
Show HN: Artistic Maps of Over 4,000 U.S. Cities - seanlinehan
https://www.projectjefferson.com/
======
vacri
I don't really understand the use of tribal names for the various styles. Does
'shoshone' really associate with 'garish'?

When using tribal or other demographic names, I'm always reminded of the
argument once put against the Jeep Cherokee: there's no such thing as a Ford
Caucasian or a Honda Negro. And for fairly obvious reasons. Or, if instead the
names were European demonyms, you'd still have people asking why that colour
scheme goes with that name. If it was 'French' instead of 'Shoshone', people
would ask "why is this garish scheme associated with them?". If it was 'Czech'
instead of 'Blackfeet', people would be asking why the nighttime colours are
associated with that demographic.

As far as I can tell - and I could be quite wrong here - the demonyms used
have nothing to do with the associated schemes, and are just 'friendly names'.
I'd find a different naming scheme, where the names semantically matched the
colours. For example, Bannock is proposed as a tribute to Warhol, so call it
something like 'Warhol' (though maybe that exact name might also run you into
copyright issues... Perhaps 'Soupcan'?)

Also, the reason for the colour scheme should be the first paragraph in the
associated blurbs, not the third. The other two paragraphs are boilerplate and
inherently less interesting when you're looking through the series.

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dougmccune
My first guess would be that this is using OSM data, but I didn't see any
mention of that on the site and didn't see any OSM copyright notices on the
images. Could one of the creators explain where the map data comes from?

~~~
seanlinehan
Yup, totally OSM data. Going to add attribution to them in our Our Story
section right now. Totally missed that, but happy to give credit where credit
is due. Thanks!

~~~
walterbell
[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ#3a._I_would_lik...](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ#3a._I_would_like_to_use_OpenStreetMap_maps._How_should_I_credit_you.3F)

\---

Our requested attribution is "© OpenStreetMap contributors". You must also
make it clear that the data is available under the Open Database Licence. This
can be achieved by providing a "License" or "Terms" link which links to
www.openstreetmap.org/copyright or www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl.

... This credit needs to appear in a place reasonable to the medium you are
utilising. In other words, you should expect to credit OpenStreetMap in the
same way and with the same prominence as would be expected by any other map
supplier.

... For a printed map, the credit should appear beside the map if that is
where other such credits appear, and/or in the "acknowledgements" section of
the publication (often at the start of a book or magazine).

\---

EDIT: looks like this only applies to OSM maps, not data. What's the
difference between a "Produced Work" and a "Derivative Database"?

~~~
chippy
Produced Work is an output that uses but does not alter the OSM data. So you
can use an OSM database with your own data overlaid on top. These lovely paper
prints would be a produced work. One basically does not change the OSM data,
you just produce things with it.

Derived database is where you adapt the OSM data with your own data, or
perform some kind of manipulation of the data For example, vector
simplification or calculating the road lengths and adding that into the data,
or merging addresses from one dataset with the polygons from OSM.

~~~
walterbell
Thanks for the explanation.

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mturmon
I'm in your target audience -- I used to have a wall size Thomas Brothers map
of LA on my wall, and I have a large map of Southern CA geography there now.
But:

Why is are most of the color schemes so garish? Did you run these by a
designer? I'd think that many of the LA posters (Blackfeet, crow, Shoshone,
Pawnee, even Bannock) are so garish as to be unusable in most rooms.

Why is the water the same color as the border?

And, you need deeper zoom (at least in selected areas), or I can't see what
I'm getting. Within the preview, some indication of the scale of the shown
features within a print of a given size would be useful.

~~~
seanlinehan
To each their own, I suppose. Our goal was create designs that were bold and
bordering on the abstract, rather than to create traditional maps. I'd say
maps are one of the more ubiquitous pieces of art, but rarely are cause for
any attention. We wanted to create art anchored in people's identities -- not
just another standard map of Paris.

I think what I'm getting at is that you _probably_ aren't in our target
audience for these current designs. That's totally okay... Perhaps one of our
future designs will suit your fancy.

~~~
gabemart
Rather than the deeper zoom the OP suggested, I would suggest a link to a
full-screen lightbox of the map image. On a 1080p monitor, the map box only
takes up 20% of the screen real estate.

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seanlinehan
Hey there,

I'm one of the two creators of Project Jefferson. We'll do a full run down of
the tech we used to do this some time this week, but I'm 100% willing to chat
about anything to do with the project.

We started working on this just a couple weeks ago and are super excited to
ship it tonight. If anything breaks or looks wonky, please drop me a line. :)

Cheers, Sean

~~~
msutherl
I can't help thinking it's a bit tasteless, and at best arbitrary, to name
your maps of New York, a territory brutally taken from the Lenape by the
Dutch, after (unrelated) Native American populations.

See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kieft%27s_War](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kieft%27s_War)

Edit: I see now it's the color schemes for every map, in which case I'd say
it's perhaps a bit tasteless to name the colors of maps of colonial cities
after exterminated peoples.

Otherwise, really lovely project.

~~~
seanlinehan
Thanks for your comment.

We were on the fence with the naming of the maps, but decided to roll with the
potential misunderstanding of what they represent. We were really interested
in playing into themes of American exploration for this project. We settled on
Project Jefferson as the name of the project, in honor of Jefferson's
commissioning of the Louis and Clark expedition. We named our map themes after
the tribes found during their journey, in homage to the shared identity of the
land.

~~~
mbubb
"We named our map themes after the tribes found during their journey, in
homage to the shared identity of the land."

\- I don't understand what you mean here. For the NYC "Sioux" map you mean
that there were Sioux tribes in the NYC area? I am sure that is not true. It
doesn't feel like "homage to the shared identity". For me it really strikes
falsely

~~~
mcphage
>> We named our map themes after the tribes found during their journey

> For the NYC "Sioux" map you mean that there were Sioux tribes in the NYC
> area?

I don't think Louis & Clark did much exploring in the NYC area...

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frewsxcv
Wouldn't it be copyright infringement if the printed maps don't attribute OSM?

~~~
fastball
[http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright](http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright)

This seems to indicate that yes, OSM must be attributed in print.

------
freehunter
I'm not understanding how the cities are chosen. For example, Madison, WI
(home of a Big 10 university where probably more than a few folks here went to
school) is non-existent, but Fitchburg, Middleton, and Sun Prairie, three
suburbs of Madison _are_ included. Madison is the second largest city in the
state. Just for giggles, I looked up Michigan, and the second largest city
(Grand Rapids) is represented even though it's a smaller city than Madison.

That's a somewhat random example from me searching for cities folks here might
know, but it's certainly odd.

~~~
seanlinehan
Really good question. We started with a list of the 5,000 highest population
cities in the U.S and tried to generate maps of as many of them as possible.
We are using Open Street Maps data as our source, which is generally pretty
amazing but didn't provide the data in the format that we needed it for every
city. There were a good couple hundred cities that we wanted to generate but
didn't. We hand generated binding boxes for a good number of very large
cities, but didn't do it for all of the missing ones.

If you'd like, we can make one for Madison!

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dnewms
Here is a similar remix of OSM, that allows you to zoom in and pan, export as
.jpg, or embed - for free:
[http://maps.stamen.com/#watercolor/12/42.3318/-83.0503](http://maps.stamen.com/#watercolor/12/42.3318/-83.0503)

~~~
seanlinehan
Good find! We ran across this while building Project Jefferson. It's a pretty
cool project.

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davidw
I typed in 'Eugene, Oregon' into the search thing and it didn't find it. The
map does exist though.

I actually find having lots of nicely done details is what I like in a map.
The super-detailed USGS quads, for instance, are very nice.

I'm also not wild about the native american names, I think they might be a
distraction for a lot of people. Maybe you could go with US regions or
something.... "northwest", "southwest", something like that? Or states?

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robszumski
Clever project that shows how access to data, normally behind massive
paywalls, can be used for really creative projects that otherwise wouldn't
exist.

~~~
seanlinehan
Thanks!

------
schmidtc
Your search feature doesn't handle "St. Louis" type searches.

Searching for "St." anything returns nil, but searching for "Paul" returns
"St. Paul" and others.

Otherwise it's an interesting exercise.

------
furyofantares
I was surprised to see the city I live in (because it's small - population
7100) but I guess 4000 cities is a lot, googling shows people estimating 20k
cities total in the US.

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itafroma
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
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!

~~~
msellout
Some cities require a larger footprint. For example, Atlanta should include
the entire I-285 Perimeter.

~~~
madcaptenor
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.)

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mlinksva
It is unfortunate that the name of your project honors a slave owner.

