Map Hawk

The New York Times has created an interactive map showing the gains or losses in subway ridership over the past year. The maps shows a graduated symbol on each subway stop and provides a tool tip indicating the stop, the increase or decrease in ridership and the number of average daily riders. Most striking, as pointed out in the article, is how you can map the areas hit hardest by the economic recession. It should serve as an invaluable tool for the NYC transportation authority as well as urban planners. But, unfortunately, it displays the tragic effects of a job losses and the potential impact upon the individual local economy around each subway stop.

The Telegraph has developed a unique thematic map that displays the political landscape for the upcoming general election in the UK. Each constituency is displayed as a single hexagon and color-coded according to the predominant party results from the 2005 election. It is an unusual way of thematically mapping political tendencies since it totally removes any inherent political and geographic boundaries that might otherwise confine an interpretation of the spatial underpinnings. Selecting any single hexagon will review the voting results as well as some selective stats on crime, health and education.

MSNBC has created an " Adversity Index " map of 381 metro areas in the U. S. In conjunction with Moody's.com , the maps displays a thematic map of whether a state is either in "recession," "at risk," "recovery," or "expansion." By clicking on each state a table will be displayed showing the largest metros and the economic indicators for each such as "employment," "single family housing starts," "housing prices," and "industrial production." Hover the mouse over each state and it will show you the aggregate indicators for each. The map also has a slider bar that will allow you to move along a time line from 1995 to present to thematically display the conditions at any particular time. This is an extremely good representation of the data that is highly useful to any company looking at moving into or expanding existing operations in any given region.

Forbes published (March 30 issue) a map depicting the loss of wealth among the world's billionaires. The thematic map shows the total losses among all billionaires in each country. The online map is a little hard to read so Forbes provided an interactive "magnifying glass" to see the results of each country. As interesting is the number of countries without millionaires and to see which countries did not suffer to many losses. Bill Gates remains the richest man in the world even though his net worth dropped $18 Billion!

I want to be fair to the Wall Street Journal but sometimes I'm just left scratching my head. In an article in today's WSJ, a thematic map of the median household income in and around the Chicago area was used to show the high income areas affected by the routing of a freight rail line. Canadian National Railway purchased a suburban rail line that they wanted to use for freight to bypass the congested lines through downtown Chicago. In fairness, I think the map enhanced the story. The problem was that you just could not read it. Once again, a shaded gray thematic doesn't really work for a print newspaper. Though the WSJ limited the gray tones to only four, the tones were too faded. And it took me almost five minutes to actually see that the rail line was overlayed on the map itself. It was not noted in the legend and I can only assume that they thought it was obvious. It was not. Now, unless you are faily familiar with thematic maps and you can discern spatial patterns, th

One of the lead stories today in the New York Times discusses the demographic diversity of New York City in recent times. A thematic map of the five New York boroughs divided by ZIP code provides some details on median rent and median income between 2000 and 2007. The newspaper reports that a three year study confirms what some have suggested anecdotally about the changes in income, ethnicity, and poverty. For example, there was a decline by 17% of those who did not speak English in the home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn indicating a gentrification of the area that is heavily Hispanic and Asian. While the proportion of foreign born citizens remains the same, the proportion who are now American citizens passed the 50% level. The American Community Survey was the source for some of the data.

Perhaps its my 50-year old eyes but it drives me crazy when I see a newspaper, especially one as reputable as the Wall Street Journal, publish a map that is barely legible. Page A12 today of the WSJ has a map of Indonesia showing the distribution of the predominant religions as a color-coded thematic. Now given that many of the Indonesian Islands are barely spits of land to begin with, a map thereof with various denominations confined to areas no bigger than a postal code is particularly straining to the eyes. The use of color themes was fine but the map was TOO SMALL. I'm squinting to see where each faith group was located. And in some area, the color bled into another area. Either make the map bigger or point the reader to an online version where the reader can zoom into these smaller areas.