Land Use in Switzerland

Only 8% of Switzerland is used for housing and infrastructure (such as roads). In the European Union the average territory used by housing and infrastructure is 11%. In neighboring France 12% of land is utilized by housing and infrastructure, while in Italy 13% of territory is used for this purpose.

You can learn more about how land is used in Switzerland on a fascinating new data visualization from 24 Heures. How Switzerland Uses its Territory is a scrollytelling mapped visualization exploring the amount of land taken up by housing, farming, forests etc. As you progress through 24 Heures' visualization the scale of each different type of land use is shown by overlaying the area of land used on a map of Switzerland. This culminates in a final map of Switzerland where the whole country is shaded to show how much of the country is given over to different types of land use.

How Switzerland Uses its Territory also explores the differences in land use between more rural and more urban cantons. At the end of the article small multiples show how land is divided in each of the 26 cantons.



How Switzerland Uses its Territory was obviously inspired by Bloomberg's Here's How America Uses its Land. In 2018 Bloomberg used a similar scrollytelling technique to map out how much land in America is given over to different types of land use.

It is interesting to compare how land is utilized in Switzerland and the USA. Forests make up the biggest percentage of land use in Switzerland (the Alps). In the USA the largest percentage of land is given over to livestock (cropland and pastures combined account for 41% of land in the contiguous states). Different categories are used in each map so it isn't easy to make direct comparisons between the tow countries. However it does appear that a far smaller portions of the USA is urbanized than in Switzerland (which makes sense when you think of the populations and size of each country).

How Old is Montreal?

The award for the first building age map of 2020 goes to CBC News. Montreal is 375 years old this year and to help celebrate the occasion CBC has released the Montreal Building Age map. On this map Montreal's buildings are colored to show their year of construction.

The Montreal Building Age map is a great way to explore the history of Montreal's development. If you are interested in seeing which neighborhoods have the oldest buildings then you can use the map legend to filter the buildings shown on the map by age. This means it is possible to find the oldest buildings in Montreal by simply selecting the 1600-1800 filter. If you interested in learning more about some of the city's oldest buildings then you simply need to scroll down in the map side-panel. After the map's short introduction there is a tour of around 30 of the city's most interesting buildings. As well as highlighting some of the city's oldest buildings this tour also explores some of the city's most architecturally interesting buildings.

Here are a few other building age maps for cities around the world:

• Atlanta
• Barcelona
• Berlin
• Brooklyn
• Chicago, Chicago
• Detroit
• Edmonton
• Indianapolis
• Ljubljana (Slovenia)
• Los Angeles
• Milwaukee
• Moscow
• Netherlands, all of the Netherlands - again
• New York
• Paris
• Portland
• Reykjavík
• San Francisco
• St. Louis
• Vancouver

Your 2080 Weather Forecast

If you want to know what kind of weather you can expect as a result of climate change then this map can help you. What Will the Climate Feel Like in 60 Years is a new interactive map which can tell you which present day city has a climate most similar to the climate your city can expect in 2080.

Select a U.S. city and a line will be drawn on the map to the city which currently has a climate most similar to the climate your city can expect in 60 years time. The map will also tell you the average summer temperature in your future climate twin and how much hotter and drier that is than your current average weather.

What Will the Climate Feel Like in 60 Years uses 27 different climate models to predict the future climate for US cities. By default the map draws a line to show the city with the best fit to the average of the 27 different climate models. However you can change the map so that you can see 27 lines from your selected city to the 27 cities chosen by all the different climate models. The map also includes an option to view a climate similarity map. This draws a polygon on the map showing a larger area of the USA which currently experiences the sort of climate you can expect in 2080.



If you don't live in the USA then you can use Climate Central's map to find your future global warming city twin. Climate Central's Shifting Cities 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 by 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.



In the year 2080 London will experience weather which resembles the climate in Lima today. Frankfurt in Germany will be as hot as Malawi and living in Berlin will be like living in Lesotho in southern Africa.

You can also 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 the 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 in your town in the year 2080. The map uses two different climate models. This allows you to find your climate twin for a global warming scenario of 4.2 degrees or 1.8 degrees.

Small Multiples of Global Heating

Small multiple maps of global heating seem to have taken over from climate stripes as the most popular way to visualize global heating. Climate stripes are a very effective way to visualize how average temperatures have increased over time. The more recent multiple maps visualizations of average annual temperatures work in exactly the same way, showing how annual average temperatures are increasing as a result of global heating, except they substitute maps for stripes.

Multiple map visualizations of global heating have a couple of advantages over climate stripes. The maps themselves are obviously a clear indicator of the location whose average temperatures are being visualized. Multiple map visualizations of global heating (unlike climate stripes) also include the year for each map. This means it is much easier to tell which years have seen warmer or colder annual average temperatures on multiple map visualizations of annual average temperatures than on a climate stripes visualization of the same data.

In December Zeit released Too Warm Here, a tool which allows you to generate the climate stripes for any German town. Zeit's Too Warm Here also included a small multiple maps visualization of how temperatures have changed in the whole of Germany over the last 137 years.



In this small multiple maps visualization a small map of Germany is colored for every year since 1881 to show the average annual temperature for that year. The map visualizes very clearly how in the last 22 years Germany has experienced temperatures which are far hotter than the average annual temperatures.



Inspired by Zeit's small multiple map visualization of climate change in Germany I decided to create a similar visualization of annual average temperatures in the UK. My UK Warming Maps colors 50 small maps of the UK, to show the average temperature for each successive year from 1969-2018, using data from the UK Met Office.

50 years isn't quite long enough to clearly see the pattern of rising temperatures in the UK. However I think you can still on this small multiple map visualization how the UK has been witnessing hotter than average annual average temperatures on a far more frequent basis in recent years.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology has now created their own small multiple map visualization of 110 years of Australian temperatures. This visualization uses 110 small maps of Australia, each one colored to show the average annual temperatures for the mapped year, to show the anomaly of mean temperature for each calendar year, compared to the average for the period of 1961–1990.

The record breaking temperatures experienced by Australia in recent years has been used to help explain the devastating bushfires that have been burning for the last few months in Australia. Another reason why the fires have burnt so extensively and for so long is because of the exceptionally dry weather that Australia has been experiencing.



The Bureau of Meteorology has created another small multiple map visualization which shows just how dry 2019 was. 120 years of Australian rainfall visualizes the decile rank of rainfall for each calendar year. In this visualization 2019 clearly stands out for its remarkable lack of rain compared to every over year in the last 110 years.

How Big Are the Australian Bushfires?

It is very difficult to appreciate the devastating scale of the wild fires which have been raging across Australia over the last few months. In an attempt to help visualize the size of the bushfires there have been a number of misleading maps published on the internet.

However not all the published maps have been misleading. Both the Berliner Morgenpost and the Guardian have created interactive maps which show you the scale of the Australian fires by comparing the area burnt with any location on Earth.

How big is the burned area in Australia - compared to your region, by the Morgenpost, uses a yellow circle to represent the 10 million hectares of Australia which have been laid waste by the bushfires. You can enter any location in the world to see the circle in comparison to towns and cities which you are familiar with. You can also drag the circle around on the interactive map.

The Guardian's How big are the fires burning in eastern Australia? is a very similar map. On this map the fires are represented by a large square. When the Guardian first published this map at the beginning of December it used a 2.2m hectare sized square to show the size of the bushfires which have been burning in Australia. Since December the Guardian has had to update the size of this square more than once. The square now represents a size of 10.7 million hectares.

Population Change in America

Population growth in the United States continues to fall. According to the Census Bureau since Census Day (April 1) 2010, the population of the U.S. has grown by 21,476,884 or 6.96%. However in 2019 in forty-two states (and the District of Columbia) there were fewer births than there were in 2018. Only eight states saw a birth increase last year. The falling birth rate and increasing number of deaths means that although the population has grown there has also been a decline in 'natural increase' (or births minus deaths) over the last decade.

You can explore population change over the last ten years across the whole of the United States on this Population Change interactive map. The map visualizes where the population has grown and fallen over the last decade at the zip-code level. The map uses census data to show which neighborhoods have seen the biggest increase in population and which have seen a drop in population.

When zoomed out on the map you can tell that Texas and Florida in particular are two states which have seen high levels of population growth over the last ten years. However, if you zoom in on the map, you can explore population change at a far more local level. The map sidebar provides a number of quick links to zoom the map to a number of cities which have seen interesting developments in population over the last 20 years.

You can explore the map in even more detail by zooming in on zip-code areas. Click on a zip-code area on the map and you can view the local population in 2010 and 2019 and the percentage by which the population changed over this period.

Deforestation Along the BR-163

The BR-163 is a 4,476 km long road which runs through the Amazon rainforest. Like a lot of infrastructure in the Amazon its very existence has led to accelerated deforestation in the areas it passes through. Along the BR-163 is an investigation into the effects of the BR-163 road on the Amazonian rainforest. Along the BR-163 uses satellite imagery to follow the route of the road from the Amazon River to Tenente Portela, in the south of Brazil. On this virtual journey we are shown how the road encourages urbanization, agriculture and mining. All at the expense of the Amazon rainforest.

The BR-163 starts in Santarém on the Amazon River. In 2003, the American food giant Cargill completed the construction of a terminal at the port of Santarém. This terminal was then enlarged in 2015. Millions of tonnes of corn and soybeans arrive at the port using the BR-163 each year. In 2004 the BR-163 was paved, which led to more traffic and the development of many more secondary roads.

Hand in hand with the development of these secondary roads has been the emergence of large farms along the BR-163 and accelerated deforestation. Even in protected areas along the roads trees have been chopped down and huge farms have built. As you progress through BR-163 you can see this deforestation for yourself in the clear 'fish bone' patterns the tree clearance has left either side of the highway.

Along the BR-163 concludes with an examination of the pace of deforestation in the Amazon. Up to around 2012 the scale of deforestation had been slowing in the 21st Century. Since 2012 the scale of deforestation has once again begun to rise. While the controversial Jair Bolsonaro remains president of Brazil the future doesn't look good for the rainforests of the Amazon.

The World's Busiest Space Ports

The Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia is the world's busiest active spaceport. Since 1957 it has launched 1,577 rockets into space. By comparison Cape Canaveral has had 873 launches in the same period.

Aerospace Security's Spaceports of the World interactive map visualizes the history of the space race around the world since the 1950s. The map reveals the cumulative launches of rockets into space from each spaceport from 1957 to 2018. On the map individual spaceports are represented by scaled circular markers. The size of these circular markers indicate the cumulative number of launches from the spaceport. Spaceports which have been used for launching humans into space have a blue outline.

If you click on an individual spaceport on the map you can learn more about the orbital destinations of launches from that spaceport and details about the inclination for each launch’s primary payload.

How to Avoid Cars in Cities

If you've ever explored your local air pollution map then you already know that the major cause of air pollution in most towns and cities is the automobile. Which means that if you want to avoid air pollution then the first thing you should do is avoid roads. Unfortunately that is often less easy than it sounds.

If you live in Brussels you can use Hans Hack's new Retreats from Streets interactive map. This interactive map uses circular markers to show the point in every neighborhood which is furthest from a road. The larger the circle on the map then the furthest its center is from any road traffic. Therefore the largest circles on the map show the areas which are furthest from any road traffic.

You can learn more about how the furthest points from roads was calculated and how to make your own Retreat from Streets map on GitHub.


Berlin is the second city that Hans Hack has mapped. His original Retreats Away From Berlin's Streets interactive map visualizes the areas which are the furthest away from road traffic in the German capital. Using this map you can view the point in every Berlin city block which is furthest away from a road used by cars.

The Berlin map includes three views. If you select 'All' you can view all the car free retreats for every city block. Alternatively you can choose to just view the 'Top 30' retreats, the thirty locations in Berlin which are the furthest from car traffic. The 'Top Neighborhoods' view shows you the location in every Berlin district which is furthest away from traffic.

Real-Time Trains on the New York Subway

The Weekendest is a relatively new interactive map of the New York subway network. The map provides up to the minute information on arrival times, planned service changes and train routing on the MTA.

The Weekendest is designed to provide a real-time overview of service on the whole New York subway network. If you click on any of the subway lines on the interactive map you can find out the current status of service on the line. If you click on a station on the map you can view the subway lines that serve it and the next arrival times of the currently scheduled trains.



LiveTrain NYC is another real-time map of the MTA subway. This map also shows the MTA trains moving in real-time based on the trip updates provided by the MTA.

The map uses the MTA's GTFS real-time feed of schedule updates to estimate the position of the trains on the network. If you select a train's marker on the map you can view its full scheduled timetable, showing when the train is expected to arrive at each station on its route.

The trains shown on the map can be filtered by route. It is also possible to click on the station markers to view all the current scheduled departures from that stop.