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Posts Tagged ‘Map’

Google foreclosure maps

09 Dec

Barry sez,
Google Maps keeps evolving, expanding the ability to drill down into granular detail. The latest updated trick? Mapping foreclosures for sale. This great and terrible Google trick has been around at least since 2008 -- but it seems to have become much more robust earlier this year:

1. Punch any US address into Google Maps.
2. Your options are Earth, Satellite, Map, Traffic and . . . More. (Select "More")
3. The drop down menu gives you a check box option for "Real Estate."
4. The left column will give you several options (You may have to select "Show Options")
5. Check the box marked "Foreclosure."

I wanted to demonstrate the full extent of Foreclosures in the US, so after setting GMaps on foreclosure listings, I slowly zoomed out of the map. Voila! Most foreclosures that are for sale in the USA are now showing on your screen. (Note: This map does not reveal any of the millions of REOs that have already been sold by the banks that hold them).

Google Map Foreclosure Tricks (Thanks, Barry!)

 
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Posted in Google Reader

 

Your City’s Segregation Visualized [Maps]

20 Sep
In some ways, this is the most accurate map of Washington, DC I've seen: those colors represent the demographic breakdown of a divided city. Here's how the largest metropolitan areas in the US look after the same treatment. More »


 
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Posted in Google Reader

 

This is meant as an art piece

30 Jun

Sf_drugs_500Indeed, this set of maps produced by Doug Mccune (more here) using publicly available data released by the San Francisco government on its DataSF website is breathtakingly beautiful. Thanks to Rudy R for bringing this to our attention.

***

Hate to spoil the fun but it has to be said that if we apply the Trifecta checkup, these maps fail at the first question: what is the practical issue being addressed?

As Doug noticed, there is a ridge along Mission Street that appears on pretty much every map regardless of the type of crime. The features on various maps are rather consistent as well -- and I can assure you that those features are consistent with population density.

Alas, if you live in San Francisco and care about crime there, Mission Street is not news. We don't need a sophisticated map to tell us that insight. Same with where prostitution is.

What if you are interested in crime in your local neighborhood? Not these maps either because in creating the relief, Doug must make approximations; the higher the peak, the more collateral activity is created around the peak to avoid discontinuities in the surface. This destroys the local details.

***

Still, they are gorgeous to look at, and as Doug alluded to in his disclaimer, we just need to remove our junkcharts glasses to appreciate them.

 
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Posted in Art, Google Reader