Key map showing which areas of Philadelphia are covered by which numbered, standard Sanborn Co. fire insurance map volumes for the city.

More-or-less essential starting point for using the Sanborn maps in printed or digital form.

Photos, info., compiled maps, scanned maps of Philadelphia region transit lines, especially trolleys.  Also has some info about Toronto and San Francisco areas.  An enthusiast website.

about

fast road image cc license

View selected historic maps and aerial photographs, mixed with current data from Google in a Google Maps viewer. The "crown jewel" is a full-city mosaic of the 1942 Philadelphia Land Use Maps.

Census Atlas of the United States

* Census 2000 Reports

We are pleased to present the complete content, in PDF format, of the recently published Census Atlas of the United States, the first comprehensive atlas of population and housing produced by the Census Bureau since the 1920s. The Census Atlas is a large-format publication about 300 pages long and containing almost 800 maps. Data from decennial censuses prior to 2000 support nearly 150 maps and figures, providing context and an historical perspective for many of the topics presented. A variety of topics are covered in the Census Atlas, ranging from language and ancestry characteristics to housing patterns and the geographic distribution of the population. A majority of the maps in the Census Atlas present data at the county level, but data also are sometimes mapped by state, census tract (for largest cities and metropolitan areas), and for selected American Indian reservations. The book is modern, colorful, and includes a variety of map styles and data symbolization techniques.

Seeing The Numbers: NYC

We continue our series with Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the U.S. Census, on the new Census Atlas of the United States. This week, we look at some of the NYC-specific maps:

Also, Andrew Beveridge, Professor of Sociology for Social Explorer and chair of the Sociology department at Queens College, helps us flesh out what those maps tell us about New York.

Seeing The Numbers: Origins and Diversity

Each Thursday in June, we are taking a look inside the new Census Atlas of the United States, the first of its kind in almost 100 years. Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the Census, helps guide us through some of the maps and trends. Today we look at the changing face of America and an interesting definition of "ancestry."

Seeing The Numbers Each Thursday in June, we take a look inside the new Census Atlas of the United States, the first of its kind in almost 100 years. Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the Census, helps guide us through some of the maps and trends.

Seeing The Numbers

Each Thursday in June, we take a look inside the new Census Atlas of the United States, the first of its kind in almost 100 years. Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the Census, helps guide us through some of the maps and trends.

tour titled South Asian on City of Memory

City of Memory

City of Memory is brought to you by City Lore; a not-for-profit organization, founded in 1986 which produces programs and publications that convey the richness of New York City\'s cultural heritage. To find out more information about City Lore and our projects go to citylore.org

A nice google maps mashup about election results.

You can now make cloropleth maps in google maps

Documents the street name changes within Philadelphia Streets.  Try multiple variations of the street name to find it.

The User-friendly Desktop Internet GIS (uDig) is both a GeoSpatial application and a platform through which developers can create new, derived applications. uDig is a core element in an internet aware Geographic Information System.

uDig has been developed with a strong emphasis on supporting the public standards being developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium, and with a special focus on the Web Map Server and Web Feature Server standards.

Redraft of the Castello Plan New Amsterdam in 1660

September 6, 2007 - The Harvard Map Collection's atlases of historic Cambridge have much to reveal about the city and the University's past. Looking at these oversized documents, for instance, one learns that 135 years ago, Harvard students boarded their horses in the University stables where current day John Harvard's Brew House operates and that as of 1903 the John Harvard statue sat, not outside University Hall, but by Memorial Hall. Now the Map Collection has made it easier for those researching local history to use its Boston and Cambridge atlases by digitizing these volumes and making them available online to the public.

GeoRSS

This site describes a number of ways to encode location in RSS feeds. As RSS becomes more and more prevalent as a way to publish and share information, it becomes increasingly important that location is described in an interoperable manner so that applications can request, aggregate, share and map geographically tagged feeds.

To avoid the fragmentation of language that has occurred in RSS and other Web information encoding efforts, we have created this site to promote a relatively small number of encodings that meet the needs of a wide range of communities. By building these encodings on a common information model, we hope to promote interoperability and "upwards-compatibility" across encodings.

August 23, 2007

GigaPixel Images in Google Earth

Frank Taylor at the Google Earth Blog has posted a video demonstrating a new layer in Google Earth (v 4.2 required). The layer essentially adds portals to high resolution images on to the map and allows for modal interaction with the image. The interaction starts with a sweep down to the geolocated image which is then aligned with the surrounding 3d space. You can then navigate into the image which is refined like the standard tiling approach seen in mapping sites giving you access to the full gigapixel experience.

We have developed and tested two measures of visual clutter: the Feature Congestion measure, and the Subband Entropy measure.

Feature Congestion measure: This measure of visual clutter is based on the common experience of going to put a note on a colleague's desk. If the desk is uncluttered, it's easy to find a place to put the note where we are confident our colleague will notice it. However, if the desk is cluttered, we tend not to be confident they will notice the note, and perhaps will leave the note on a chair so they will spot it.

This suggests that clutter is related to the difficulty in adding an attention-grabbing item to a display. Visual search models typically attempt to predict the difficulty of searching for a particular target among particular distractors. However, our Statistical Saliency Model can easily make the dual prediction of how difficult it would be to add an attention-grabbing item to a display, and what features that item should have in order to draw attention. Our Feature Congestion measure of visual clutter is based upon this model of visual search.

Subband Entropy measure: This measure of visual clutter is based upon the intuition that a scene or display is less cluttered the more "organized" it is, i.e. the more items "group" together perceptually, whether through use of similar colors, or alignment, or other tricks. A related question to ask is to what extent each part of the display or scene is predictable from the rest of the scene? How redundant is the visual information in the scene?

Click on the map for reader comments, audio clips from commuters and photographs from the aftermath of the storm.

MAPublisher 7.5 is the newest version of this powerful suite of plug-ins for Adobe Illustrator that bridges the gap between Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and high-end graphic design for high quality creation, high resolution printing and electronic publishing of maps. Cartographic quality map production is now faster, easier and better. Avenza understands that completing GIS graphics tasks is best performed in the right environment such as a powerful graphics application like Adobe Illustrator. MAPublisher takes you into this environment seamlessly and effortlessly with the right GIS data management tools to facilitate the map production process. Using this fast, intuitive system, your map can transcend the ordinary and become a work of art.

MAPublisher 7.5 combines the best features of GIS with the powerful design environments of Adobe Illustrator CS2 and CS3 to enable native GIS data files to be used as a base for cartographic production. No more scanning and tracing is necessary with MAPublisher.

MAPublisher 7.5 supports the import of the most widely used GIS data formats, including those from ESRI, MapInfo, MicroStation, AutoCAD, Google and the USGS. All GIS data attributes and geographic parameters are maintained during import and are fully accessible and editable during the cartographic process. MAPublisher 7.5 provides dozens of mapping, cartographic and GIS-like tools for working with imported map data within the Adobe Illustrator environment towards the creation of the the highest quality maps possible.

This site is a non-profit, freely browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago.

It is not affiliated with the Chicago Police Department or with Google Maps. It is not an official source of crime information for the city of Chicago. Rather, it is an alternative view of public record that is available elsewhere.

How We Watch the City: Popularity and Online Maps

Microsoft Research

Danyel Fisher

ABSTRACT
One way of conceptualizing physical spaces is to look at
where people notice, remember, or note them. Computer-
assisted methods give us new tools based on implicit, rather
than explicit, data about how users have examined and
travelled online through cities. “Hotmap” is a tool that
visualizes how people have used maps.live.com, an
interactive mapping service, looking at what parts of the
maps they find most compelling.  

Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 26, No. 4, 404-414 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0739456X06298820

© 2007 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning
Exploring Changes in Income Clustering and Centralization during the 1990s
Casey J. Dawkins

Urban Affairs and Planning at Virginia Tech, Virginia Center for Housing Research

This article employs a new "spatial ordering index" to describe and explain changes in the degree of income clustering and centralization within U.S. metropolitan areas during the 1990s. The results suggest that while the spatial pattern of household income became more decentralized and less clustered during the 1990s, the patterns established as of 1990 were highly persistent over the decade. Factors associated with metropolitan area size and growth affected changes in both the degree of centralization and the degree of clustering. Although traditional determinants of suburbanization were associated with increases in income decentralization during the 1990s, densely developed cities with an increase in the percentage of white residents saw increases in income centralization during the decade. Furthermore, changes in the patterns observed were shaped by various policy influences, including the number of Low Income Housing Tax Credit units, urban containment policies, and the degree of local government fragmentation.

Key Words: economic segregation • spatial analysis • metropolitan governance • urban containment • growth management

Snapshot: Global Migration

Nearly 190 million people, about 3 percent of the world's population, lived outside their country of birth in 2005. A look at the flow of people around the globe.

You may generate maps interactively at planiglobe. Zoom in and out, search for places and add your own locations to a map.

The ps- and ai-versions (which you can download) are compatible to the PostScript^® level 1 language and the Illustrator^® 7 format, respectively.

These formats are vector based graphic formats which overcome resolution limitations usually found with JPEG or GIF formats. You can select and edit single objects or groups of lines, points or polygons and change graphic attributes such as size and color. Check with you favorite graphics package for the ps- or ai-format support.

MapBuilder is a powerful, standards compliant geographic mapping client which runs in a web browser.

Geotools is used by a number of projects including Web Feature Servers, Web Map Servers, and desktop applications, as is described on this page. Some screenshots of Geotools in action are also available.

Programmers wishing to use GeoTools in their own applications can get more information from the Use page and the User Guide. Developers wishing to extend the GeoTools library can get started on the Develop page and the Developer Guide.

GeoTools releases can be found on the downloads page. The Geotools code base is maintained in a subversion repository.

GeoServer is an Open Source server that connects your information to the Geospatial Web.

With GeoServer you can publish and edit data using open standards. Your information is made available in a large variety of formats as maps/images or actual geospatial data. GeoServer's transactional capabilities offer robust support for shared editing. GeoServer's focus is ease of use and support for standards, in order to serve as 'glue' for the geospatial web, connecting from legacy databases to many diverse clients.

GeoServer supports WFS-T and WMS open protocols from the OGC to produce JPEG, PNG, SVG, KML/KMZ, GML, PDF, Shapefiles and more. More information on specific features of GeoServer can be found here, and some samples of GeoServer in action are in the gallery.

GeoServer is built on Geotools, the same Java toolkit that udig uses. GeoServer is a truly open community, with a well documented and modular codebase, so don't hesitate to get involved.

GET LOST is a collective portrait of downtown New York. Twenty-one international artists were invited to create a personal view of the city and draw a map of downtown New York, uncovering a territory that is both real and imaginary.

GET LOST brings together fictional landscapes, utopian visions, private memories, and obsessive instructions to explore Manhattan, its past, present, and future.

An exercise in emotional geography, GET LOST sketches the coordinates for an endless drift across the streets and myths of downtown New York.

GET LOST is the city as seen through the eyes of: 16beaver group; Francis Alÿs; Cory Arcangel; Jennifer Bornstein; Beth Campbell; Marcel Dzama; Isa Genzken; Inaba and Associates; Dorothy Iannone; Chris Johanson; Christopher Knowles; Terence Koh; Julie Mehretu; Jonas Mekas; Aleksandra Mir; Thurston Moore; Dave Muller; William Pope.L; Lordy Rodriguez; Rirkrit Tiravanija; Lawrence Weiner.

GET LOST is a New Museum production, edited by Massimiliano Gioni.

Beginning Wednesday, June 6, 2007, free copies of GET LOST will be available to the public at the following markers of the downtown scene and cultural organizations around the city: Opening Ceremony (35 Howard Street), Babeland (43 Mercer Street), Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery), The Bowery Hotel (340 Bowery), Congee Village (100 Allen Street), Lost City Arts (18 Cooper Square), Freemans Restaurant (Freeman Alley at Rivington Street), Two Boots (155 East 3rd Street), Patricia Field (302 Bowery), Screaming Mimi's (382 Lafayette Street), Joe's Pub (425 Lafayette Street), Artist's Space (38 Greene Street, 3rd Floor), The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street), Sculpture Center (44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City), The Rotunda Gallery (33 Clinton Street, Brooklyn), Bronx Museum (1040 Grand Concourse at 165th Street, Bronx), and the Bedford Cheese Shop (229 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn). GET LOST can also be found at the New Museum Store at 556 West 22nd Street and at the galleries of participating artists.

What you are witnessing is a ridiculously-realistic virtual version of New York City's Lower East Side, a.k.a. the place where every angst-ridden, music-loving teenager (that means you, or maybe you a few years ago) dreams of running away to. This teensy neighborhood is so brimming over with cool bands, fun hangouts and bars, and pretty people that it can take about ten years to come out the other side once you move here.

So vLES wants to send you there now to give you a head start. You can create a little person and then walk right into faithfully recreated virtual versions of legendary LES venues and see real bands play. And if you're in a band (and who isn't), this is where you can get yourself heard. vLES is going to be so totally the opposite of boring, you don't even know.

Google Mapplets are mini-applications that you can embed within the Google Maps site. Examples include real estate search, current weather conditions, and distance measurement. Mapplets are Google Gadgets that can manipulate the map using Javascript calls that are derived from the Google Maps API.

Mapplets are currently only available in a special Developer Preview version of Google Maps at:
http://maps.google.com/preview

Mapplets are new, so there may be bugs and slightly less than perfect documentation. Bear with us as we fill in the holes, and join the Maps API discussion group to give us feedback.

 
mapping housing trends over time throughout the US

OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth.

Google maps mashup includes data on population, housing cost, housing market, schools, safety, health, climate, income/work, and age ethnicity for the continental US.

annoyingly, their "explains" don't say where the data comes from, so it's hard to know how up to date it is. However, it's neat.

Cartographers have long used flow maps to show the movement of objects from one location to another, such as the number of people in a migration, the amount of goods being traded, or the number of packets in a network. The advantage of flow maps is that they reduce visual clutter by merging edges. Most flow maps are drawn by hand and there are few computer algorithms available. We present a method for generating flow maps using hierarchical clustering given a set of nodes, positions, and flow data between the nodes. Our techniques are inspired by graph layout algorithms that minimize edge crossings and distort node positions while maintaining their relative position to one another. We demonstrate our technique by producing flow maps for network traffic, census data, and trade data.

This article examines the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), Mayor John F. Street’s plan to revitalize Philadelphia’s distressed neighborhoods by issuing $295 million in bonds to finance the acquisition of property, the demolition of derelict buildings, and the assembling of large tracts of land for housing redevelopment. Despite its resemblance to the discredited urban renewal programs of the past, this plan offered real potential for reducing blight by leveraging substantial private investment at a time when public subsidies
for affordable housing and community development have been steadily diminishing.

However, NTI did not promote equitable development that might have fostered broader support for an inherently controversial plan. Moreover, Street’s initial leadership in proposing this bold initiative was followed by a reluctance to promote NTI aggressively after it was adopted in 2002. The  result was a watered-down effort that achieved some goals but has fallen short of what might have been accomplished.

The Penn Library's new subscription to the Digital Sanborn maps: Pennsylvania provides online access to black-and-white reproductions of fire insurance maps produced by the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company for 586 Pennsylvania communities from the late 19th century through the early 1950s. These maps show streets, building outlines, and other improvements and infrastructure for urban communities.

The online collection, arranged in atlas volumes searchable by county, community, and date, covers all major Pennsylvania cities - Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Allentown, Scranton, Reading, Bristol, Lancaster, Bethlehem, Harrisburg, and Altoona - as well as many smaller places - Scalp Level, Shickshinny, Jersey Shore, Black Lick, and Throop.

maps by harold fisk - 1944

from the infosthetics blog - "semantically ordered tag clouds that resemble self-organizing maps. the size of the text & the color brightness of the background represent the frequency of the different terms. this technique has been applied to visualize the keywords present in website favorites, or the tags used by different del.ico.us users for the same web pages."

 tags clouds developed by Moritz Stefaner

The literary map of Pennsylvania is a graphic display of the literary history of our Commonwealth. On the map you'll find writers of novels, plays, short stories, technical manuals, legislation, children's literature…just about anything you could imagine connected to writing.

Click on a county to see authors from that county with biographies and lists of works.