The folks at Twitter recently updated their Andes height map for Twitter — adding two additional 3D city maps (Buenos Aires and Moscow) which rise and fall where people tweet more or less. The Andes map set allows users to pick a city, view it through a variety of filters and see what locations people are tweeting from, where there are Twitter dead spots, and to speculate as to why this use might be so low.
These maps are height maps, a specific type of map of terrain which rises in height due to a larger concentration of what is being measured. In this case, those would be tweets, but they can be other things as well. What is important to note about height maps, is that they do not reflect the height of the actual terrain.
The Andes project now consists of five maps rendered in the browser window in 3D, mapping out New York City and San Francisco in the U.S., as well as Buenos Aires, Istanbul, and Moscow. Each city can be viewed through a variety of filters. Some — such as the clear, dark, and watermark — show some area names and major roadways, helping give a person a clearer idea of where they are in the city.
Others are more abstract, such as contour lines, fill, grid and heat. None of these are recommended if you’re unfamiliar with the city you’re looking at. Contour line, despite the name does not correspond with actual terrain elevation on this map. It is merely the contour lines of the raised data.
When we look at a city such as New York, for instance, we can spot several dead zones for Twitter. Central Park for instance, as well as several other parks in Brooklyn and Queens show up as dead zones. On the other hand, areas such as the Financial District in Lower Manhattan tower over the city like a colossus. Staten Island, meanwhile, lacks this elevation and wide Twitter use.
It’s also not as popular past 60th Street (this is where Central Park begins if you’re looking at the map from a bottom-top perspective). This is particularly interesting from a poverty perspective: beyond Central Park is Upper Manhattan, Harlem, and the Bronx, areas which are particularly hit hard by poverty. Though not fully represented on the map, we can see that there is a definite decline in Twitter use to the north of Central Park.
This correlates with an April 2013 report released by the New York City Center for Economic Opportunity. The Bronx borough has some of the highest poverty rates in the city. Contrast that with Manhattan, which is thriving in Twitter users.
Likewise, Brooklyn should also be suffering a similar lack of Twitter users according to this data and map. Gentrification and the presence of a younger, “hipster” population may be offsetting what should be a decline in Twitter use. As fas as Staten Island, though, Staten Island’s geography and make up is decidedly different from that of the other boroughs. It is made up more with homes and a lot less high-density urban development. It’s possible this lack of large tracks of high-density urban landscape as well as the ages of residents helps keep this population from being as Twitter-active.
However, speculating just over New York City’s nuances is not all that this map allows people to do. San Francisco, for instance, allows users to actually see the rises of the Golden Gate and Bay bridges, and the large tract of beach in Buenos Aires.
The data for these city maps comes from the Billion Strokes data released in May 2013. For users who would rather see the same data laid out in a traditional 2D map, or different areas, the Billion Strokes data set might be worth checking out. It’s possible to find the Imperial Palace in Tokyo without knowing where anything is!
Elaine Rita Mendus is a undergraduate student working on graduating college (someday soon). Her career interests include geopolitics, the Hispanic community, and urban planning. She really wouldn't mind ending up a scriptwriter though...
