Thursday, January 14, 2010

Maps of places you'll never go

I just today discovered that the MICRODEM software I use often is capable of loading IMG files of elevation data of the Moon, taken by the Clementine in the 90's.

I'm still looking for interesting lunar features to map out, but here's a sneak preview.


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I have no idea where it is, but i'n'it gorgeous?

Ever wonder what an Earth mountain would look like compared on the same kind of map to a lunar mountain of similar height? (Yes, I'm sure you have.)


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On the right, weighing in at 1900m, we have Mount Washington, New Hampshire, United States. The highest peak in the northeastern United States. In it's shadow, Bretton Woods, where the fundamentals of the modern international financial system were laid.

On the left, weighing in at, 4600m, yes you heard me, 4600 metres above lunar "sea level" (ooh, something I'm going to have to look up on The Google now), Mons Hadley. In its shadow... the base from which the future interplanetary financial system will be laid? Nah, probably not. I'm sure it'll be thought up somewhere in an international organisation. By a committee!

Or perhaps just by a lonely astronaut.


(♫ There's gonna be one less lonely astronaut ♫)

Monday, January 4, 2010

Northeast American Railroad Network

Today's map is finally not just another Montréal downtown map of demographic data! Three cheers!

Montréal is on the map, but not exclusively.

Behold, the sadly underused (for passenger services) railroad network of the Atlantic Northeast!


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Sources today are the STRM satellite elevation files no longer graciously made available by NASA (more tax money well spent), and completely random North American Transportation shapefiles downloaded from mapcruzin.com. They may not be 100% accurate, but it's believable enough for me!

Railroads located in the US are in red, and those in Canada are blue.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Housing Unit Occupancy in Central Montréal

In what is probably going to be a series of several Montréal maps (since I did spend quite a few hours putting together the shapefile), here now are three maps showing what I showed previously for Manhattan -- the rate of owner-occupied, renter-occupied and vacant dwellings.


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I'm willing to bet there are a few methodological differences between how the U.S. Census Bureau tabulates what they call "housing units" and whether they are considered owner-occupied, renter-occupied or vacant, and what Statistics Canada / Statistique Canada does with what they call "dwellings". But I'm not willing to look it up right now. :)

Friday, January 1, 2010

A Labour of Love

I've been trying to convince Statistics Canada to give me a free copy of a map they sell for a thousand dollars, which contains the census tracts of all the metropolitan areas in Canada. So far, no luck, but we'll see...

In the meantime, I spent a few hours tracing over the census tracts of downtown Montréal in the Epi Info shapefile editor, and managed to create a map covering an area from Pie-IX to NDG, and from the river to the A-40.

I also wrote a small program to repeatedly query Census Tract Profile data, which you don't seem to be able to download for more than one census tract at a time, and compile it into one big data file.

So now I can make maps covering a variety of themes, from language to education to employment and mode of transportation used to get to work.

My first map shows what percentage of residents of each neighbourhood either walk or cycle to work.

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Not surprisingly a lot of people who live right downtown walk or cycle to work, but there are some zones further out where people do as well. The two areas that stick out, Lower Westmount / Saint-Henri and the Plateau / Rosemont, are also pretty mixed residential/commerce neighbourhoods, so perhaps it's people who live near where they work...?