Time Maps

Mapbox has created this fantastic "map" - really a diagram showing web search results from the perspective of time, in this case walking time. The map is a concentric circle diagram with geography only preserved in the direction of each result.

In their own words Mapbox has "swept the physical world away completely, in favor of the time needed to move around it." The results are from Foursquare and are somewhat dubious as I will discuss.

I chose Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, a favorite spot since childhood. One nice feature was I just put in the name of the square, no city, state or any other info and it knew exactly where to go. I searched for ice cream, often problematic in that neighborhood because places seem to come and go quickly. Click on any spot and you get a walking route with directions.

You can click "Find me" to get your location or start searching an address. The address search is overly eager. I started to enter an address where I'll be going soon in upstate New York and it took me first to Birmingham, UK and then to Toronto before I could finish typing.

Of course, a map like this is only as good as the information behind it. When I did some searches of my neighborhood, I found quite a few businesses that closed several years ago while some places that are well over five years old did not appear.

For some details on how and why see the this Mapbox blog post.