Mapping NYC Capital Spending

Chris Whong, a former planner for the City of New York found a way to muddle through various budget documents to quantify and map where money is being spent on capital projects. The process, documented in a Medium article, involved "scraping" PDF documents ("where data goes to die") and then grouping projects by district to look at his own neighborhood in Brooklyn. Here is the result - click for a more readable version

A sample area.

He also did some nice "small multiple" maps showing 4 year spending by project type across the city. The image below is just a sample - the thing is huge. Clicking it will get you the whole thing.

For details on the convoluted process click here.

40 Maps That Won't Explain Anything-Part 4

This is the final (for now) installment of this series. However, there are so many of the "40 Maps That Will Increase Your Earnings and Change Your Life" pages out there now that I might be compelled to put out some bonus editions of these in the future.

It was pointed out to me that some of the maps in Part 3 actually explained things. I will try to fix that situation with less meaningful maps this time.

31. The Provinces of Bolivia

32. Darts being thrown at random provinces in Cambodia to illustrate PowerPoint Maps Online

33. Detail from the Austin Music Map - love that purple river!

34. The Interstate 11 Corridor proposed to connect Phoenix and Las Vegas.

35. Psychedelic precipitation map of Hawaii. With a bonus Maui blowup.

36. Hawaii refrigerator magnet from Shop in Paradise.

37. The High Sierra region from Visit California - I like their maps and we just visited this region.

38. World placemat for "bigger kids"  from the Reader's Catalog. Got cliches?

Here's the Western Hemisphere zoomed in. Note the atrocious placement of New York City. Guess where this company is located? If their 646 area code is any indication they're based in New York City!

39. Speaking of New York City - here are the Trees of Prospect Park. On the Prospect Park page you can  click on a tree to get details and pictures, but then it would be a map that explains something so be careful!

40. Time to put this series to sleep with some White Comic Map bedding from Debenhams. If you zoom in on the image you'll see that the "map" is a series of comic book images.

Baby Hat Update

After several weeks and three round trips, the baby hat (See previous post)  finally arrived-back at our front door! It traveled 1,507 miles to get the 3/4ths of a mile from the local post office to our doorstep. See the full itinerary at the bottom - again it reads upwards.

The problem was that we had the wrong zip code. The zip code we used was almost an entire block away! Here is a map to illustrate.

My wife re-mailed it with the correct zip and this time it made it in one trip!

I'm usually impressed with the USPS and the amount of mail they able to quickly deliver. We take them for granted and complain way too much-or do we?

Here is the full travels, beginning with the second (correct) mailing.Total distance 1,816 miles!

Arrival at Post Office	BROOKLYN, NY 11230	February 24, 2014 8:34 am
Processed through USPS Sort Facility	BETHPAGE, NY 11714	February 23, 2014 7:28 pm
Depart USPS Sort Facility	BETHPAGE, NY 11714	February 23, 2014
Processed through USPS Sort Facility	BETHPAGE, NY 11714	February 22, 2014 11:59 pm
Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility	NASHUA, NH 03063	February 21, 2014 11:23 pm
Depart USPS Sort Facility	NASHUA, NH 03063	February 21, 2014
Dispatched to Sort Facility	ARLINGTON, MA 02476	February 20, 2014 7:07 pm
Acceptance	ARLINGTON, MA 02476	February 20, 2014 1:59 pm

****************************************************

Delivered	ARLINGTON, MA 02476	February 18, 2014 10:38 am
Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility	BOSTON, MA 02205	February 17, 2014 2:14 am
Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility	BOSTON, MA 02205	February 15, 2014 6:26 pm
Depart USPS Sort Facility	BETHPAGE, NY 11714	February 15, 2014
Processed through USPS Sort Facility	BETHPAGE, NY 11714	February 14, 2014 11:31 am
Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility	NASHUA, NH 03063	February 12, 2014 4:41 pm
Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility	BOSTON, MA 02205	February 12, 2014 2:02 am
Arrive USPS Sort Facility	BROOKLYN, NY 11256	February 10, 2014 7:38 am
Depart USPS Sort Facility	FLUSHING, NY 11351	February 10, 2014 6:51 am
Depart USPS Sort Facility	FLUSHING, NY 11351	February 10, 2014
Processed through USPS Sort Facility	FLUSHING, NY 11351	February 10, 2014 5:33 am
Depart USPS Sort Facility	BOSTON, MA 02205	February 8, 2014
Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility	BOSTON, MA 02205	February 8, 2014 5:54 pm
Depart USPS Sort Facility	KEARNY, NJ 07032	February 7, 2014
Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility	KEARNY, NJ 07032	February 7, 2014 8:12 am
Undeliverable as Addressed	BROOKLYN, NY 11223	February 1, 2014 11:05 am
No Such Number	BROOKLYN, NY 11223	February 1, 2014 11:05 am
Insufficient Address	BROOKLYN, NY 11223	February 1, 2014 11:01 am
Arrival at Post Office	BROOKLYN, NY 11223	February 1, 2014 10:29 am
Processed through USPS Sort Facility	BETHPAGE, NY 11714	January 30, 2014 1:58 pm
Depart USPS Sort Facility	NASHUA, NH 03063	January 30, 2014
Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility	NASHUA, NH 03063	January 29, 2014 10:33 pm
Dispatched to Sort Facility	ARLINGTON, MA 02476	January 29, 2014 6:56 pm
Acceptance	ARLINGTON, MA 02476	January 29, 2014 2:17 pm