Where are they going? New Yorkers' daily movements mapped

Where are they going? New Yorkers' daily movements mapped

Jeff Clark, of Neoformix, has used data from geolocated tweets to map the movements of New York's Twitter users over a typical day

I love this would have linked it to my university dissertation back in the day if the tech had been around in 1999!  Also had a similiar idea for our activities week a couple of years back but drawing pictures via geo-tagging walking the streets of New York.

 

Jeff Clark's visualisation maps the daily movements of New Yorkers. CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE Illustration: Jeff Clark, Neoformix

Drawing inspiration from Hint's wind map of America, Neoformix's Jeff Clark has created a similarly intricate map of New Yorkers' daily journeys.

The map was produced using data from geolocated tweets, where journeys are based on any two or more updates posted within a four hour window of one another by the same user.

The starting point of each trip is coloured blue, and the colour gradually changes through purple to red, where the journey ended.

Very short journeys are denoted by a blue dot or short line, while a longer red segment corresponds to a trip where travel was at high speed.

The image below shows journeys made between 6 and 11am. Two particular flows stand out; a large number of people can be seen exiting Central Park at its south-eastern corner, while crowds are congregating in Times Square.

Here, journeys taken between 6 and 11 am are illustrated. CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE Illustration: Jeff Clark, Neoformix
 

This next image shows trips taking place between midday and 5pm. Lots of people have made their way to Union Square, and several high-speed trips end at Grand Central Station, possibly showing commuters jumping into cabs as they hurry to catch trains.

Travel between midday and 5 pm is shown here. CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE Illustration: Jeff Clark, Neoformix
 

The final panel shows flows between 6 and 11pm. The busiest area is around the junction between 54th Street and 6th Avenue, and several trips end at The Pond in Central Park's south-eastern corner.

 

In this panel journeys between 6 and 11 pm are mapped. CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE Illustration: Jeff Clark, Neoformix