Help me find good interactive maps

March 24, 2009 7:16 AM

What interactive maps have you seen that do a particularly good job illustrating an issue? I'm thinking about trying to put one together to illustrate a project I've been working on, which is loosely about policy changes, and I can't believe no one's done this before. This, from Newsweek, kinda gets it ... but I'm looking for other ideas.
posted by janet lynn to computers & internet (7 answers total)

BBC have some very good maps. Elections (US or UK)normally elicit one, all I can find at the moment is this
posted by BadMiker at 7:31 AM on March 24, 2009

These are not exactly interactive, but may be of use.
posted by aheckler at 7:49 AM on March 24, 2009

I like Gap Minder (also see Wired article).

This BBC article (scroll down for the Titanic graph) is also good, but not interactive.
posted by devnull at 8:03 AM on March 24, 2009

Toronto Star has a map blog with some interesting ones they've done to illustrate various issues (ie. bike accidents in Toronto, etc.). Sometimes includes a nerdbox that talks about the challenge of constructing the maps.
posted by Wilberto at 8:10 AM on March 24, 2009

If you measure the quality of an interactive map by how depressed you make young single men, this map I made is pretty high up there.

And here is a[n incredible] TED talk that's pretty much all Gap Minder.
posted by soma lkzx at 8:22 AM on March 24, 2009

You might find further inspiration at http://infosthetics.com/.
posted by Ness at 9:01 AM on March 24, 2009

Hmm. Thanks. Most of these seem to mine data. I'm not quite looking to do that -- I'm more looking to use a geographical area to explore an issue -- say, for example, what might happen to a small city if the power grid went down, or looking at who controls water rights in a small town in Arizona, or something like that. (Lots of possibilities, no?) Anyway, that raises two questions: are there maps out there that do this? And if not, maybe that's for a reason, and there's a better way to do this project?
posted by janet lynn at 10:46 AM on March 24, 2009