Maps elsewhere: Real-time air traffic in 3D

Hat tip to Google Earth Blog: a .kmz file, updated every 10 seconds, showing air traffic more or less over Switzerland in real time in 3D. You'll need Google Earth to see the file -

April's real estate volume

TARA WALTON/TORONTO STAR

Map: Home sales volume: Percentage change, April 2009-April 2010

The Toronto real estate board released April's numbers today.

Tony Wong explains:

The spring market for resale homes in the Toronto area continued to show strength, with new records set for both sales and listings as the market moves toward balanced conditions.

According to figures released by the Toronto Real Estate Board today, there were 10,898 sales in April, representing a 34 per cent increase over last year and a record for the month.

Video: European airspace rebooted

Hat tip for this wonderful visualization of Europe's airspace being shut down and gradually restarted again to The Map Room:

Airspace Rebooted from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

Map of the Week: Ontario registered organ donors

ANDREW STAWICKI/TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

Map: Ontario registered organ donors by postal code, February 2010

This week's map looks at rates of organ donor registration in Ontario. A link to a fully interactive version is above. The results are discussed more fully in an article in today's paper..

The map shows that Ontario residents sign up for the province's organ donor registry at very different rates, and that the rates show clear geographic patterns.

Parts of the GTA have have very low rates. The pattern is dramatic. The lowest-ranking 50 postal codes out of about 500 in all Ontario all cluster in northwest Toronto and the nearby part of Vaughan, and in Scarborough and the nearby part of Markham:

By contrast, northeastern Ontario shows far higher rates, with a belt stretching from Muskoka through Sudbury and North Bay and north of Lake Superior showing rates over 30%. A top 10 list of Ontario's 500-odd postal codes includes two different neighbourhoods in Timmins and two different neighbourhoods in North Bay.

These are real regional differences with sharply defined clusters. The question is: what lies behind them? At first I wondered whether it was local differences in the approach taken when health cards are renewed, but apparently this is supposed to be done uniformly across the province.

So these are real choices, rooted in a complicated mix of attitudes about death, the body, strangers, medicine and so forth.

(What was your experience when you renewed your health card? Let us know in the comments.)

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Within Toronto, the city generally has rates under 10%, except for the inverted-T shape of the older neighbourhoods of the former City of Toronto, which have rates between 10 and 20%. York Region has rates below 10% south of a line more or less at King-Vaughan Road and Stouffville Road, and between 10-20% north of that. Much of Oakville has rates over 20%.

The Hamilton area has generally higher rates, with Dundas, Ancaster and the downtown neighbourhood south of Main St. W. showing rates over 30%.

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Here is a top 20 list:

1	P1C	43.80%	Northern North Bay
2	P2A	40.00%	Parry Sound
3	P3G	39.80%	North shore of Georgian Bay E of Killarney
4	P1A	39.20%	Southern North Bay
5	P4P	38.00%	Northern Timmins
6	P9N	36.91%	East of Kenora
7	P0H	36.80%	Upper Ottawa Valley, outskirts of North Bay
8	P4R	35.99%	Western Timmins
9	P7J	35.88%	South of Thunder Bay
10	P0G	35.69%	Georgian Bay shore north of Parry Sound
11	P0C	35.48%	South of Parry Sound
12	P3E	35.48%	Southern Sudbury and area to the south
13	P3Y	35.35%	West of Sudbury
14	P4N	35.13%	Central Timmins, area to the west
15	P2B	34.27%	West Nipissing (W of North Bay)
16	P3L	34.26%	Northwest of Sudbury
17	P0N	34.22%	East of Timmins
18	P3B	34.08%	Western Sudbury
19	P3A	33.94%	Northwestern Sudbury
20	P3N	33.88%	North of Sudbury

and a bottom 20 list:

484	M1W	5.20%	Toronto: Northwest corner of Scarborough
485	M3M	5.19%	Toronto: Central Downsview
486	M6B	5.18%	Toronto: Glencairn/Allen area
487	M1B	5.14%	Toronto: Malvern
488	M6M	4.92%	Toronto: Keelesdale/Mount Dennis
489	M1X	4.86%	Toronto: Morningside Heights
490	M1S	4.86%	Toronto: Agincourt
491	M9M	4.84%	Toronto: Weston Rd-Shepphard area
492	M3K	4.83%	Toronto: Eastern Downsview
493	L4K	4.74%	Vaughan: Keele/Langstaff area
494	L3S	4.61%	Markham: Markham Rd/14thSt area
495	L4J	4.42%	Vaughan: Centre St/Bathurst area
496	M1V	4.29%	Toronto: Milliken area
497	M3L	4.27%	Toronto: Western Downsview
498	M4H	3.99%	Toronto: Thorncliffe Park
499	M9V	4.00%	Toronto: Rexdale
500	L4L	4.00%	Woodbridge
501	M9L	3.80%	Toronto: Humber Summit
502	M6L	3.80%	Toronto: NW of Black Creek/Lawrence
503	M3N	3.50%	Toronto: Jane/Finch

The data was released by the Ministry of Health under access-to-information laws.

Each FSA has an individual graphic, like this one:

Map of the Week: Property crime by census tract

SHUTTERSTOCK

Map: Property crime by census tract, 2006

This week continues our census-tract-based crime map series with a look at property crime.The data came from Statistics Canada by way of the Toronto police.

The pattern is different from last week's violent crime map, though many of the top neighbourhoods are the same.

Property crime is much more diffuse than the clear pattern in last week's map. There is a concentration in the higher-density parts of the old city, with higher rates in a rough rectangle south of Dupont/O'Connor between Roncesvalles and Victoria Park. As we found with the 2008 breaking and entering map, there is no very simple and obvious connection to income.

Here is a top 20 list:

1	5350003	SW Parkdale	8 on violence map
2	5350073	Greenwood/Gerrard/railway
3	5350316.03	Steeles/Jane/Finch/Gosford
4	5350194.03	Overlea Blvd/Thorncliffe Park
5	5350039	Queen/Dundas/Spadina/Bathurst	6 on violence map
6	5350180	NW of Victoria Park/Danforth
7	5350368	Lawrence/McCowan/Brimley/401
8	5350067	Winchester/Parliament/DVP/Bloor
9	5350356	SW of Lawrence/Markham Rd
10	5350032	Carlton/Dundas/Jarvis/Parliament	1 on violence map
11	5350054	Bloor/Dovercourt/College/Brock
12	5350249.05	Albion/Kipling/Martin Grove/Mt Olive
13	5350071	Hampton/Danforth/Bain/Pape
14	5350205	Lake Shore/23rd St/lake/13th St
15	5350068	Winchester/Parliament/DVP/Gerrard
16	5350033	Queen/Dundas/Jarvis/Parliament	3 on violence map
17	5350292	Sheppard/Highbury/Jane/401	11 on violence map
18	5350052	Bloor/Roncesvalles/Sorauren/Wright
19	5350308.02	Finch/Bathurst/cemetery/Senlac
20	5350080.01	Danforth between Main and Woodbine

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The crimes tracked in this map were:
Breaking and entering
Theft of a motor vehicle (or inside vehicle), theft of bicycles, in possession of stolen property
Theft over $5,000, theft under $5,000 and shoplifting over and under $5,000 frauds
Mischief (against property or causing property damage)

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More background to the study is here. The maps toward the end of the study track particular offences, and are worth a look.

Now we are five

Mike Pegg at Google Maps Mania points out that this is the fifth anniversary of the first Google Maps mashup, announced in a post on Craigslist:

Keep in mind that an API for Google Maps did not yet exist. This was the first act of its kind to mash data up and add it to a Google Map and as far as record keeping goes, is, the first Google Maps hack, or mashup. I've always tended to call it a hack since it's just more bad-ass and disruptive than a "mashup" sanctioned by a proper API. :)

I think we can hold our heads up as reasonably early adopters - our first serious project, a homicide map backdated to the beginning of the year, launched in mid-2005, a collaboration between editors Brett Smith, Chris Carter and me.

Map of the Week: Violent crime by census tract

IAN WILLMS/TORONTO STAR

Map: Violent crime by census tract, 2006

Regular readers of this blog will have seen several iterations of words to the effect that a map is being produced because improved tools have made it possible.

When Statistics Canada published a file last year of 2006 crime rates for Toronto broken down by 531 census tracts, it wasn't possible to map it on line, and I more or less forgot about it until this week until I found it in an ideas spreadsheet. (Yes, I have an ideas spreadsheet - doesn't everybody?)

The data is from 2006, but very finely textured. I can only imagine the work involved. The authors explain:

Incidents that were located on the boundaries of many census tracts were divided in that number of census tracts. For example, an incident located on the boundary of 3 census tracts was counted as 0,333 incidents in each of the 3 census tracts.

As far as I can tell, the researchers ended up mapping 26,022 violent crimes. Property crimes were dealt with separately, and will be the subject of a different map.

Also, there was an attempt to relate crime rates to both residents and visitors in an area. One problem with our neighbourhood-based crime maps is that they divide the number of reported crimes in a neighbourhood by the number of residents. I suspect that this overstates the crime rate as experienced by residents in neighbourhoods with many outsiders, like those downtown. It's never been clear to me what to do about the problem other than to flag it for the reader.

Here is a top 20 list:

1	5350032	Carlton/Dundas/Jarvis/Parliament
2	5350312.05	SE of Jane/Finch
3	5350033	Queen/Dundas/Jarvis/Parliament
4	5350316.05	NE of Jane/Finch
5	5350207	Off Kipling N of Lake Shore
6	5350039	Queen/Dundas/Spadina/Bathurst
7	5350080.02	Danforth W of Victoria Park to Main
8	5350003	SW Parkdale
9	5350248.02	Martin Grove/Albion Road/Kipling/West Humber
10	5350312.02	SE of Driftwood/Finch
11	5350292	Sheppard/Highbury/Jane/401
12	5350018	DVP/Eastern/Carlaw/Queen
13	5350031	Gerrard/DVP/Dundas/Parliament
14	5350173	NE of Jane/Eglinton
15	5350358.03	Along Kingston Rd SE of Lawrence
16	5350312.04	SW of Jane/Finch
17	5350341.03	NE of Danforth/Victoria Park
18	5350069	Bain/Pape/DVP/Gerrard (includes Don Jail)
19	5350097.01	NW of Bloor/Dufferin
20	5350337	SW of Midland/Kingston Rd

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A string of neighbourhoods with high violent crime rates stretches south from Jane and Steeles more or less along Black Creek and the railway tracks south to Parkdale.

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A large area centred more or less at Lawrence and Bayview has fairly low violent crime rates:

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Another area with high violent crime rates starts in the east downtown and stretches east toward and past Victoria Park, with several areas of lower rates.

In an e-mail back-and-forth this week, Statistics Canada explained that the violent crimes tracked were:

Homicides: murders, manslaughters, infanticide
Attempted murders
Assaults
Sexual assaults, sexual offences (invitation to sex. touching, luring via computer, etc.)
Robberies
Criminal negligence causing bodily harm
Firearm offences: use of, discharge, pointing
Forcible confinements, kidnappings, abductions
Criminal harassment, uttering threats, threatening or harassing phone calls
Other violent violations: trafficking in persons, arson causing disregard for human life, intimidation, hostage-taking, incest, voyeurism, etc.

Tweaking the neighbourhood map

SIMON HAYTER/TORONTO STAR

Toronto Star neighbourhood map

Through much of the early part of last year, we were working on a Toronto neighbourhood map which was largely crowd-sourced: we produced a map and invited comments, then tweaked the map based on the comments, and so forth through several iterations. (You can follow the whole process here.)

The version published today has a few housekeeping issues sorted out - some boundaries have been tidied, the lines between areas have been thinned, and it is produced in a conventional .kmz format.

Map of the Week: Bedbug reports

Map: 2009 bedbug reports

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This week's map looks at bedbug problems reported to Toronto's public health department as a rate per 1,000 households by postal code.

The map shows a clear pattern, with bedbugs concentrated in a cluster of neighbourhoods in the east downtown, and then stretching into the east end as far as southwestern Scarborough. Parkdale also has high rates.

Shoreline Etobicoke and the Jane/Finch-Black Creek areas are also afflicted, at a lower level. The Annex, the Junction/High Park and Cedarvale also pop out on the map as one-offs.

The data was released by the City of Toronto in response to an access-to-information request.

Map of the Week: Military recruiting, redux, with video

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

This is Part 2 of the map I produced back in February showing regular force enlistment rates by postal code in Ontario.

We have the data for the whole country, along with a complete set of .kml boundaries, but for various reasons (the main one being that even the .kmz file is still too large to display) I can't produce a national map in our usual method.Yet.

So today we have a national map of regular force recruiting rates presented in Google Earth video, based on 2007 data.

The map shows some clear patterns - many people join the regular force from Atlantic Canada (which for anybody who has spent time with soldiers will not be much of a revelation), especially from the greater area around Halifax and the St. John Valley in New Brunswick. Fewer join from PEI, Newfoundland, Cape Breton and the north shore of New Brunswick. I expected higher rates in Cape Breton and Newfoundland.

There was some data missing in the Fredericton area, hence the visible hole in the map.

Quebec has lower rates, with the very visible exception of Quebec City and the area to the north, through and past Valcartier.

Ontario has a similar pattern - low enlistment rates, except for an area of the Upper Ottawa Valley stretching north from Petawawa. Trenton, Kingston, Barrie and Meaford are also pockets of high enlistment.

The West has very low enlistment rates, except for three pockets: Brandon, a large area around Cold Lake, and Victoria and the south shore of Vancouver Island.

As some readers will have already guessed, what all these areas have in common is a visible normal military presence, something that is otherwise unusual in Canada. (Edmonton, which is an oddity as a large city with a major regular army presence, has fairly low enlistment rates).

I'm still figuring out how to present Google Earth video, so be nice. I know the audio quality could be better.

Mouseover the image below to start:

Map of the Week: Passports

TORONTO STAR

Link to the map

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This week's map is the first of two looking at the percentage of passport-holders by neighbourhood, using postal codes as a proxy for neighbourhood.

So what does a passport map represent?

It seems to be a map of who has the resources for international travel, maybe or maybe not including the United States. (Windsor and Sarnia have fairly low rates of passport-holding, although the areas of New Brunswick along the U.S. border are high.)

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Here are some screenshots of parts of the map. First, Toronto. High passport rates are seen along the Yonge St. corridor, in the west end, and along the northern tier of Scarborough. Low rates are found in the familiar check-mark shape of the low-income map of Toronto - this is recognizably an income map. The interactive version is worth a detailed look.

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Next, Hamilton and Brantford. Inner-city Hamilton has lower rates than the suburbs, with rates falling the closer you get to the harbour. Brantford is an island of low rates.

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Next, for want of a better term, the near north. The Hwy. 60/400 corridor shows higher rates than the rest of the region, with Sudbury showing much higher rates than North Bay. Petawawa pops out as having higher rates than the rest of the Upper Ottawa Valley.

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Ottawa shows a clear progression from urban to suburban to rural, with the suburbs showing high rates, and the inner city more mixed.

I've been trying to figure out what to do with the increasingly stale population FSA population figures from the 2006 census. Areas where there has been serious population growth, like the downtown condo districts, show obviously wrong results when data a few months old is divided by the 2006 population. For this map I have excluded some of these, as well as any FSA with a population below 2,000. I'm not sure it's a good solution, but it's the best I've been able to come up with for now.

Bike maps, redux

Hat tip, once again, to BlogTO: ridethecity.com offers a bike route planner based on OpenStreetMap, better (as far as I can tell) than what Google is offering cyclists in the United States.

It came out of some road-testing pretty well just now - I like the fact that they include off-road bike paths like the Don Valley bike trail.

My only quibble, and it's a small one, is that all the downhill routes I tested were shown as having an elevation gain; presumably they mean an elevation change.

Derek Flack at BlogTO writes:

Case in point: I'm not convinced that the above suggestion of using Davenport to get from Christie and Dupont to Bloor and Bedford is optimal. From both a safety and speed standpoint, I tend to think it makes more sense to cross through the Annex to U of T using Barton and other side streets. Not only is such a route less trafficked, but it involves less elevation gain, a factor Anderson says Ride the City tries to take into account when recommending routes.

A route planner favouring residential back streets would be useful. I used to have a similar route to the one described (Christie and Dupont to downtown) and also ended up weebling though Seaton Village.

Designing a really useful bike route planner is a lot harder than making one for drivers or pedestrians, since cyclists' preferences vary so much. Some people ride on Lakeshore (which I tried once for a block and found terrifying) and others will ride only on empty streets on nice days.

I don't know much about the back-end programming of this kind of thing, or whether this would be horrendously difficult, but it would be useful to have an option that favoured local streets while respecting one-way rules, while also crossing main streets at lights or pedestrian crossings, where possible.

Bike directions in Google

Google now offers directions for cyclists, but only in the United States.

We may not be missing anything for the time being, though - when Google says the feature is in beta, they really mean it.

There's more at BoingBoing's discussion thread.

(h/t to the Map Room.)

Map of the Week: The adoption disclosure registry

Map: Adoptees
Map: Birth parents

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This week's maps look at Ontario's adoption disclosure registry, mapping birth parents and adoptees by postal code, as a rate per 1,000 of population.

There are over twice as many adoptees (28,300) on the registry as birth parents (12,990):

About 86% of the people on both lists are still Ontario residents.

Some of our maps show an immediate, obvious pattern; these really don't, except that both are more small-town and northern than not.

Birth parents cluster in the mining belt of northeastern Ontario (North Bay, Eliot Lake, Timmins and Kirkland Lake all have clusters). In the south, inner-city Hamilton, the St. Catharines-Thorold-Niagara Falls area, London, Brantford, Sarnia, Peterborough and Oshawa have clusters; Ottawa has a cluster centred in Vanier and Westboro. Toronto doesn't really pop out on the map at all.

The adoptees are more scattered, though there are clusters in Sudbury, North Bay, Kirkland Lake and Timmins. In the south, the same St. Catharines-Thorold-Niagara Falls area pops out, as does K-W, Sarnia, Peterborough, Belleville, Kingston and Ottawa.Once again, Toronto has no visible cluster.

The data was released by the Ministry of Community and Social Services in response to an access-to-information request.

A roundup of maps elsewhere

1) Michael Holloway at bikingtoronto.com links to a feature at sportdistancecalculator.com which calculates and charts altitude on bike routes. Here we see a route with red for uphill, blue for flat and green for downhill:

Next, we have all the data:

It also works for off-road paths.

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2) Next from Steve Munro and blogto: nextbus.com now covers some TTC routes - I only see the Queen's Quay/Spadina streetcars, but several others, including the King car, are promised.The data for this comes from GPS units on buses and streetcars reporting their positions. The main use seems to be for mobile devices, but there is a Google Map-based app as well.

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3) Just south of Withrow Park, the map shows a Riverdale neighbourhood attraction. Make of it what you will.