San Francisco crime mapped as elevation
Doug McCune maps San Francisco crime in 2009 as if it were elevation. Peaks and valleys emerge with the rolling terrains of crime. The above is the map for prostitution:
My favorite map is the one for prostitution (maybe “favorite” is the wrong choice of words there). Nearly all the arrests for prostitution in San Francisco occur along what I’m calling the “Mission Mountain Ridge”, which runs up Mission St between 24th and 16th. I love the way the mountain range casts a shadow over much of the city. There’s also a second peak in the Tenderloin (which I’m dubbing Mt. Loin).
I love how realistic the 3-dimensional models look. They could almost pass for clay figures. Doug notes that the series of maps are more an art piece than they are information visualization, but these would be a great complement to your standard choropleth.
Cool!
But as you pointed out….. the shadows and 3d feature actually make it harder to read this than properly done circles or a choropleth.
I do like the 3D though, visually. Maybe it could be improved analytically if the angle of the viewer was a little more vertical, and the shadows were either taken out or made lighter.
Gee, I live on a mountain top and the view is great!
Perhaps, if prostitution were taken as the blight that it is, it would be better to render the peaks as troughs, valleys instead of hills. Then the difficulty of shadows would be restricted to the indicated area.
While I don’t agree that prostitution is blight. I would say that the hills with their shadows that cast over much larger area…metaphorically does more to suggest your interpretation than if they were just holes.
They’re women, not just holes.
In order to get something out 3D models they need to be interactive. Any static view will have the issues of occlusion of regions of interest, troughs will not help with this. The major characteristics of the data set though come across nicely.
Too bad they can’t tell the difference between the Loin, which includes Market, and Broadway with the sex shop and champagne hustle bars.
Actually, that Broadway region probably includes Polk St. with the trannies and working boys…
The Prostitution Hill most south . . . City College has as many 647b’s as Broadway or Polk Street?!!!
Is it displayed using a linear scale?
This graphic is great, it shows how creative one can get when displaying information.