6 ms·

Interesting concept, but it needs curation from people who live in the places it purports to map. Perhaps it's just my familiarity with the state, but there is

Interesting concept, but it needs curation from people who live in the places it purports to map. Perhaps it's just my familiarity with the state, but there is a lot of dubious stuff in the results for New York and it gives a "this is completely automated and maybe not as useful as it could be" vibe. Some background: by law, every part of New York state except New York city is under at least three levels of government: state, county, and town/city. Many places have four: a village or city within a town (there's even the case of hamlets, which are like villages but do not have their own governments). Frequently, a town will have a village with the same name as the town within its borders, but other villages and hamlets as well. It appears (with one exception that I found, noted below) that villages are being treated as cities for map generation, but this is problematic in New York for two reasons: 1. Long Island, being right next to New York City, is incredibly densely populated. All of Nassau County could arguably be considered a single urban core, never mind its constituent towns (and the villages that make up those towns). Hempstead winds up being overrepresented because it looks like every single one of its villages makes it into the list. Hempstead itself shows up, but only the village of the same name that appears within its town. 2. Upstate, there are a lot of towns that have villages within them that have the same name. Unless specifically qualified with "the village of," I've found that people are usually referring to the town. I've found that's the case even when referring to a village that doesn't have a corresponding town of the same name, but happens to be the main center of that town. For example, I grew up near a village called Washingtonville. I would say I'm from Washingtonville even though my house wasn't technically within the bounds of the village: it was in its town, Blooming Grove. If I'm looking for a map of Washingtonville, I would expect to see not just the comparatively tiny area incorporated as "the Village of Washingtonville", but its surrounding area as well. To make matters more confusing, there is a hamlet of Blooming Grove within the town of Blooming Grove as well, but nobody cares about it: I couldn't name 3 people would would ever want a map of the hamlet of Blooming Grove. Another example is Wallkill, which is even more confusing. There's a town of Wallkill in Orange County: within it, there's the city of Middletown. If you're from there, you're going to say you're from Middletown unless speaking to someone from the area who could tell the two apart. There's also a hamlet of Wallkill in another county, part of a different town. If someone says they're from Wallkill, they're probably talking about the hamlet, not the town. You'd say you're from Wallkill (and not the town in which it resides, Shawangunk) because... well, I don't know. That's the way it's always been. Which brings me to the exception I mentioned earlier. Check out the listing for Monroe, NY: https://www.projectjefferson.com/?city=1804311 https://www.projectjefferson.com/?city=1804311 Three entities in New York share this name: a town in Orange county, a village within that town, and a county 300 miles northwest of the town that encompasses the city of Rochester and its suburbs. (There is no city of Monroe in New York.) The site shows a map for the county. Presumably, the list being worked off is actually referring to the town, which has a population of ~39,000 and not its village, which only has a population of ~6,000. Part in parcel with Monroe and the confusing town/village distinction, Kiryas Joel is listed (https://www.projectjefferson.com/?city=175464 https://www.projectjefferson.com/?city=175464). Kiryas Joel is a village within the town of Monroe comprising of about half its population. Even though it's massive, if you're from Kiryas Joel, you say you're from Kiryas Joel. But if you're from anywhere else within the town of Monroe, you say you're from Monroe. This is for cultural reasons: Kiryas Joel is a very insulated village consisting of mainly people of the Hassidic Jewish faith. If you're not Hassidic, you wouldn't self-identify with it even though it's the largest village within the town. This was long, but hopefully it demonstrates some of the perils of taking an automated-only approach to this type of mapping.

seanlinehan 12y ago
Mark, you are incredible. I think you've hit the nail on the head in terms of certain locales needing more TLC. I think we can get away with the fully-automated approach for most of the maps, but there are certain regions where this approach more or less falls apart. The one thing we say -- and mean quite seriously -- is that we are willing to generate maps of wherever you most desire. We've already begun the process of rendering custom areas for customers, all requested through the contact form of the site. I think we'll slowly refine maps of certain areas as time goes on. We wanted to cast the net wide and fast, but I think we can hone in from here on out. Thanks for your thoughts Mark!
- itafroma 12y ago
  No problem: I think maybe part of the problem is treating state-level subdivisions the same nationally. For New York, perhaps a decent compromise would be to map by town outside of New York City. Other states don't necessarily have the same concept of what a town is that New York has, but have some other type of subdivision that makes more sense for them. I bet it'd be a lot easier if the US had a system like NUTS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature_of_Territorial_Units_for_Statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature_of_Territorial_Uni...
- msellout 12y ago
  Some cities require a larger footprint. For example, Atlanta should include the entire I-285 Perimeter.
  - madcaptenor 12y ago
    Also, cities that are longer east-west than north-south should be in landscape, instead of portrait, orientation. Berkeley, CA and Cambridge, MA are examples. (And the San Francisco print should probably be a square.)
- seszett 12y ago
  > I think we can get away with the fully-automated approach for most of the maps Even though it might look nice to outsiders, I firmly believe you can never get representations of cultural and human data really right if you're doing them automatically. Such data will always be full of quirks, and representing it will always need some tweaking if you want to get it perfect. Say, moving a label a bit further left so it doesn't hide a monument, displaying a street wider than its actual designation because it's an important way, not showing at all another path because it's disconnected from the rest of the network and really not that important (or displaying the more minor path that connects this one to the rest even though its designation means it should be hidden). I really think a lot of people who make maps do not acknowledge the fact that human data is not something that is completely normalized, not normalizable, and sometimes might not be able to be processed with a set of rules, however fine.

seanlinehan 12y ago

Mark, you are incredible. I think you've hit the nail on the head in terms of certain locales needing more TLC. I think we can get away with the fully-automated approach for most of the maps, but there are certain regions where this approach more or less falls apart. The one thing we say -- and mean quite seriously -- is that we are willing to generate maps of wherever you most desire. We've already begun the process of rendering custom areas for customers, all requested through the contact form of the site. I think we'll slowly refine maps of certain areas as time goes on. We wanted to cast the net wide and fast, but I think we can hone in from here on out. Thanks for your thoughts Mark!

itafroma 12y ago
No problem: I think maybe part of the problem is treating state-level subdivisions the same nationally. For New York, perhaps a decent compromise would be to map by town outside of New York City. Other states don't necessarily have the same concept of what a town is that New York has, but have some other type of subdivision that makes more sense for them. I bet it'd be a lot easier if the US had a system like NUTS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature_of_Territorial_Units_for_Statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature_of_Territorial_Uni...
msellout 12y ago
Some cities require a larger footprint. For example, Atlanta should include the entire I-285 Perimeter.
- madcaptenor 12y ago
  Also, cities that are longer east-west than north-south should be in landscape, instead of portrait, orientation. Berkeley, CA and Cambridge, MA are examples. (And the San Francisco print should probably be a square.)
seszett 12y ago
> I think we can get away with the fully-automated approach for most of the maps Even though it might look nice to outsiders, I firmly believe you can never get representations of cultural and human data really right if you're doing them automatically. Such data will always be full of quirks, and representing it will always need some tweaking if you want to get it perfect. Say, moving a label a bit further left so it doesn't hide a monument, displaying a street wider than its actual designation because it's an important way, not showing at all another path because it's disconnected from the rest of the network and really not that important (or displaying the more minor path that connects this one to the rest even though its designation means it should be hidden). I really think a lot of people who make maps do not acknowledge the fact that human data is not something that is completely normalized, not normalizable, and sometimes might not be able to be processed with a set of rules, however fine.