Map of the Week-Are You Happy?

This map shows "subjective well being" and is based on data from Eric Weiner's The Geography of Bliss. So maybe you thought Disney World was the happiest place on earth but you're wrong! It's Denmark!

I have not read this book so I don't know what all the criteria are but the caption references Happy Denmark's free education and health care as well as spending on the elderly and children. I agree that governments should spend on the elderly and children but am a bit skeptical that spending = happiness.


The map was produced by a geography student at
the University of Oregon and appeared in their alumni magazine. Thanks to Michael5000 for another great submission. Yes it only takes me 5-6 months to get reader's submissions out!

Map of the Week-Filling Empty Space

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is being built on an empty desert landscape around the village of Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. They have put together this interactive map (takes a minute or two to load) as a recruiting tool. In their own words:
"Just launched this month, the map offers students, faculty, research partners and community members the opportunity to explore the university via an immersive and cutting edge digital map, highlighting everything from residential flats, lab and research facilities, sustainability features, community services, recreational facilities, flyover video and more.
Currently the interactive map's main purpose is that of a recruiting tool, something which differentiates it from virtually every other campus map. Rather than showing students how to get from point A to point B, however, the map serves to share the KAUST story with them. Also, KAUST is using the map to showcase its commitment to sustainability by highlighting the green aspects of every building."

The map allows you to switch between the plans for the university and an aerial view (left) and is "the only physical link to an entire institution which does not yet exist."




This empty piece of desert is rapidly being transformed as this recent photo shows.

Soon it will look like this:

Thanks to Jason Hellman of Fleishman-Hillard for the above comments.

The Daily Masshole Obstacle Course

I frequently complain about my commute. Yes it's "only" 8 miles but 8 miles of stress. It is much more stressful than my job and probably the main thing that leaves me drained at night. In addition to the usual problems of heavy traffic, construction, bad roads and "Masshole" drivers, the route itself is a crazy serpentine pattern-there is no straight line to get me there.
Below is a map of my route through eastern Massachusetts. I've generalized it a bit and left off place names to make it less obvious where I live and work. Green text indicates southbound issues, purple northbound and black means the problem is in both directions.

The 8 mile route takes me 25 minutes with no traffic, 35-40 minutes typically and can be up to an hour in bad traffic situations. I can ride my bicycle there in 40-45 minutes when I don't get whacked. Public transit is a 3 bus system and takes an hour and 20 minutes. Walking? I haven't tried that one yet.

Map of the Week-Cotton Pickin' Democrats!

Yes these images have made the rounds of many other map blogs and yes I was supposedly done with Election 2008 but this is interesting. In my November 5th post I alluded to the county patterns and the possible race factor among others. Now we have courtesy of Allen Gathman from Southeast Missouri State University (Go Redhawks!) an explanation. He compared an 1860 map of cotton production to the pattern of southern counties that voted for Obama on this page. The Strangemaps blog took this a step further and actually overlaid the two maps. Each dot from the 1860 map represents 2000 bales of cotton.



There is the obvious racial component as the cotton belt counties have a higher concentration of African Americans. However, the Vigorous North blog takes this even another step beyond to show how the shallow ocean waters of the Cretaceous Period influenced the soil types and thus the suitability for cotton and thus the racial settlement patterns and thus the election results in the cotton belt counties.

Map of the Week-Strolling Baby Through Weird Alternate Realities

Here's a delightfully odd marketing strategy. Bugaboo strollers (right) has enlisted some avant-garde artists to make a series of day trip maps for cities in Europe, North America and Australia. They have points of interest you can click on to get more info. Apparently "third world" places such as Asia, Africa and Philadelphia don't rate with them.

One of the more interesting ones is Mina Monnee's Portland. I especially like how she wrapped the river around it.



I also like Prague by Dustin Arnold.

Robert Nakata has some of the most "artistic". Here are his renderings of Toronto and Brighton (England)

Map of the Week addendum

Here is a nice Election 2008 cartogram that goes by county. I found it on this site. There's a more red/blue version but I like the purple gradations - it makes us seem less divided for what that's worth.
Unfortunately it's missing two states.
Watch out! The San Francisco Bay area is trying to escape!


And here's the same map geographically.

Map of the Week-Dissecting the States

We've probably all seen some version of this map by now:

What's interesting is when you drill down into the states and get the county patterns. The New York Times maps allow you to do this. Aside from the usual urban-rural dichotomy much of the patterns can be explained by ethnicity, race and income. I could speculate about these states but I'd rather just enjoy them as is.