The hottest Mapping Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top Technology Topics

Britain's geospatial data is a huge mess

Odds and Ends of History • 1809 implied HN points • 18 Mar 26
🕹 Technology Mapping
  1. Geospatial data in Britain is fragmented across many organisations, with inconsistent rules and paywalls that make it hard to find and use.
  2. That fragmentation and charging for core datasets slows innovation and creates worse-quality data, and it effectively acts like a tax on startups and small projects.
  3. A National Data Library could consolidate and open addresses, maps and property data, and making these datasets free and usable would unlock big economic and social benefits.

Launching CivicMapper: Visualizing Land Values in 3D

Progress and Poverty • 2001 implied HN points • 10 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Mapping
  1. CivicMapper is an interactive 3D mapping tool that extrudes each parcel into bars to show land and property values and highlights vacant or underutilized lots.
  2. The visualizations expose where high land values don’t match existing development, revealing economic potential and guiding policies or planning moves like land value taxes or incremental building to close the gap.
  3. The tool depends on assessor data that can have anomalies, but it will expand to more cities, datasets, and analytic features while improving performance and accuracy over time.

The 50 Lost Waterways of Southwark

Londonist: Time Machine • 399 implied HN points • 24 May 24
🎨 Art & Illustration Mapping
  1. Coloring historic maps can provide interesting insights into the past, revealing hidden details such as lost waterways.
  2. Peeling off the rivers and streams from an old map and pasting them onto a modern map can show the significant presence of water bodies in an area.
  3. Exploring old maps and overlaying them onto current maps can unveil historical features like rivers that have been lost over time.

The Oldest Map Of London... Now In Colour

Londonist: Time Machine • 878 implied HN points • 29 Nov 23
🎨 Art & Illustration Mapping
  1. The Copperplate map is the earliest-known map of London and showcases the streets, buildings, and people of 16th century London.
  2. The map is a wonder of Tudor engraving, offering a unique glimpse into the history and layout of London from that era.
  3. Accessing the map and detailed information about it may require a subscription to Londonist: Time Machine.

Mapping the London of Sherlock Holmes

Londonist: Time Machine • 419 implied HN points • 14 Feb 24
🏝 Travel Mapping
  1. Sherlock Holmes is deeply associated with London, with many places in the city linked to the fictional character.
  2. Holmes' claim to have exact knowledge of London raises questions about the role of the city in the stories.
  3. The Victorian city of London plays a significant role in the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes.
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This Map Might Change Where You Live

The New Urban Order • 119 implied HN points • 01 May 24
🕹 Technology Mapping
  1. Close is an interactive map that helps people find neighborhoods with amenities important to them, like public schools, increasing personalized walkability.
  2. Close uses free spatial datasets and user feedback to build a detailed destinations roster, showing a commitment to accuracy and continuous improvement.
  3. Close differs from tools like Walkscore by focusing on transparency, user customization, and the 'time to furthest important destination' approach to assess walkability in cities.

The Days Are Long but the Years Are Short

Steve Coast’s Musings • 470 HN points • 09 Aug 24
🕹 Technology Mapping
  1. OpenStreetMap has shown that with teamwork and volunteer efforts, we can create something valuable from scratch. It's amazing how people from different backgrounds come together to improve mapping.
  2. Fear and vanity can hold us back from trying new things. It's important to move beyond just thinking about ideas and actually take action to create something new.
  3. Even if new projects don't succeed, it's okay to experiment. Many ideas might need to evolve or even be completely abandoned to find what really works.

The Fractal Map and Impossible Symmetry

Bedogged • 1 HN point • 26 Feb 23
🕹 Technology Mapping
  1. Achieving a 1:1 digital map of the earth is an impossible challenge due to physical storage constraints.
  2. Maintaining accuracy in maps requires constant updates based on real-world changes, especially as the scale of mapping expands.
  3. Creating a truly perfect map, reflecting human spatial knowledge, may only be achievable through the synthesis of all available spatial data using advanced AI technology.

The problem with isochrones: overcoming false precision in drive time maps

Expand Mapping with Mike Morrow • 3 HN points • 15 Dec 23
🔬 Science Mapping
  1. Drive time isochrones can give a false sense of precision because they are based on average traffic conditions, which can vary greatly.
  2. Improving isochrone accuracy can be done by increasing the number of trips, testing different conditions, and varied departure angles.
  3. To better communicate uncertainty, consider simplifying isochrone shapes and creating bands to show the range of possible outcomes.

Exit Google Maps, Enter Ola Maps

Sector 6 | The Newsletter of AIM • 0 implied HN points • 08 Jul 24
🕹 Technology Mapping
  1. Ola is moving away from Google Maps and launching its own mapping service called Ola Maps.
  2. To encourage users, Ola is offering a year of free access and credits worth up to 100 crore INR for developers.
  3. The CEO believes that Western maps don't suit India's unique needs, like local street names and traffic issues.

Bulk isochrone creation

Expand Mapping with Mike Morrow • 0 implied HN points • 15 Dec 23
🕹 Technology Mapping
  1. The script was made to analyze fan travel impact between Capital One Arena and a proposed new arena in Potomac Yards.
  2. Isochrones were generated with Mapbox and inserted into Snowflake as geographic data types.
  3. The analysis included 2 addresses and 6 different drive times, but the script can handle any number of addresses.