Super Commuting

A new report from NYU's Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management details the rise of the "super commuter" - someone who commutes from one metropolitan area to another. The report is summarized in an article in the Atlantic Cities. This map shows "non-local labor sheds" for major U. S. cities.

The stars are the commuting destinations while the graduated circles represent the home areas of commuters from outside the region. I like the gratuitous inclusion of Puerto Rico at the bottom right of these maps.

According to the study, these commuters tend to be younger people with modest incomes and may be making these commutes to take advantage of more affordable housing. Many of them probably don't need to show up in the office more than a couple of times a week. Two of the top super commutes are Houston to Dallas and Dallas to Houston. Sounds like a recipe for a house swap reality show.

I grabbed this image directly from the report as a typical detail of one of these areas - in this case Chicago.

 The darker reds represent larger percentage increases. While Detroit had the largest percentage increase, it is still coming from a much smaller number of actual commuters,. Cities such as Champaign and Saint Louis had higher absolute increases. I don't know why Milwaukee is so much smaller than the other cities when it is so close by - better job market there?

Weekend Special-Intelliglobe Knows Too Much

Here is a cheesy video ad showing gangsters chasing Replogle's Intelliglobe through the streets of Chicago. The globe is not only interactive, but can outrun gangsters while telling passersby how long it will take to fly to Caracas and what animals are native to the southeastern USA.

Maps on Album Covers

I thought it would be a good idea to spotlight album covers featuring maps but it turns out that there are fewer than I expected. I had to dig in some obscure places to find the ones below. Not having an exhaustive music collection I may have missed something obvious or notable. Let me know and I'll add it to the list.

I'll start with one of my personal favorite covers. Nile Rodgers of the disco/funk band Chic came out with a solo album titled "Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove" with a cover featuring lower Manhattan with faux latin place names like "Uptownicus" and "Nova Joysey."

Probably the best known album on this list is Chicago XI-Baby what a big surprise!

Martha and the Muffins went with the topographic Toronto look.

Early American folk music specialists Tasker's Chance used this historic map of part of Maryland.

Representing the world of experimental classical music is the Chicago Sound Map.








Hardcore metal band Slayer's "World Painted Blood" has a collector's edition with four different covers that when put together form a world illustrated with skulls and bones.

 This is more of a globe than a map but I've always been partial to Yes so I had to include "Fragile."



Canadian popsters Barenaked Ladies used an oddly styled Michigan for a live album with the somewhat clever title "Talk to the Hand."

Two Philadelphia area bands previously covered here have some good map artwork. The Strapping Fieldhands map showing sightings of the New Jersey Devil and Slo-Mo's map of the Northern Liberties neighborhood.

Finally, a 4 CD compilation called "Left of the Dial: Dispatched from the '80s Underground" used some map mashups for their covers. Don't try to use the map below for wayfinding!

UPDATE: for more good stuff see the follow up post.

I am a Very Slow Reader-Part 2

I'm not only a slow reader, but slow to pick up on "new" things.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet has been out for over a year but I only discovered it over the summer as one of the staff picks at the Maine Coast Bookshop.  Two things drew me in; one, the staff picks at this store have never let me down and two, it's a book about a cartographer!

The book is very enjoyable, however I find parts of it to be a bit of a reach. A 12 year old cartographer maybe, but one with such maturity and depth of knowledge (including an expertise in entomology) just seems a bit of a reach. Perhaps if Reif Larsen had made him 14 or 15 I might find this story easier to believe. The basic plot of the book is that a 12 year old prodigy who lives on a ranch in Montana named Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet is invited to the Smithsonian, unknown to his parents, to accept an award for his scientific work. The book is illustrated with some beautiful maps and illustrations, apparently these were an afterthought to the book.

Here is his map of the ranch in Montana. I could not find the original image online so I took this German version (note the building names) from the Fischerverlage publishing site.

T. S. Spivet's obsession with diagramming everything he sees, from the way his sister shucks corn, to male pattern baldness is borderline annoying but it makes for some fun marginalia. The map that begins Chapter 10, shows a large U.S. City and slightly gives away a bit of plot ahead of time if you recognize this street pattern.

 Even if you don't recognize this place chances are very high that if you're riding a train across the country you will get there as will the plot. The image above is from the Boston Globe review.

Overall, this is a clever and unique book that is an entertaining read for anyone, regardless of your knowledge of cartography, entomology or male pattern baldness.

 

Map of the Week-Baseball Week 1

Here in the US of A the baseball season has begun! To honor the occasion I have a couple of baseball related posts. The indiemaps blog maps out where balls were hit. The first one is of a perfect game pitched by Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox on July 23rd, 2009. The small blue dots are hits and the pink ones are outs. Click on the image to get to an interactive google map of US Cellular Field in Chicago where you can click each point for more information. Highlighted is a 9th inning home run saving catch over the wall that helped preserve the perfect game.

The blog entry discusses the details of how the maps are created using these diagrams from MLB Gameday. The points were converted from pixels to geographic coordinates. The diagram locations are based on observation and may not be as accurate as what you might pay to get from for-profit firms.


The next map, from a Phillies-Pirates game played at Citizen's Bank Park in Philadelphia, shows how different ballpark dimensions can affect the outcome of a game. The hit locations are shown (map on left) then transferred to PNC Park in Pittsburgh (map on right) to show how some of the home runs would have stayed in the park in PNC's larger outfield. Note that differing stadium orientations necessitate rotating the coordinates.

The entry continues with a long discussion about how to transfer the data and a link to the code on github in case you want to try plotting your own favorite game. Good luck! Go Phils!

Map Changes for 2010 and beyond

New State in India?

 

New transit line for Vancouver                                           

  - opened in August, 2009


















Proposed Purple Line would serve the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.  The line would run from Bethesda to New Carrollton.

Rerouting the Chicago River? 

Michigan's attorney general has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to seal off the most direct routes from the Chicago River into Lake Michigan to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes.










Stay tuned for these and other exciting map stories as the year progresses.

Map of the Week - Jimmy Corrigan's World

I've looked at this site many times and still don't completely get it. It's an interactive promotion for Chris Ware's graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Boy on Earth. I have not read it, but the story here does not appear to follow the book as described online. It does make an interesting use of maps to tell a story. Click the map below and then the lower arrow. Next click on one of the circles on the globe and you get a piece of the story.

This a typical immigrant coming to the US to find whatever opportunities are out there story. If you really want to follow it the trick is to click on what's supposed to be Tennessee but really is too far south and east. Then click the right arrows. There seem to be parallel stories about slavery and some traffic accident in Panama. Again, the relationship to this graphic novel is unclear. Below is a typical sequence showing parts of the story.


If you click on Chicago you get this nice little zoom in sequence


The site does work in that it makes me curious to read the story. Then again after months of looking I have yet to actually place my order.

Map of the Week - City of Vice

Those of you regular readers know that I attended the "Maps, Finding our Place in the World" exhibition that came to Chicago and then to Baltimore last year. I bought the companion book from this exhibit and have been slowly reading it.
This map (from William T. Stead, "If Christ Came to Chicago!", 1894) shows the "sites of moral depravity and turpitude" within Chicago's Nineteenth Ward, First Precinct. According to the book the map "worked to tame the anxieties about social dysfunction held by the same people, by isolating each dysfunction, comprehending it, and so enabling it to be corrected and eliminated." The map shows brothels, pawn brokers, saloons and lodging houses in addition to "legitimate" businesses. Because of the gridded nature of Chicago's streets and the almost exactly identical areas of the properties, the map looks and functions almost like a graph. A more complete description of the map can be found here.

Map of the Week-Christmas Lights

With all the do it yourself map technology available it's surprising how few maps of Christmas lights I've been able to find. The best one for sheer volume is the Chicagoland Christmas Lights page.

The locations are color coded and you can click them for more information. Unfortunately no pictures come up but some of them have web links such as Nick's Lights. Thank you Nick Diaz. Happy holidays!

Map of the Week 115-The Oak Park Continental Divide

Continental Divides usually bring up images of snowy mountain peaks but sometimes the mountains look like this:


Yes the suburban folks of Oak Park, Chicagoland, Illinois have their own continental divide and they're proud of it! They even have a web page to showcase it. The map below is proof for skeptics - stand at the corner of Division and Elmwood with a cup of water and watch some of it flow to the Gulf of Mexico while the rest goes to the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence Seaway.

<- This is a detailed map showing the approximate line of the divide. My guess is that the storm drainage system adds a layer of complication, making the map approximate at best.
The map above can be further subdivided - if you do this enough times you will eventually find your own local continental divide that you can brag about!

Map of the Week #102 - Chicago Map Fest Map

Those of you who are as obsessed as I am with maps may want to hurry over to Chicago for the Festival of Maps. There is a major exhibit at the Field Museum and a bunch of map related exhibits and events going on at over 30 other institutions including universities, museums, art galleries, libraries and even the Brookfield Zoo. Of course, they also have an excellent web map that allows you to pan around the city find out what's happening at all the big red dots. Even if you can't make it to Chicagoland, you can still spend hours browsing at the events and looking at the little thumbnail pictures. Maybe I'll even make it over there before it's too late. See you there?

MOTW #2

I'm pretty sure this came from Lori Napoleon's wonderful collection of "mental maps".