Alternative mapLand
:: Tendermaps / Loveland / Mapping America & the United States of Autocomplete
Maps - the purest and most graspable form of data visualisation. So in the quest to make information comprehensible it makes a lot of sense to start with geo-space that we all understand intuitively. Here are four wonderful mapping projects that look to illuminate our world in a different light.
NYT : Mapping America with the US Census Bureau
http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer
This really brings to life US census data relating to ethnicity and racial groups and in it's own way tells particular stories that will no doubt become more interesting with some time-lines.
Browse local data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, based on samples from 2005 to 2009. Because these figures are based on samples, they are subject to a margin of error, particularly in places with a low population, and are best regarded as estimates.
Tendermaps.com
http://tendermaps.com/
This is a sweet project from the Great Urban Hack event working with local people in the Tenderloin to create personal maps which can then be overlaid in transparencies on the original map - or as they say "an exercise in informal community-based cartography".
Loveland
http://makeloveland.com/about
This is a project that seems hard to grasp because it's typical of not-for-profit third-world micro-grant schemes one might expect to see in Mozambique... except it's for Detroit. The one in America. Seriously. This amazing, and rather fun social enterprise is selling plots of land by the inch to raise money for social investment in the area (albeit in a typically high-tech way and with a gorgeously geeky vision). Personally I think it's extraordinary to imagine that this could happen... unless you also happened to see this amazing photo essay today: Detroit in Ruins
United States of Autocomplete
http://www.verysmallarray.com/?p=1056
Love it. This is just faintly surreal map. No data just weird tangential trending search results connected with States.
Particularly love Montana Fishburne
