Hello,
I have resumed blogging, but in a new space.
You can find me here:
My new spot’s focus is tighter — on Maps, Data, and Geo Info. And it’s more of a scrapbook than a column.
Happy Surfing, Happy Reading, and Happy Pretty-Picture Gazing.
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OK, here are the maps that work:
This map shows change in parcel size over time.
This map shows increase of seasonal and year-round properties over time. (Light blue = year-round properties. Dark blue = seasonal.)
See the previous post for instructions on how to use the maps.
Remember to be patient and allow lots of time for the animations to load. (And push the slider all the way to “faster.”) Then, the best way to interact with the timeline may be to slide the slider back and forth yourself, instead of watching it play through.
I also have an alternative way of interacting with these planned. Please stay tuned.
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WARNING 8/2/10 – 7 AM: The link to the map (below) is broken. I’ve written to the folks at GeoCommons and will get this fixed asap. Thanks for your patience.
In response to feedback you’ve provided, gentle readers, along with feedback I’ve received from people as I’ve sat showing them my interactive GeoCommons maps, I’ve made some adjustments.
Check out a new map here.
When the map opens, you’ll see dark blue squares that represent all the parcels with buildings on them in 1970. The larger the square, the larger the size of the parcel the building sits on.
To see all the parcels with buildings on them in 2008, click the eye icon on the “All Parcels, 2007″ Layer. You’ll see light blue squares that represent parcels new since 1970.
To see the animation, click the clock icon as described before. On the timeline, be sure to move the slider to “faster,” and press the play button.
Also as before, you can turn on or off the layers that show ownership of large tracts of land by New York State/The Nature Conservancy, working timber companies, and by timber investment management organizations (TIMOs). The default mode for these is now “off,” to cut down on visual confusion. But you can easily turn them on my clicking on their eye icons.
Also easier to use should be the interactivity with individual properties. Click on any square, and you should immediately see the acreage of the parcel, the owner’s name and address, and assessment information.
Please try it and let me know what you think. Are the colors, symbology, and layers more or less easy to understand? What else do you wish you could do?
Finally, some of you commented that there wasn’t enough context here for a person not familiar with the region to understand what’s going on, or what the significance is of what you’re seeing. In my next post, I will post some of the significant conclusions I’ve drawn from this information. In the meantime, know that my primary goal for this project is to create a tool for use by people who do live and work in this region, so a certain amount of context is assumed for the average user.
Thanks so much for your feedback!
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I’ve drafted a map with the same title as this blog post.
You need to leave my site to see it because WordPress-hosted blogs don’t allow Java/Flash embeds except from certain companies that have agreements with. That list of certain companies does not include GeoCommons, which I used to make the map, and which I’ve recently, tentatively, fallen in love with.
My new love adores talking about demography and places. He remembers every piece of geographic information anyone ever tells him and then makes it available for free to anyone who wants it. He fetches any Google, Yahoo, or Bing or any kind of other background imagery I want for my map so that I can avoid the tediousness of downloading big satellite files from the National Atlas. He has an army of staff who answer my many questions, any time, by email. He makes it easy to symbolize data and make maps “pretty.” We’ll see if the love affair lasts.
I was about to say I can’t think of anything bad to say about him, but there is one thing — he’s not that flexible about providing interpretive information on the maps we make together — things like legends and labels. I guess he just feels that if people know him and love him, they should just understand, and he shouldn’t have to explain. Well, OK. I can live with that. But nevertheless, here’s some explanatory information for the map. (Don’t tell him I told you.)
1.There are two animations you can watch. Both show the progression of buildings on new parcels over time, starting in 1970, and continuing to 2009. Size over Time shows the relative size of the parcels that the new buildings are on. Prop Class over Time shows Seasonal Properties as purple dots, and Year-Round Residences as orange dots.
2. To turn any layer on or off, click the eye icon on the layer list. To turn an animation on, click on the clock icon. When the timeline box pops up, move the slider all the way to the “faster” end of the spectrum. Beware — these particular animations take a long time to load due to some technical issues I haven’t solved yet. Once the animation has played all the way through, you can back up, replay, or start it over, without reloading all over again.
3. You can read more details about an property by clicking on it on the map. You can read the year labels on the timeline by clicking on those.
4. Because the parcels where development is happening are so small, it can be helpful to zoom in on a dense area during an animation to see what’s happening in more detail. Try Montague, for instance.
You can help me out if you offer feedback in the comments section. What was easy to understand/use? What takes longer to understand? Is there anything else you’d like to see?
The black lines are Northeasterners and Minnesotans rushing into Los Angeles. The red lines are all those Californians running out. To pretty much anywhere besides the Northeast.
Check out 1998 migration to/from your own county of interest here.
Forbes Magazine made the interactive map, using IRS change-of-address data.
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Sometimes the sun needs to shine into the things that are known and horded in the corridors of power. But sometimes we need to shine light into the grassroots and find out what’s going on there.
Or at least, that’s the philosophy of Ushahidi. Kenyan activists developed the software platform as way for people to share information about post-election violence in 2008. Ordinary observers could send a text message when they witnessed an incident, and the report could be automatically transformed into a point on a map, with the user’s annotations. Human rights groups and journalists could then use the map to follow the spread of violence, follow up on reports, and focus help where it might be needed. 45,000 people became users during the crisis.
Since then, founders of the project developed a customizable platform that could be adapted to various situations and places.
Here, violence in the DRC Congo in late 2008.
Al-Jazeera hosts a map of events in Gaza during intensification of attacks in January 2009. The larger dots represent more incidents. Click on the dot, and you get a list of annotations. Incidents can include those reported in the mainstream media as well as those reported by individuals.
Most active right now is the Haiti Crisis and Response map.
Here is a flyer for distribution around South Africa, encouraging people to report xenophobic attacks against non-South Africans.
A new feature here at AWIIP: Every other Tuesday, I’ll make note of an online spatial tool that provides access to some set of (usually public) spatial information. My aim is to create a compendium of sites that shed light on issues of public interest in creative and revealing ways.
We start with a map that is already a little old, but still relevant. First designed in2004, and fully revamped and updated for the 2008 Presidential election, Fundrace shows who gave how money to which presidential candidates, and where they live. Hosted by the Huffington Post and developed by a non-profit arts and technology think tank.
Search by address, city, or name of donor, or — fascinatingly — occupation or employer. HuffPo encourages you to search for names of celebrities or your upcoming dates, but of course, I’m more interested in spatial patterns.
Big Hazel's Hood: Parade of Donkeys, Protected from Elephants by the BQE
Some cities do show distinct spatial patterns in Red v. Blue. But most reliably, these maps show where the rich people live.
Usually in the Mountains
They also make a strong case for why continuous pan-able maps are crucial for this kind of application, and why more analysis should be available by MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area), rather than just city limits or zip code.
In Portland, Democratic contributions outnumber Republican contributions 6:1. But that doesn’t mean that the greater economic-social unit that is the Portland-Vancouver MSA is all majority blue.
Republicans line the shore in Vancouver, Washington
When you search by employer or occupation, be aware that the database is not standardized or corrected, so if you search for “U.S. Army,” for example, you should also include “Army,” “United States Army,” and probably “Armee,” for good measure.
Have you answered any interesting questions using Fundrace? Comment and let me know.
I don’t usually post things that are likely to be in lots of other places, but this map by Neil Freeman is just gorgeous. [via via.]
Behold, the new districts from which each pair of U.S. Senators is to be elected (in an alternate Fantasyland):
Each district contains around 5.6 million people.
All things considered, I think that Mr. Freeman did a fascinating, thought-provoking public service here, and the regions seem carefully and successfully grouped together on the basis regional interest. New York State has been carved up skillfully, which will always win points in my book. [Though California does make me cringe just a little. Those big east-west regions that span the Sierra's? More ham-handed than most the rest of the country.] Still, gorgeous.
I wouldn’t have guessed the region called “Pecos” contains 5.6 million.
I’m also rather fond of this piece of Neil Freeman’s: 50 States and 50 Metros.
I’m working on a map of Moscow for Buster to include in his dissertation. So I went digging through my dusty old collection of paper maps, looking for large-scale city plans to inspire me. Most of what I have in this category are freebies handed out to tourists — some are beautifully designed, some not as much. Comparing them, I did pick up a couple of tips which may be obvious to accomplished cartographers, but are helpful to me:
1. Bring attention to the network of streets by making them white against a lightly colored field.
From: “NYC Cycling Map”,by New York City Department of Transportation.
From “The Map,” Center City Charlotte North Carolina. Distributed by Charlotte Regional Partnership
2. There’s no substitute for red when you want to draw attention to landmarks.
From “Queens Art Map,” distributed by Queens Council on the Arts
I won’t post the not-so-greats, since I don’t feel like I’m in a position to be throwing stones, but if you’re interested in less-than-effective maps, check out Cartastrophe, owned by a blogger whom I hope begins to post more regularly.
Do you have any favorite city maps?
I grew up in this Congressional District. It has been been represented by a Republican Congressman for over 100 years.
Last night, that changed.
The unfolding saga of this race and campaign has been chronicled many other places. But here’s the basics:
- Local Republican bosses choose a local Republican stalwart — and longtime Assemblywoman for their party’s nominee for a special election. Her name is Dede Scozzafava, and when I was a reporter in NNY, she had a reputation for being one the nicer people in the regional political establishment. A well-liked, moderate straight-shooter.
- Locally, this should have meant another totally boring Congressional election. No suspense, just the usual — the Republican nominee wins by 60, 70, or 80 percent.
- But then the national right-wing tea-party gang decided to take it as a personal affront that someone somewhere in an out-of-the-way part of the country who supports equal marriage rights and legal abortion would dare to call herself a Republican.
It is shocking and saddening to me the pure hatred and vitriol poured out by national right-wingers against Scozzafava, and the local Party leaders who endorsed her. But their tactics worked. Money poured in for the previously marginal third-party Conservative candidate, Doug Hoffman. So did endorsements from Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, and the like. Soon, Scozzafava was running third, behind Hoffman and the Democratic nominee, Bill Owens. So Dede dropped out of the race last weekend, with just a few days til the election. National Republicans cheered and praised her for doing the right thing, by making way for Hoffma. Then she endorsed Owens.
(Here’s Jon Stewart’s treatment of the story thus far, including a shout-out to Plattsburgh. (Skip ahead to 5:21.))
This is the point at which the whole thing reached its climax of nuttiness.
This is a picture of Joe Biden shaking hands at the Northside Improvement League in Watertown. My mind boggles.
(Norm Johnston, Watertown Daily Times)
Pollsters and pundits mostly predicted Hoffman would win, possibly big. But they were wrong. There were a few local quirks that most pundits did not take into account. One, a lot of unions had backed Scozzafava. And with her gone, their went straight to the Democrat. (Unions backing the R? Only in NNY, where the R is married to the president of the district’s Central Trades Council.)
Two — yes, registered Republicans vastly outnumber Democrats in this district. But in NNY, the Democratic infrastructure is so atrophied that registering as anything but a Republican can disenfranchise you. Many local races (town supervisor, County legislator, highway superintendent, etc.) are decided in the Republican primary because there’s no Democratic challenger. If you’re not registered Republican, you just don’t get a vote at all. So some people register R even if their feelings on national issues are left of center.
And finally, there’s the “mood of the electorate.” Some national observers had painted this race as an Obama referendum because the district went blue for the president last year, while still giving its old Republican incumbent Congressman over 60% of the vote.
National observers, do not use NY-23 as a reflection of the national voter mood. I am pretty sure that the mood of the average NY-23 voter at the beginning of this campaign was, “Dede, sure — I always vote Republican. I mean, not last year, for president, because Bush was getting kind of crazy. In retrospect, I shouldn’t've trusted a man who doesn’t drink. Speaking of — I’m sorry to leave you standing there. Would you like a beer? We can go sit on the porch if you want. The leaves are nice this time of year.”
Then, after the wingers started up, that mood changed to, “Wha..? Dede’s a Fasco-Marxist? Why didn’t I know that?? This is troubling. Let’s have a beer on the porch and think about it.”
And finally, the mood settled, as it’s been known to do in the North Country from time to time, upon, “Who do these come-from-aways think they are, anyway? Let’s go out and spite them.”
And that’s the mood that brought us to a win for Democrat Bill Owens of NYS’s northernmost district.
As with everything else in this race, though, it’s a weird mixed bag. Bill Owens is not a progressive — he’s a blue-dog, and he’s actually to the right of Dede on some social issues. So this is a happy ending, but not an ecstatic one.
And speaking of wierd mixed bags…
What is going on in this picture? It comes from a slideshow at the Watertown Daily Times, that depicts the final day of the campaign, photo-essay style. This particular photo has no caption, and there’s no indication of whether these mild-looking people are supporters of Obama and Hilary Clinton, or if they want to see them decapitated.* Good old WDT. I love them, but they do sometimes lose their heads in the excitement of covering that rare NNY event of national interest.
On a final note, the fact that I now live in Brooklyn means that I didn’t get to participate in this historic North Country election. But hey, I did get to vote for Jimmy McMillan for mayor of NYC.
I think I came out ahead.
*(There’s also no indication of why North Country 15-t0-22-year-olds are so into Jimi Hendrix. My cousin’s kids have the exact same shirt. It’s like no one told them that he’s 70 and dead.)
