maps – Page 54 – Coffee Spoons

Old Healthcare Policy Renewal

Let’s start this week off with cartograms. Sometimes I like the idea, sometimes not so much. Here is a case where I really do not care for the New York Times’ visualisation of the data. Probably because the two cartograms, a before and after of health policy renewals, do not really allow for a great side-by-side comparison. I imagine there is probably a way of condensing all of that information into a single chart or graphic component.

Credit for the piece goes to Keith Collins, Josh Katz, Katie Thomas, Archie Tse, and Karen Yourish.

Cancelling the Cincinnati Streetcar Project

So Cincinnati was going to have a streetcar. Now it won’t because the recently elected mayor, John Cranley, campaigned on killing the streetcar. I won’t get into the whys and the why nots mostly because I’m not from Cincinnati and others can do it better. Suffice it to say that costs and budget battles played a part. Yesterday the city council opted to pause the project. This will likely suspend federal grant payments, meaning contractors don’t get paid, which means the city faces lawsuits for being in breach of contract, which potentially means the city spends almost as much money cancelling the project as they would completing it.

Ordinarily I would post something from a local newspaper or media outlet covering the story. But today I have the pleasure of sharing some work that my former professor made. His infographic explores the fiscal details of the streetcar project and how much Cincinnati owes if they opt to cancel it in the end.

Funding the Cincinnati Streetcar project

Credit for the piece goes to Giacomo Ciminello. You can download the original here. And you can visit his site here.

Speeding on Chicago’s Tollways

The Illinois Tollways will be raising speed limits starting 1 January. Part of that process includes researching current driving habits and patterns. This graphic by the Chicago Tribune looks at some of the results. While the map part is necessary to show the routes themselves and the limits on those routes, the more interesting part is the dot plot below.

Credit for the piece goes to the Chicago Tribune’s graphic department.

The Tallest of the Tall (in Los Angeles)

I have always had an interest in architecture. And so this piece from the Los Angeles Times is just because I like to indulge myself every so often, a look at the five tallest buildings in Los Angeles.

Credit for the piece goes to Scott J. Wilson, Matt Moody, and Anthony Pesce.

Internet Explorer in South Korea

The Washington Post had an interesting story on how, in South Korea, Internet Explorer dominates the internet. I won’t spoil the story, it is kind of fascinating and worth a short read, but the accompanying graphics show just how dominant the browser has been in a leading technology country in Asia.

Credit for the piece goes to Richard Johnson.

The Origin of Beer

Today’s post comes via Business Insider. They linked to work by reddit user sp07 who mapped out words used for common objects across Europe and then looked at those words by their origin. But of all words, this is probably the most important.

Credit for the piece goes to sp07.

The Sinking of the Bounty

This time last year, the Northeast began to pick up what was left from Hurricane Sandy. There was a lot of rain, a lot of wind, flooding, and electrical outages. But not all the damage was ashore. In an excellent long-form narrative piece, the Tampa Bay Times covered the story of the Bounty, a functional replica of HMS Bounty from that famous story of a mutiny. This Bounty was used in the 1960s movie and had sailed ever since until it sank off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

The piece doesn’t makes use of some charts and graphics to explain positioning and familiarise the reader with terminology. It’s a fascinating though ultimately tragic story. And like so many of these long-form pieces, the credit list is extensive.

Credit for the piece goes to Michael Kruse, Don Morris, Maurice Rivenbark, Carolyn Edds, Caryn Baird, Barbara Moch, Mike D’Andrea, Bill Duryea, Alexis N. Sanchez, and Lee Glynn.

Haiyan’s Destruction in Tacloban

On 8 November, Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in the Philippines, killing what may well be 10,000 people. The New York Times covered much of the damage in Tacloban, perhaps the hardest hit city, in this interactive graphic.

Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.

Banksy Works in New York

The English artist Banksy has been in New York the past month. Consequently, the interest in his work prompted the New York Times to map the works across the city.

Credit for the piece goes to the New York Times graphics department.

Scale of Syria’s Refugees

So that civil war in Syria thing, yeah, it’s still going on, folks. And lots of people—7,000,000 of them—have been forced to flee to either external or internal locations. Al Jazeera has attempted to put that number into context for Americans using US census data and maps.

Here is a look at both Philadelphia and Chicago for comparison’s sake. The interactive application has a few pre-selected options, or you can find your own US locale.

Syrian refugees based on Philadelphia's population — Syrian refugees based on Philadelphia’s population

Syrian refugees based on Chicago's population — Syrian refugees based on Chicago’s population

Credit for the piece goes to Michael Keller.