Mapping Illegal Dump Sites

Way back in 1990 I went to Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia) to volunteer for a mapping project. We mapped illegal dump sites in the Krka River valley. Unfortunately I don’t have any of those maps now, but here in Philadelphia they are doing a similar citizen mapping initiative as documented in the Inquirer.

Participants gathered at an event last week to mark up paper maps just like we did 36 years ago. Here is a better look at one of the maps.

-via Philadelphia Inquirer

The event was organized by the Trash Academy who also keep an interactive digital map of these sites with clickable content.

Here’s the citywide picture.

From their web page:

“Earning it the title of ‘Filthadelphia’, the trash and litter that defaces the streets of our city is an apt metaphor for the systematic devaluation of underserved communities.”

Illustrated Mapmaking Contest - 2026

 The Osher Map Library in Portland, Maine recently posted their 2026 Illustrated Mapmaking Competition results. These are maps made by school children in Maine in the 4th-6th grade range. First prize went to The Broken Islands by Jacob S., a 6th grader at Brunswick Junior High School.

Most of these maps are of fantasy lands, some from literature and other purely made up. I don’t have a strong familiarity with today’s children’s literature or movies so I am probably missing some of the references. Here are some of my favorites from the honorable mentions.

Rough Ridge Mountain Bike Trails by Foster B. of Montville.

Ipad Isles by Aster B. of Brunswick

I love how apps such as the weather and health are classified as boring.

The Land of Three Colors by Erin Q. of Brunswick (a town very well represented here)

This is really three color palettes but I’m not going to get too uptight about that.

Pine Tree State by Darcy Q. also of Brunswick.

An actual place! Nicely done!

Finally, just in time for lunch, Pizza Island by Katie Cahoon of York.

You can see all of the maps here.

Cancer Maps

Dr. Jospeh Fraumeni, a pioneering researcher of epidemiology, died a couple of weeks ago. Among his achievements were the first maps of cancer deaths in the United States. Here are two early maps.

These maps eventually became an atlas of cancer mortality published by the National Cancer Institute. You can see the entire atlas here but be warned, it’s huge and may take a long time to load.

The atlas maps begin with overall maps, broken down by race and gender before breaking them down further by types of cancer.

There is a bias in that there are many more maps showing white people than black and no other races (or genders) are accounted for. Anyway it is interesting to see the male/female contrasts here-above is white male, below white female.

One difference that really stands out is “cancer alley” in Louisiana. Are males contracting cancer at work, where presumably there are fewer females employed in these chemical industries? Similar disparities appear in coastal parts of Georgia, the Carolinas and Texas. Here are the maps for blacks. Notice the they do not have the finer county breakdown, nor is there data for the earlier 1950-69 time period.

All of these maps show a similar pattern of lower rates in the southeast and southwest. You can see more, including interactive and story maps at gis.cancer.gov. Here is a sample from the urban-rural disparity story map. I manipulated this image slightly so the legend and map appear together.

This quote from the gis.cancer site summarizes Dr Fraumeni's ideas that led to developing these maps. “The spatial context in which people live is an important factor in cancer etiology and outcomes influencing a person’s risk of developing cancer, accessibility and quality of preventive and treatment services, and quality of life after surviving cancer.“

Skpe a Scientist

Skype a Scientist is an organization that matches scientists with classrooms across the United States. Their annual United States of Science Challenge seeks to fill a certain number of classrooms in each state with donations. This map is a bit, ummm, unscientific maybe but it shows empty bubbles as classrooms waiting to be matched (?)

I’m not sure what the Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty is doing inside two of the three Wyoming bubbles, or for that matter why Wyoming only has three bubbles. He’s also hiding in small bubbles in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Also, the colors only seem to exist as some kind of regional differentiation. Most states appear to be full but there are still opportunities within most regions of the country. 

Maps for the U.S. Semiquincentennial

Semiquincentennial is a mouthful. So much that my spell check doesn’t believe it’s a word. The Bicentennial, which I’m old enough to remember well was easier to pronounce, and celebrate. I won’t make any grand statements, instead here are some fun, interesting or alternative maps of the United States to celebrate its 250th birthday.

I’ll start with the original inhabitants of this land. This is one of the maps of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, previously featured here in this post.

Tribal Map 2000

You can see the whole map here.

License Plate Map (one of many)

-via Photowall

If the states were based on watersheds: The United Watershed States of America

-via Next City

The United States drawn as Fifty States with Equal Population

This is an attempt from Neil Freeman to make the Electoral College more fair - good luck either way that! More here.

Speculative fiction - USA in the Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle is a 1962 novel by Philip K. Dick, which imagines a world in which the Axis powers won World War II. Map from Wikimedia Commons. It looks like Long Island might be safe. I’m not sure where some of these oddly specific boundary jogs come from.

A less depressing speculative map (unless you hate rail) - Sci fi coast to coast high speed rail network. 

-via Greater Greater Washington

Finally, for dessert here is the Most Popular Pie by State

-via Holiday Calendar

Cool Spaces

Europe has been very hot lately. The City of London created a cool spaces map last year highlighting indoor spaces, water fountains (the small blue dots), shade, and cooler areas of the city. 

The interactive map lets you choose what you want to see, filter for only air conditioned spaces and click points for more information. 

If you have your own venue, you can register it with the city to be on the map.

Here is a striking heat map from The Evening Standard, showing London’s hottest and coolest spots, from 2022 data. They are remarkably close together. Stay cool!

Atlanta Soccer Map

Veazy Studio, previously featured here for the ATL Rap Map, has a new Atlanta Soccer Map just in time for that city’s World Cup hosting duties. 

The map took “just under 100 hours to create” and he does a convincing job of selling Atlanta as a soccer destination. Here is a detail of the east downtown area showing stores, fields and bars where people go to watch games - assuming FIFA allows them to be shown.

There’s also a list of Atlanta’s soccer “culture makers“

Bonus map section (!!!!!!!!) - my sister alerted me to Veazy’s Barbecue Map, which is how I discovered the soccer map.

The above image is not very readable but here is a detail from the Costco Connection.