Grab Bag

Here's a bunch of random maps. They won't "change the way you see the world" like so many other clickbait-y sites claim. They're just kind of interesting, or pretty, or something. Click on the map for the original source and higher resolution.

Meat Production on Ranches - via Pearson Education though I lost the link.

Tasmania's cartographic revenge - via Reddit

WestJet Destinations, 2000 featuring a Canada without Montreal or Toronto.

Proposed development of Toronto's industrial waterfront, 1910

- via Toronto Public Library

Saloons, free theatre and "houses of ill fame" in Buffalo, 1893. If you're looking for this neighborhood, it's basically been torn down and replaced with expressways. Easy access from the Children's museum though.

Geo-Eye (Mount Inasa), 2015 by Takahiro Iwasaki carved on a roll of vinyl electrical tape. Iwasaki is a Hiroshima-based artist. Mount Inasa is in Nagasaki.

Where Europe and Asia would fit in North America climate-wise - via askthebirds

Tourism map - where to see whales, seabirds and icebergs in Newfoundland And Labrador - issuu.

Whales and dolphins in Costa Rica - via Enter Costa Rica

Extermination of the American Bison

Artist David Buckley Borden created this wonderful, sad map showing the demise of the bison.

Borden adds many clever touches to his maps including the downward facing buffalo head.

The map is based on conservationist William Hornaday's 1889 map that showed the declining range of the bison throughout North America. Hornaday is credited with preserving the bison from extinction. The present day (2003) tiny distribution of bison herds is shown in the tiny upside down* map in the bottom right corner.

Hornaday's original map is also quite striking.

 Here is a detail-you can click on the map above for a full, zoomable version.

*The upside down map is a theme of Borden's. Here is a detail of his Ecological Distress Hydroscape Map. I like the clever use of arrows to indicate distress points-including the City of Ecological Sin.

In Borden's words:

No disrespect should be shown to the map of the United States of America; the map should never be displayed with the Great Lakes down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life, property or landscape.

More of his maps can be seen on this page.

More Mario Zucca Illustrations

Self-made thousandaire (his own words) Mario Zucca, creator of the National Parks map also has a series of great city maps, including Kansas City,

Buffalo,

and Cleveland (University Circle Area).

There are also maps of Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Atlantic City, Minneapolis and a map of Denver's bicycle loop - see the portfolio on his web page for these.

The Philly Island Map shows the"Strait of Disinterest" that exists between the city and the rest of Pennsylvania-a popular sentiment among Philly folks.

Misleading Buffalo Snow Maps

As we prepare to spend Thanksgiving with my wife's family in western New York, here are some maps of what we could be in for. This one, posted on Flowing Data a few years ago does a nice job of showing the lake effect snowbelt south of Buffalo. But there are problems...

Green implies that the rest of the area including Buffalo (inside the dashed box) is not so bad. However, a look at the legend shows that green is up to 80 inches a year and the yellow that appears in many of the suburbs is 90-100 inches. Chautauqua County people may consider 80 inches to be minor but for the rest of us this color choice is terribly misleading.

The map also may need an update as parts of the region are getting half their average this week.

 Be "4 Warned" - this is another misleading map. How much snow will we see in Rochester? Apparently nothing even though family members tell us otherwise. The dropoff from 18-24" to nothing at the Livingston-Wyoming county line is remarkable as is the sudden lack of snow in Erie County, Pennsylvania. No data and no snow are not the same thing so don't treat them the same.

Megabust

For decades there's been a trend of locating airports increasingly further from the cities they serve. Buffalo has embraced this trend in unprecedented fashion according to Megabus Canada. Their airport is so far away its practically in Syracuse, almost 150 miles away!

OK - the map is a schematic and many of the other locations are inaccurate to add clarity but this is pretty bad!

The War of 1812 Board Game

A good way to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 is by playing the board game.
This is the map board

From the Columbia Games Web Page:

War of 1812 is an elegant strategy wargame depicting the Anglo-American struggle to control the Great Lakes and Canada.
War of 1812 sets up in five minutes and plays in 1-2 hours. This classic game has been enjoyed by thousands of gamers for over 30 years.
Unit types in this edition include artillery, cavalry, infantry, and navies. The map board is unchanged from previous editions.

This page also has a good summary of the war, mostly a listing of failed campaigns by both sides and the partial destruction of cities such as Buffalo, Toronto and Washington. The game strategy much like the war's is to concentrate your forces on one or two of the four Great Lakes fronts (Detroit, Niagara, Kingston and Lake Champlain) and attack early (in 1812-13) before the Napoleonic wars abroad wind down and the British forces receive major reinforcements. If you play the British side, try to hold out in a defensive posture until those extra forces arrive.

Here are some close up images from the board. The first one highlights Sacket's Harbor, New York where American naval forces were concentrated and where two attacks by the British were successfully repulsed.

Here is the western frontier where the war began with American forces crossing the Detroit River and invading Canada. British forces responded by driving them back and then surrounding Detroit.

These are the labels you stick on the wooden blocks to indicate who is where.

In the long run nothing really changed. Both Americans and Canadians decided that they were victorious. In the game version whoever can control the lakes and/or Quebec can rewrite history.

Map of the Week-Census Preview

Last week the New York Times put out this nice interactive map showing some of the latest data released from the Census Bureau. The dot maps are the most interesting. They nicely illustrate patterns of race:

and income:

The entire country is covered so you can zoom, pan or choose a location. If you zoom too far in you lose the patterns a bit and also get some misleading information because each dot represents multiple people, not individual households.

 To really see the patterns of segregation, zoom out.

Here's a larger city with a more diverse breakdown.

The income map reveals the inner city income holes that are prevalent in older cities like Baltimore, but less so in Washington D.C. where there is much more inner city wealth.

If you zoom out a ways the dots seem to follow county boundaries. Zooming in arranges them in a more realistic pattern. I'm not sure what algorithm produces that result.

Happy Holidays and may your next year be filled with new census maps!