Author: Ricky Holzer
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Comparing Median U.S. Home Values and Incomes
This week, my coworker showed me a cool map from Esri’s Living Atlas relating median home values with median incomes in the U.S. — click the image below to pull up the interactive map. I thought it was a cool idea, but something bothered me about the map. Later that night, I had a shower…
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The Geography of American Food
I made this poster for the Minnesota GIS/LIS Consortium 2019 Conference. Stay tuned for posts diving deeper into barbecue, hamburgers, pizza, sandwiches, hot dogs, and fast food!
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Adding Custom North Arrows to ArcMap 10.X
By far the easiest way to tell if someone used ArcMap to create their map is by looking at the north arrow. The first version of ArcMap, 8.0, was released at the end of 1999, and most of the software\’s included north arrows reflect the clipart-y style of that era. One of the simplest ways…
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Analyzing Fires in Minneapolis Across Space and Time
After recently attending the Esri UC and listening to many sessions about spatial analysis, I have been inspired to test what I’ve learned. The City of Minneapolis where I currently live has an excellent open data portal, just waiting for GIS nerds like me to download and have some fun. Now I will walk you…
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Analyzing Pedestrian Accessibility Using QGIS and OpenStreetMaps Data
Current transportation planning practices are shifting toward a focus on accessibility – the ease in which a person can reach destinations given the available transportation network – for all modes of transportation including walking, bicycling, and using public transit. This article will explain different methods of measuring accessibility and how to adapt those methods for…
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Mapping Homelessness in the United States
After reading an article about homelessness in the U.S., I read the comments at the bottom and saw the typical finger pointing claims that liberal cities like those in California are havens for the homeless because of their lax policies and plush benefits. In particular, Los Angeles is usually called out because of the notorious…
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How to Translate MySQL Data into GeoJSON Using PHP
I’ve seen a couple StackExchange posts about taking data from a MySQL table and trying to display it on a Leaflet map, but none of the solutions seemed to be fully baked or applicable in my situation. This example comes from my side project, a Midwest hiking website at www.nocoastbestcoast.com, a site I built from…
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Make a Heatmap of Travel Destinations
I enjoy traveling and I enjoy making maps, so one morning I woke up and decided to combine the two. Steps: I’ve always kept a list in my head of the places I want to go, so this project allowed the data nerd within me to finally create a spreadsheet of that list. A quick…
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Mapping Wind Power in the US
I remember being amazed looking out the car windows at the wind farms in the Coachella Valley as a child, watching the otherworldly beauty of these giant structures spinning in unity during the day or the UFO-like field of blinking of red lights at night. I have been admiring the work of John Nelson since…
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Visualizing the growth of the Minneapolis – St. Paul bikeshare program 2010-2015
As the #1 bike friendly city, you won’t be surprised to see the growth of the Nice Ride bikeshare program in Minneapolis. Visualizing the change over time is difficult to do using a static map, so I opted for animation to really show the expanding network and increase in trips. I present to you my…