• Greene & Greene properties: a map

    So, I’ve created a map – using social-mapping tool Platial – of all the existing Greene & Greene properties I’ve been able to find record of. I’ll also be adding a new layer of no-longer-standing Greene & Greene projects, but that’s a few weeks off.Take a look, and let me know if you like this style of map and if the tool is easy to use; if so, I’ll revive our Craftsman Home Registry (above) using this, so you can all add your own homes.

  • off-topic: the new Google Maps and how to REALLY improve them

    I posted this over at Urban Cartography, but thought some people here might be interested too, especially since my test use of this new technology will be to make a map showing the locations and some background data on all still-existing Greene & Greene properties here in California.

    I was all excited to learn that Google is now allowing user-created
    data in custom maps. This is great! However, when I went to go play
    with it, I learned the current implementation – which in most ways is
    an alpha release – is missing 90% of what could make it useful. Such as:

    • the ability to import, not just export, addresses. I want to
      make a canonical map of all currently existing properties by the late
      great architects Greene & Greene; this is not very easy by
      hand-entering every single one. However, if I could import
      tab-delimited text, I could have the full list of 200 up in a few
      minutes!
    • the ability to display multiple maps at once – on top of each other
      (i.e., LAYERS). this would make google maps a useful tool for data
      analysis: you could display maps of different data layers at once, but
      what would make this feature REALLY shine would be…
    • the ability to pipe in data from online databases. if you combined
      #1 with the ability to bring data in from online databases, not just
      uploaded text files, you could use this with the ability to see
      different layers at once to see real causality – that is, you could see
      how income, for example, and property values, tax base, parks, etc. all
      interact. It would be a really democratic tool – the ability, for
      example, to see if public works projects actually happen in poor
      neighborhoods as they do in rich, or to see what zipcodes public
      university admissions come from (if that data were available), or to
      see what area codes had the most telemarketer calls originating, etc.
      In fact, this would turn Google Maps into the ultimate social
      researcher’s dream tool – the killer app that sociologists, activists,
      criminologists and others have been waiting for.

    Just a few (big) suggestions for the Google Maps folks to think about…