The HTC 2020 map is an interactive map of hard-to-count communities built for campaigns to increase participation in the United States’s 2020 census. Hard-to-count communities are populations that historically have a poor self-response rate: they return their census forms online or by mail at lower rates, requiring followup interviews by enumerators. The map shows response rates by census tract, and notes the demographics of each tract in terms of why the response rates might be low: lack of Internet access, or large numbers of people who are historically undercounted (poor, rural, people of colour). [NYPL]
Category: Human Geography
Using Street View to Spot Gentrification
CBC News: “A group of researchers at the University of Ottawa is using Google Street View to spot instances of gentrification in the city’s neighbourhoods. […] The program looks for patterns of improvements on individual properties, such as new fences, landscaping, siding or significant renovations.” Honestly not something for which I expected Street View to have a use.
Mapping Society
Laura Vaughan’s Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions of Social Cartography (UCL Press, 3 September) “traces the evolution of social cartography over the past two centuries. In this richly illustrated book, Laura Vaughan examines maps of ethnic or religious difference, poverty, and health inequalities, demonstrating how they not only serve as historical records of social enquiry, but also constitute inscriptions of social patterns that have been etched deeply on the surface of cities.” Available in the U.K. in hardcover (£45) or paperback (£25), but you can also download the PDF for free: the book is published under a Creative Commons licence.
Diagrams of Power
Diagrams of Power, a group exhibition taking place right now at OCAD University’s Onsite Gallery in Toronto, “showcases art and design works using data, diagrams, maps and visualizations as ways of challenging dominant narratives and supporting the resilience of marginalized communities.” Curated by Patricio Dávila, it runs until 29 September. Free admission.
Update: The above is lacking in some detail; here’s the Toronto Star review to make up for it.
Mapping the Post-Hurricane Maria Migration
Puerto Ricans, as U.S. citizens, are able to travel freely between Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland. In the wake of Hurricane Maria, many of them sought refuge in Florida, New York and other parts of the U.S. Using anonymized cell phone location data for some 500,000 smart phones, data analysis firm Teralytics was able to map where Puerto Ricans moved from August 2017 to February 2018. CityLab has the maps and the story: “Between these months, nearly 6 percent of the Puerto Rican population left the island and is still living in the continental U.S. Another 6 percent left between October and September 2017 but returned to the island by February 2018.”
Comparing Cartograms
Datawrapper has added population cartograms to its map collections, and in its blog post discusses the advantages and disadvantages of cartograms vs. geographical maps, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of some of the different types of cartograms. Turns out that cartograms are kind of like map projections: each has its pros and cons; each is better suited to some uses than to others. [Caitlin Dempsey]
Dot Density Maps of Belgium
Maarten Lambrechts discusses how to make a dot density population map, in technical detail. He uses QGIS to process data for his home country of Belgium. The map above is one result (he also zoomed in on Brussels).
Estimating Population
NASA’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) has produced a population estimation service “for estimating population totals and related statistics within a user-defined region.” Basically, it provides a population estimate for an area drawn on a map. Available as data via map and GIS clients, it’s also accessible via a web app. I’ve noodled about with it; its population estimates are generally not insane. [Kottke]
Fast Food vs. Schools in London
One of the proposals in the new draft London Plan is to prohibit new fast food establishments within 400 metres of an existing school as a means of combatting childhood obesity.1 This is going over about as well as you’d think. Dan Cookson has mapped the locations of London’s fast food establishments and the 400-metre exclusion zones around each school; his map suggests a problem: there would be few places in the city able to host a new fast food joint.
Related, via Maps Mania: the Guardian’s interactive map of fast food shops in England.
An Interactive Map of Canadian Incomes
It’s in French, and the accompanying text is weighted toward Quebec examples, but Le Devoir’s interactive map showing neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood median income levels, based on recent census data, and how they relate to the national average is worth looking at even so. [Nathaniel Kelso]
More New Map Books for October 2017
It’s an even busier month than I thought for map book publishing. In addition to the eight books I told you about earlier this month, plus the two new editions of the Times Mini and Reference atlases, here are three more map-related books that were published this month:
- Atlas of Nebraska by J. Clark Archer et al. (Bison Books). “Far more than simply the geography of Nebraska, this atlas explores a myriad of subjects from Native Americans to settlement patterns, agricultural ventures to employment, and voting records to crime rates.” [Amazon]
- Bermuda Maps by Jonathan Land Evans (National Museum of Bermuda Press), a look at Bermuda’s cartographic history back to the 1600s. Available directly from the National Museum of Bermuda; I’m not sure where to get it off-island.
- Explorer’s Atlas: For the Incurably Curious by Piotr Wilkowiecki and Michał Gaszyński (HarperCollins UK). Illustrated large-format book full of factoids. There’s an accompanying wall map. Published in the U.K.; available elsewhere through resellers. [Amazon UK]
Previously: New Map Books for October 2017; New Editions of Two Smaller Times Atlases (One Very Small Indeed).
Update (30 Oct.): Jonathan Land Evans writes with information on overseas orders for his book, Bermuda Maps: “The most direct way by which people overseas may order copies is by e-mailing bookmart@psl.bm, as the museum now uses The Bookmart bookstore in Bermuda for all order-fulfillment involving shipping to addresses outside Bermuda. The hardback book is a large one, handsomely illustrated in colour, and costs $65 plus postage.”
‘Counter-Mapping’ the Amazon
The Conversation has a piece on how indigenous peoples in the Amazon are using “counter-mapping” to reclaim not only their ancestral lands, but as a way to counter the colonial process of mapmaking itself.
Maps have always been part of the imposition of power over colonised peoples. While map-making might be thought of as “objective”, it is fundamentally political, a necessary part of controlling a territory. Maps inscribe borders, which are then used to include some and exclude others.
During a late 19th-century rubber boom, Amazonia became increasingly well mapped out as the young nations of Peru, Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia vied for territorial control. The rights and interests of Amazonian peoples were never included in this process and they would be continually denied rights, recognition and citizenship from these nations until the 1980s and 1990s. Even following legal recognition, their territorial rights—critical for their continued existence—are still often ignored in practice.
These marginalised people are now working together to reclaim the process of mapping itself. In the central Brazilian Amazon there has been a recent flurry of “counter-mapping”, used by forest peoples to contest the very state maps that initially failed to recognise their ancestral territorial rights.
[via]
Boston Immigration Map Exhibition
Along with Regions and Seasons (previously), the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center is hosting another exhibition, Who We Are: Boston Immigration Then and Now, which runs until 26 August. “This exhibition compares the landscape of today’s ‘new’ Boston with that of over 100 years ago. The maps and graphics on display here show where Boston’s foreign-born residents originate from, and where newer immigrant groups have settled, while celebrating who we are, and the vibrant diversity that is Boston.” Text is in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, Chinese and Vietnamese.
Mapping Canadian Census Data
Statistics Canada released population and dwelling data from the 2016 Census yesterday. MountainMath’s CensusMapper project already has interactive maps based on that data: population change since 2011 (absolute and percentage), population density, and unoccupied dwellings—with presumably more to come, since the interface allows you to make your own census-derived maps.
Danny Dorling’s TEDx Talk
Oxford geography professor Danny Dorling spoke at the TEDx Exeter conference in April 2016. If you’re familiar with Dorling’s work, it will come as no surprise that he makes extensive use of cartograms to describe the world’s population. Video: TED, YouTube.
Previously: Hennig and Dorling on ‘Seven New Maps of the World’; People and Places.