Monday, June 6, 2011

Zoomable block-level Census change maps for the NYC metro area

The CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research has launched a set of interactive maps showing detailed race/ethnicity change at the local level throughout the New York City metro region, along with an analysis of the changes in New York City.

The maps use the “before and after” technique that the NY Times and others have used effectively for images of natural disasters. But they’ve integrated the slider technique with two overlapping sets of interactive maps via OpenLayers (an open source online mapping framework), so you can slide between the two (showing 2000 and 2010 block-level maps of predominant race/ethnicity patterns) while also zooming in and out and clicking on individual Census blocks for detailed population data.

The color-shaded maps are overlain on a Microsoft basemap – you can set the transparency of the map dynamically so place names and streets become more or less visible, and also switch between the Bing street map and aerial imagery.

Here’s a direct link to the maps. They also have an analysis of the data for New York City, plus static 2000-to-2010 maps with the slider for New York’s 5 boroughs.

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