings.

110 Maps That Explain America

Data USA claims to be "the most comprehensive website and visualization engine of public US Government data". It allows you to explore a wealth of government data about the demographics, economics, health and education of the United States.

The Maps section of Data USA contains over 110 different choropleth views of this data. These maps visualize the different data sets about America and the American people at county level. The sidebar for each map includes a list view of the top & bottom ten performing counties for the selected data. Each of these map views also includes the option to map the selected data for a number of different years.

The Stories section explores some of the most compelling narratives that emerge from the data. These stories also use interactive maps and other types of data visualization to help explain what the data tells us about America.

Each of the visualization in Data USA can be embedded on another website. The data for each of the visualizations can also be downloaded in CSV format.

Money = Happiness

Alexander Bastidas Fry has used data from the World Happiness Report to map the happiness score of every country in the world. He has also created a number of visualizations which compares these country happiness scores against a number of other factors. One thing that Alexander's World Happiness visualization seems to show is that happiness is very closely tied to economic production.

If you select the scatter plot option you can view how happiness compares to economic production, life expectancy, social support, freedom, generosity and absence of corruption. If you look at the scatterplot of happiness compared to economic production there seems to be a very strong correlation between happiness and economic production.

If you select a country on the interactive globe you can see the country highlighted on the scatterplot or radar plot. If you click on 'information' you can view the country's happiness score and see how well its happiness score compares to its expected score from how it scores on the other indicators.

The Amazing Map of Rome

There is very little new in cartography. Over the last few years there has been a bit of a trend to create building age maps of cities. A building age map is a great idea but it isn't new. For example an Italian archaeologist had the same idea over 100 years ago and what he created was nothing short of cartographic magnificence.

At the turn of the Twentieth Century Italian archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani undertook the task of creating a huge detailed map of Rome. A map which would visualize when different parts of the city were built. Lanciani’s Forma Urbis Romae is color codded to show the different historical epochs when different areas of Rome were built. On the map ancient and medieval Rome is shown in black, early modern Rome in red and the modern city (to Lanciani) is shown in blue.

The Forma Urbis Romae was also huge. It measures 17 x 24 feet. You might therefore struggle to open the map. It is lucky for us therefore that Mapping Rome has digitized all 46 plates and released a fully interactive map of Lanciani's Forma Urbis Romae. It is well worth zooming in on this map to explore Lanciani's beautiful cartography and how he was able to visualize the often complex intermingling of different historical eras within single structures and areas of the city.

1,518 Mass Shootings Mapped

Since the tragedy of Sandy Hook there have been 1,518 mass shootings in the United States. In less than six years 1,715 people have been killed and 6,089 wounded in mass shootings. Vox has mapped all 1,518 of those mass shootings, using data from the Gun Violence Archive.

Vox's Mass Shootings interactive map shows the location of 1,518 mass shootings across the United States since December 2012. If you click on a marker on the map you can view the date and location of the mass shooting and the number of people who were killed and injured.


Of course people aren't just killed by guns in mass shootings. According to data from the Gun Violence Archive there have already been 11,686 people killed by guns in 2017 and 23,717 injuries.

If you go to the Charts and Maps section of the Gun Violence Archive you can view static maps of all the mass shootings this year, all the deaths from guns this year and all gun incidents so far in 2017.


Why has there been 1,518 mass shootings in the USA in less than 6 years? One common denominator is guns. There may be a Starbucks on every corner in America but there are more gun shops on more corners. There are 64,747 gun dealers in the US. That's more gun dealers than grocery stores & McDonald's restaurants. It also means that there are nearly six gun dealers for every Starbucks.

Firearms & Frappuccinos compares the number of Starbucks to the number of firearm dealers in the United States. If you enter the name of a town into the map you can see the locations of all the local Starbucks coffee shops and the locations of all the local gun dealers. So, for example, if you search for Dallas, you will discover that there are more than twice as many gun dealers in the city as there are Starbucks stores.


Back in 2015 Oregon Live created an interactive map to show where gun deaths most occurred in the United States. The US Gun Deaths Map 2004-2010 shows the average number of gun deaths per 100,000 county residents. The map therefore provides some insight into where gun deaths are occurring more in proportion to the population.

It is important when viewing this map to understand that this is not a map of only gun homicides. The map also shows deaths occurring from suicide attempts. The map does reveal however that there are some clear geographical differences in the number of gun deaths per population in different regions of the United States.


After two mass shootings in quick succession in San Bernardino and Colorado Springs in 2015 the Guardian created an interesting map which revealed how much money political representatives received in political donations from the National Rifle Association and where those representatives stand on gun legislation.

The Gun Deaths in Your District map shows how many gun deaths there have been in every congressional district. If you select a district on the map you can find out how many gun deaths there have been in the district.

Below the map you can view details about the district's three political representatives, including information on how much money they have received from the gun lobby and how they have voted on gun rights and gun control legislation.

Moscow Noise Pollution

Urbica built their own cheap noise meters using the OrangePi platform with a microphone attached. They then placed their meters on Velobike stations around Moscow. With this data the team were then able to build a noise pollution model for the whole of Moscow.

The Noise Map of Moscow is the resulting interactive map of noise pollution in the Russian capital. At first glance the map appears to be little more than a road map of the city but if you zoom in you can see how certain roads, pubic spaces and areas around train stations are noisier than other roads and locations across the city.

Urbica's noise generation model includes factors such as building density and recognizes four different kinds of noise pollution sources; construction sites, roads, railways and public spaces. You can read more the model and how the map was made on the Urbica blog.

The Atlas of Data Technologies

Lambert, the Data Monster, wants to take you on a guided tour of the World of Data Technologies. To help you find your way around Lambert has created an interactive map of Data World. The map uses Leaflet.js to introduce you to this confusing world of big data.

The interactive map includes numbered map markers showing you all of Lambert's geotagged Monstragram photos. Click on the marker numbered 1 on the map and you will find Lambert at home. If you then proceed chronologically through the numbered markers Lambert will take you on a guided tour of Data World. The tour includes such sights as the rural data farms, the Regression Mountains and the Gödel Dam.

Dangerous Roads for Cycling

CycleStreets, the UK bike route map, now also allows you to view data about road accidents which have involved cyclists. This means that you can use CycleStreets to plan a bike route and also see the relative safety of that route, based on the number of traffic accidents.

The road collision data comes from the Department of Transport. The map allows you to filter the traffic accidents shown by the severity of the accident, by year and by type of road. You can click on the individual collision markers on the map to view details about the accident, including the date, the severity of the accident and the number of casualties.

As well as the new road collision data CycleStreets also includes 'cycleability ratings' for every road. These are CycleStreets own bike safety ratings which colors each road based on its suitability for cycling.

Real Trains in Real Time

The Swiss Railways map Trafimage shows the entire public transit network of Switzerland. It maps railway lines, tram lines, buses and cable-cars. The map even shows you all the trains on the Swiss railway network moving in real-time.

If you select the 'Train Tracker' option from the map menu you can watch all the trains in Switzerland moving in real-time, based on the timetable of the Swiss rail system. If you zoom in on a train and click its map marker its schedule will be loaded into the map sidebar. Controls also appear in the sidebar that allow you to speed up how fast the train moves on the map.

The Trafimage map also allows you to click on individual stations to view the station timetable, train departure times and services available in the station.


You can also follow Swiss trains in real time on the Swiss Railways Network map. This map also allows you to view all trains on the Swiss Railway moving in real-time based on the national rail timetable.

The Swiss Railways Network Map includes the option to automatically follow any train in real-time. If you select a train on the map then select the 'follow' button (which appears in the map sidebar) the map will then automatically follow your selected train. Like with Trafimage you also have the option to increase the speed that the train moves on the map.