Urban Data

"I used flashtext, a high-performance keyword search algorithm, to scan articles and count these mentions. Then I map, for example, how often French newspapers mention Allemagne (Germany) or how often Chinese outlets mention 美国 (USA)", says Matt. Play with the map on mfranchi.net/global-gossip!

This visualization uses randomly sampled news articles from digital news providers in 55 'ego' countries since 2015, courtesy of Nokia Bell Labs Cambridge's Responsible AI Group. Country mentions are qualified by CLDR, which compiled names of 257 countries as expressed differently in 186 languages.

#30DayMapChallenge day 24: Places and their names

How often do places name other places?

@mfranchi.bsky.social mapped global media attention patterns using 415K news articles from 55 countries. The analysis tracks how often outlets mention other nations. Explore at mfranchi.net/global-gossip!

Dates come from two sources: the record of changes from 1964-2025 maintained by Jonathan Belcher (roster.transithistory.org/MBTARouteHis...) and Thomas Humphrey's book on the development of the MBTA's bus network (roster.transithistory.org/MBTABUSDEV.pdf). Shapefiles are sourced from MassGIS.

"These bus routes have been inherited from various older private and public bus companies, converted from street cars or trackless trollies, and created whole cloth based on arising needs. Together they represent the complex and evolving history of bus transportation in Greater Boston," he writes

November is over, but we still have some #30DayMapChallenge entries to share! And for our transport-themed day 26 map, MBTA data analyst Joe Hilleary takes us on a ride back in time: he shows current bus routes in Greater Boston by the earliest known year in which a direct percursor route ran a bus.

#30DayMapChallenge day 22: Natural Earth
@lgreenstreet.bsky.social worked on a visualization of invasive species in New York State. Invasive species presence correlates with the presence of road, rail, and urban areas due to a combination of human activity introducing them and observation density.

Map by @jessiefin.bsky.social, in collaboration with Francisco Marmolejo-Cossío, Jacqueline Caulderon, and Lizet Jarquin. Data from INEGI.

This map (+ Day 11) is part of their ongoing collaboration continuing some of the work from the 2024 EAAMO social hackathon in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

#30DayMapChallenge day 20: water

This map of Arsenic and Cadmium levels in Mexico's water show non-trace concentrations of Total and Soluble Arsenic and Cadium. Points are colored by the presence of high amounts of contaminants, and sized by their relative concentration.

tinyurl.com/map20wtr

#30DayMapChallenge day 19: projections

@jennahgosciak.bsky.social created a gif that visualizes NYC neighborhoods under different map projections. While most atrocities are clear only at national or global levels, her maps show interesting local deformities!

"Grains are scattered in clustered patterns, merged as a landmass, converted into a smooth density field using KDE, and blended with edge-fading to mimic coastal shelves. Gaussian filtering adds coherence. Elevation bands and lighting produce naturalistic terrain with sand, grass, rock, and snow."

Elijah says: "In this project I created a generative terrain builder that transforms virtual scatterings of rice-shaped polygons into coastlines, heightmaps, and fully shaded 3D landscapes"

Out of this world!

@eappelson.bsky.social explored fantasy map-making using rice digital to form tactile terrains for #30DayMapChallenge day 18. He was inspired by handmade maps created by outlining real piles of rice and simulated rice scattering. Grain density becomes elevation.

"Day 15 immediately caught my interest because it prompted reflection on energy consumption. I was also curious to experiment with kepler.gl to explore Uganda’s Census findings. When I connected fire with cooking and energy with the electricity grid, the theme felt like a perfect match," says Sylvia

#30DayMapChallenge 15: Fire

@sylviaimani.bsky.social visualized how Uganda’s transition toward electric cooking aligns with the reach of the national grid. Regions with denser grid networks show a strong correlation with higher household adoption of electric cooking technologies.

Are you running from your responsibilities? On our #30DayMapChallenge day 14 entry, we tell you where!

Atmika Pai maps running clubs with OpenStreetMap, which includes amenities such as water and restrooms. Running club data comes from @shaylaruns (Instagram).

atmikapai13.github.io/iconic-runcl...

#30DayMapChallenge day 13: 10-min map

Atmika Pai set the clock. "I used Marauders, an AI-powered spatial intelligence tool, to create a heatmap of 311 indoor air quality complaints in NYC" she says. "All it took was downloading the dataset from Open Data and uploading!"

tinyurl.com/13-map-311

For #30DayMapChallenge day 11, a minimal map from @kennypeng.bsky.social.

Kenny extracts minimal elements from a not-as-minimal-as-it-seems object: the Manhattan street grid. "I show how Manhattan’s numbered grid of streets and avenues is more complicated than you might realize," he says.

They say: "We softly overlap point locations of these ladrilleras across Mexico (downloaded from DENUE) and scores for proximity to these kilns across the country, computed as the total inverse distance each ladrillera. This score is presented for each 50km point across the country, on a log-scale."

#30DayMapChallenge day 10: Air

@jessiefin.bsky.social + Francisco Marmolejo-Cossío visualize the presence of ladrilleras, or brick kilns, which emit pollution across the state. Data cleaned by Jacqueline Calderón and Lizet Jarquin at UASLP.

Full interactive map: tinyurl.com/map10-air

#30DayMapChallenge day 9 asked us to get off our screens. @annaloganmc.bsky.social's "analog" map is a hand-painted postcard! 📫

"I chose to paint a postcard of a map of Ann Arbor where I currently live showing the Huron River!" she says

You can play with the map, visualizing individual points rather than cells or hiding chain coffee shops, at the link: gsagostini.github.io/documents/ma...

#30DayMapChallenge day 8: Urban

Chae Won Lee uses the Overpass API to visualize current coffee shop density in New York with an interactive map. Here's a snippet.

Gabriel writes: "Many accessibility works do a great job at quantifying disparate access to a single type of service. But urban access implies a relative ordering of things close and far to you. This is a cheeky title that proposes a spatial relationship between transit and food deserts."

Day 7 of #30DayMapChallenge asked us to think about accessibility. @gsagostini.bsky.social considers two metrics of access simultaneously: distance to a Subway and distance to the subway.

YouTube video by Atmika Pai ArcGIS Maps SDK in Unity (Testing Samples)

You can find her full exploration on YouTube!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALzn...

"I wanted to step into a designer's shoes and see what tools are available to them, so I chose to set up ArcGIS Maps SDK for Unity and explore their sample project. The 3rd-person controller lets you navigate cities as a character, while the viewshed analysis calculates sight lines from any point."

#30DayMapChallenge day 6: dimensions

Atmika Pai dove into the ArcGIS Unity SDK to see how architects & designers plan in 3D. She explored 15 features from geocoding to viewshed analysis, all in an immersive game engine! Here's a video teaser of her map.

The Welikia Project Explore the landscape before New York.

Jennah says "I was interested in examining how historical wetlands in the city correspond to modern-day flooding risk. I was inspired by articles that came out shortly after Hurricane Ida, and my own experience with flooding in Hurricane Sandy."

Data comes from the Welikia Project
www.welikia.org

We might be a few days delayed on the #30DayMapChallenge, but our day 5 submission spans almost 250 years of history! Our "Earth" map comes from @jennahgosciak.bsky.social, who compared the original ecology of New York City to present day variables.