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All Streets

benfry.com — An image of 26 million individual road segments, without geographical features of any kind.

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  • valejo, on 05/02/2008, -1/+15Nice find. It's definitely in the style of Edward Tufte.
  • sfacets, on 05/02/2008, -14/+54Almost like cancer...
    • NoCt1, on 05/02/2008, -14/+6Thats what we are on this planet.
      • boombye, on 05/02/2008, -5/+2No, it's more like spores found in mold.

        http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/ts/IAQ/Got_Mold.html

        Then think of what we do to the planet, even animals can't and don't do what we do to this place.
        • rabidg00se, on 05/02/2008, -3/+11That's because they're not as smart as us. Please stop being ridiculous.
          • boombye, on 05/02/2008, -1/+5What we do the planet is no different than mold. The difference being that we're capable of intelligent thought and spores are not.
        • boombye, on 05/02/2008, -1/+2If the planet is alive, we are the spores spreading around. You're ridiculous is saying it's because they're not as intelligent as us, if they were, would they need things that cause pollution and eat away at the resources of the planet like fossil fuels? I'm not even an environmental type of person either.
      • ShadowMerchant, on 05/02/2008, -5/+0Feel free to jump off the nearest high bridge if you feel you're of no more worth than a cancer cell.
        • boombye, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1It's not about one's worth in comparison to cells just like we get infected, the planet is infected. We evolved from nothing into a resource abusing species, but who cares really, we're only human after all.
    • MisterThePlague, on 05/02/2008, -7/+7I logged in to post that exact same comment, but you beat me to it. "Asphalt cancer" it certainly is.
      • boombye, on 05/02/2008, -3/+2It appears people can't comprehend post-modern abstract thought, don't know why people dugg you down, but that's probably why.
    • gtlogic, on 05/02/2008, -8/+9You humans are not mammals. You see, all mammals instictively develop a natural equalibrium around you. You humans do not.

      • Zorkon, on 05/02/2008, -4/+15Agent Smith: You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus.
        • mehan, on 05/03/2008, -1/+3a virus is not technically an organism.
        • firstpost, on 05/03/2008, -0/+2@ mehan

          Biologists debate whether or not viruses are living organisms. Some consider them non-living as they do not meet the criteria of the definition of life. For example, unlike most organisms, viruses do not have cells. However, viruses have genes and evolve by natural selection. Others have described them as organisms at the edge of life.
          (Source: Wikipedia)
      • thallium205, on 05/03/2008, -3/+1"You humans" What the hell does that make you?
    • oxdeltaxo, on 05/02/2008, -0/+6Looks a bit more like that black mold that grows in your shower.
      • boombye, on 05/02/2008, -1/+2exactly! we're more like spores or bacteria on this planet, it might be too much of a post-modern concept for many of the modernists that frequent here, but you got it right on the money.

        http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/ts/IAQ/Got_Mold.html

        Read the first two things on that Q&A, it already seems familiar.
        • allhard, on 05/03/2008, -0/+2"...and digest materials such as our homes."

          Not seeing a connection.
    • Zera, on 05/02/2008, -1/+5It would be interesting to see a version that had the street widths drawn to scale, because the area I grew up in Wisconsin, there are often miles and miles of field/hills/forest between sections of road, with the roads making up easily less than one thousandth of a percent of total acreage. Yet, Wisconsin on this map appears to be a gray color, only one third as dark as say Chicago, and my nearest neighbor in my childhood home was a mile away. The idea that rural Wisconsin is one third as urban as Chicago is just ridiculous.

      No doubt this is just intended as art, but some people will think it's to scale. Compare, and you'll see it's just not true:
      http://benfry.com/allstreets/map4.html
      http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=44.247658,-90.6 ...
      Note: The google maps link every inch = 1 mile
      • Zera, on 05/02/2008, -0/+13And just because I love science and HATE *****, I decided to do the math to see if I was right.

        I took a typical 8 mile x 8 mile chunk of rural Wisconsin: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=44.531636,-90.3 ...
        I added up total number of miles of roads, and determined that in this typical 64 square miles, there is: 10.1 million square feet of road.
        Next I did the math to find that 64 square miles contains 1.78 Billion square feet in 64 square miles, meaning that road accounts for 0.56 % of total space.

        Next, I grabbed photoshop, and compared the darkness of this area on his map (rural wisconsin) to a lake, to see how much darker his algorythm drew the map.
        Black value of lake (no roads) = 100 (its faint yellow with no black whatsoever)
        Black value of this area on his map (smudged to get an average) = 58

        So this tells us that 0.5% actual road space was drawn with almost 50% of the way to totally dark black. (why else would chicago appear black, when in truth, the roads don't account for the buildings! Even Chicago is less than 50% roads!.

        Doing the math on how wide his algorithm drew his roads: 42% of total black = 0.5% actual road, that's a ratio of 84 times wider than reality, and thus, the roads on his map are drawn 84 times wider than they are, meaning a typical country two lane road is being drawn with a width of slightly more than a quarter mile wide. (No wonder Chicago is totally black!)

        So adjusting his map down to 84 times less dark, you get a REAL map of the roads with their widths drawn TO SCALE:

        VOILA: (yes, it's barely visible) But I have a hunch he didn't do it this way because he wanted it to be visible, and therefore artistic.
        http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/7221/maproadshj4. ...
        • dracostimpy, on 05/02/2008, -1/+3You friggin dork. Thanks for keepin it real tho!
        • Netrilix, on 05/03/2008, -0/+2Interesting. I can only view that image if I tilt my laptop screen nearly all the way back. Viewing it at straight on 90 degrees, I see white. Even tilting it back to 160, I still can't see anything. Right around 170, I can finally see the image.
      • JMSantos, on 05/03/2008, -1/+0You have to zero out the non-black reference first. You aren't 42% more black going from 100 to 58.
        • Zera, on 05/03/2008, -0/+1Incorrect. 100 is a value of pure white. 0 is a value of pure black. 100-58 gives you 42% of the way to pure black.
    • corneliusJones, on 05/02/2008, -0/+3It's what we were naturally selected to do.
    • boombye, on 05/02/2008, -1/+2I'm looking at my clock, and I realized it's time for all the /b/ tards to get off of school in the west coast, and in the east coast some of them should already be at home on their computers, hence the increase of ignorance that has spiked within the last couple hours.
    • darkism, on 05/02/2008, -0/+6Replace them with railroads and then we're talking.
    • boombye, on 05/02/2008, -0/+3Seems some of my fellow diggers could benefit from reading Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control:The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World" @ http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/

      I can't believe all the people digging me down and others here, specifically me because I'm a jerk, because they can't be bothered to educate themselves and can't comprehend the truth. Sorry if Post-Modern concepts are too much for some people to grasp and think this all sounds stupid, but hey, that's their fault for being ignorant.
    • directedition, on 05/03/2008, -0/+5Oh yeah, it's EXACTLY like cancer..... er..... wait, actually, isn't anything like cancer in the slightest.
  • fitqueenb, on 05/02/2008, -11/+5Pretty cool image
  • BeeArePro, on 05/02/2008, -69/+3FAIL
  • CzarKingRex, on 05/02/2008, -29/+5Once again the Left Coast proves how worthless it is. Suck it down jerks you can't even drive anywhere
  • cutething, on 05/02/2008, -3/+14The image itself is incredible, but the analysis makes it all the more so.
    • a1lazydog, on 05/02/2008, -0/+3good luck finding shortest path algorithm on that...

      or how about traveling sales man?
  • minou99, on 05/02/2008, -6/+3It looks cool, even if I live in a state considered "overseas" and not shown in the image.
  • AppleGeorge, on 05/02/2008, -9/+3Awesome. This is cooler than Google Maps. Atleast now when I'm looking down at the states I can't see everyone elses houses and how much bigger and better they look than mine.
  • jimthenglishman, on 05/02/2008, -1/+108his other thing is pretty cool too
    http://benfry.com/zipdecode/
    • Fubeman, on 05/02/2008, -0/+10I like the Zip one even more. I love the interactivity of it as well. You can really see how the Zip code numbering came about. Just type in one number, erase it, type another one digit, erase, it, etc. you can really see how it starts with 1 in the upper right corner, then works its way all the way to California with 9, Pretty neat.
    • vulcanius, on 05/03/2008, -0/+2It's created using the Processing software at Processing.org. I bought the book Visualizing Data he wrote about a month ago and it's definitely worth a read if you're interested in doing similar stuff. I'd recommend it to just about anyone.

      • Fubeman, on 05/03/2008, -0/+1I really have to stop visiting that site (Processing.org). I just get sucked right into it and next thing I know, I've spent 1 hour just getting mesmerized and blown away. Seriously, love Processing. After reading more about it, it just seems very organic, fluid scripting and programming. Thanks for the reminder (or maybe not . . . . . .).
  • DrDragun, on 05/02/2008, -3/+3The Boston-DC megalopolis is predictably black, but does anyone else think Atlanta looks disproportionately huge?
    • fsjenkins2000, on 05/02/2008, -3/+23Atlanta is pretty black itself
      • Ruger11mcrdpi, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1haha. dugg. Well done sir, well done.
      • atbnet, on 05/02/2008, -2/+3Atlanta - It's like Africa with buildings. Am I rite?
  • beargrylls, on 05/02/2008, -1/+4That's pretty sweet. I like how you can see the mountain ranges...
  • RooDoG, on 05/02/2008, -2/+18Its amazing how extensive our Road System is here in the US. Hard to believe we can upkeep something so massive.
  • postalblowfish7, on 05/02/2008, -1/+78super hi-res version please?
    • dodgejon, on 05/02/2008, -11/+3try googlemaps
    • Zera, on 05/02/2008, -1/+9I can't do high res, but I can do accurate: (this image is adjusted for the reality of how wide roads are. Roads drawn as pure black, all other space drawn as pure white:

      VOILA: (yes, it's barely visible) But I have a hunch he didn't do it this way because he wanted it to be visible, and therefore artistic.
      http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4168/maproadsqk5. ...

      Methodology:
      I grew up in rural Wisconsin, which is drawn on the map as one third as dark as Chicago, which is absurd, because my nearest neighbor was literally 1 mile away. The map didn't seem accurate to me, so I decided to do the math to see if I was right.

      I took a typical 8 mile x 8 mile chunk of rural Wisconsin: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=44.531636,-90.3 ...
      I added up total number of miles of roads, and determined that in this typical 64 square miles, there is: 10.1 million square feet of road.
      Next I did the math to find that 64 square miles contains 1.78 Billion square feet in, meaning that road accounts for 0.56 % of total space in rural Wisconsin.

      Next, I grabbed photoshop, and compared the darkness of this area on his map (rural Wisconsin) to a lake, to see how much darker his algorithm drew the map.
      Black value of lake (no roads) = 100 (its faint yellow with no black whatsoever)
      Black value of this area on his map (smudged to get an average) = 58

      So this tells us that 0.5% actual road space was drawn almost 50% of the way to totally dark black. (why else would Chicago appear black, when in truth, the roads don't account for the buildings! Even Chicago is far less than 50% roads! (by area)

      Doing the math on how wide his algorithm drew his roads: 42% of total black = 0.5% actual road, that's a ratio of 84 times wider than reality, and thus, the roads on his map are drawn 84 times wider than they are, meaning a typical country two lane road is being drawn slightly more than a quarter mile wide. (No wonder Chicago is totally black!)

      So adjusting his map down to 84 times less dark, you get a REAL map of the roads with their widths drawn TO SCALE:

      VOILA: (yes, it's barely visible) But I have a hunch he didn't do it this way because he wanted it to be visible, and therefore artistic.
      http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4168/maproadsqk5. ...
      • dodgejon, on 05/03/2008, -8/+3Dude...get a life.
        • Zera, on 05/03/2008, -0/+5Science is tedious and complicated, and some people like it. This only took 15 minutes, and I have a boring job. :)
      • elnerdo, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2To be fair, you haven't considered that with your 'accurate' map conversion, no place can be more than 1.19% road. You've eliminated the super-dense areas.
        • Zera, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1Yes, but that is only because he drew roads at one quarter of a mile wide, which means the super dense areas, his roads are drawn overlapping (often as much as 8-12 roads drawn on top of each other), and black only gets so black.

          But very good point, I have no way around that flaw in his algorithm. For reference, an extremely urban city, with normally sized city blocks has a road coverage percentage of 16.6%, and that is in areas with two lanes both ways for all streets. In those areas, streets were drawn with road widths over one half mile in width, and thus overlapping each of their 8 nearest neighbors. If you include alleys, that number goes up once again, yikes!
    • Tolzmaniac, on 05/03/2008, -0/+2Great work, Zera!
  • Zipko, on 05/02/2008, -2/+5I'm amazed by the definition in the Appalachian Mts. Without seeing any geographical references you can tell exactly where they are since most roads going over any of them have to wind parallel to the mountain to reduce the grade. Takes on the same shape and pattern you would see if someone did a geographical features map. Same with the major rivers too, the Mississippi and Missouri rivers are pretty well defined.
  • mal1964, on 05/02/2008, -22/+3Ron Paul Favors Obama.
    First
  • Kbennett, on 05/02/2008, -1/+8The squared off blocks of farmland are just so visually striking.
  • kipmartin, on 05/02/2008, -1/+6ok, now THAT is cool. especially after the Digg item about humans just being ants yesterday.
    • azpat, on 05/03/2008, -0/+1read "first men in the moon" the other day.
  • Towelie, on 05/02/2008, -5/+0cant see *****...
  • petebert, on 05/02/2008, -7/+1i heard detroit really is that black
  • mach32, on 05/02/2008, -5/+0S T U N N I N G
  • mennomateo, on 05/02/2008, -6/+1please continue this up into canada and down into mexico
    • StevieG, on 05/02/2008, -0/+5Canada would be a thin black line near the US border. Most of our population lives there.
  • utahnkid, on 05/02/2008, -3/+2Now I won't get so mad when the navigation gets random suburban neighborhood streets mixed up. Can you imagine keeping track of all those? And I wonder how many are just trails or roads without any asphalt, but because they're marked as roads they get counted in and made to look a bit more dramatic then reality.
    • Ruger11mcrdpi, on 05/02/2008, -0/+0I see your point but I would actually say not many. I mean there's VERY FEW dirt roads in Atlanta yet it's a huge black smudge on this map. I live in rural GA, and there's maybe 5% dirt roads in that area.
  • serif69, on 05/02/2008, -1/+1Great stuff. Interesting to see that I live in an area of New Jersey that isn't completely black on the map from the density of roads, and that Long Island is nearly completely saturated.
  • mcool119, on 05/02/2008, -3/+1I can see my house from here!
  • micahwilli, on 05/02/2008, -5/+3um..... welcome to the world of GIS... we've been around here for a while.
  • dafragsta, on 05/02/2008, -1/+33Look at all that white space. Now I know where to hide the bodies.
  • tbechtx, on 05/02/2008, -1/+4This is fascinating stuff! The visual patterns that emerge from statistical and collective data are quite intriguing.
  • exspasticcomics, on 05/02/2008, -1/+4in a way- it's cool... in another way- it's disturbing. one big block of cement.
  • HousePlaya, on 05/02/2008, -0/+1Fascinating to see our propensity for Euclidean geometry.
  • Laughsatyou, on 05/02/2008, -10/+2if it wasnt for george bush, the planet wouldnt look like that.
  • Ruger11mcrdpi, on 05/02/2008, -1/+2You must construct additional Pylons.... nevermind, Psi limit reached.
  • guidewire, on 05/02/2008, -1/+1tufteian
  • sherm420, on 05/02/2008, -3/+2I'm afraid he is using some bad/incomplete data. On his Kansas City map, he claims that there are large areas where there are no streets because of "blocks of farm-heavy areas". This is simply not true as i am sitting here right now with my 2007 USA vector streets file provided by ESRI. Specifically it appears Bates and Vernon Counties in Missouri have disproportionally less roads than equally rural Counties in both Kansas and Missouri. I'm not trying to be a thread crapper or whatever but this is not an accurate map let alone an impressive feat. Also the majority of "streets" (many are just dirt roads) in the Midwest follow the section township range boundaries originally proposed by Thomas Jefferson, not lat-long lines. If anyone here really wants to do this type of mapping download the latest QGIS (open source) and load widely available TIGER shapefiles. Similar (and complete) processing was used to create the USA street coverage on openstreetmap.com. I hope his dissertation is still in draft form. Buried, inaccurate.
    • rprins, on 05/02/2008, -0/+2I await to see your more impressive feat if this is so easy to do... Also, if you read his post about it you would have already known that he used the TIGER data feeds. (http://benfry.com/writing/archives/54)

      I personally find it fascinating, regardless if it's missing a few roads here and there.
      • sherm420, on 05/03/2008, -1/+0Amazing. I see you have done your research, oh wait this is digg. If you would have read the last sentence in my comment you would have known that i clicked further to read more behind the image. I correctly pointed out that his data "processing" for which he is supposedly earning (earned?) a phd in, is flawed, so flawed in fact that he obviously and statedly observed anomalies in his data set but brushed them off as "farm areas". I don't know what university you went to but i know my colleagues would have thrown this right back in my face. It would be a shame that this would go along side his other works in MOMA, but not surprising as east coasters love to perpetuate whatever myths they have about the midwest. rprins, I will have a graphic for you that shows all roads within the lower 48 or you can (and I'm repeating myself here which i hate to do) download a copy of QGIS and witness the data for yourself. i will even give you a head start http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/

        cheers!
    • Tyrghast, on 05/03/2008, -0/+1zomg i take everything literally and can't enjoy a simple, curious looking map. i never get invited to parties since i'm such a buzz-kill.
      • sherm420, on 05/03/2008, -0/+0crowley boy i see you are posting a comment at 4 in the morning. must have been a hell of a party.

        people in academia pride themselves on research, something glaringly lacking on digg. simple? curious? hmmm this guy has a ***** book on this subject and he cant even get it right. go ride a bull kid. or better yet go to a farm in a block of land. ***** hicks.
  • Section1, on 05/02/2008, -1/+1I was surprised by the lack of density in California, especially compared to the piss hole Chicago that I call home.
    • sherm420, on 05/03/2008, -1/+1See my reply above. This is possibly missing large amounts of data. I hope to do a more thorough analysis this weekend. I'm really hoping its due to the size of the image, because if his "processing" is flawed then so is his book and dissertation. Also Cali is relatively compact where developed.

      Cheers!
  • SEN5241, on 05/02/2008, -0/+3I can see my street from here!
  • Cornrider, on 05/03/2008, -0/+2This article is not accurate, the program actually used on these maps can be found here: http://fsk.deviantart.com/art/Line-Rider-beta-4025 ...
  • aguynamedben, on 05/03/2008, -0/+2This guy has written an O'Reilly published book called "Visualizing Data." I bought it a few days ago, and it's alright, but it's too specific to the Processing framework he created. It's almost like a documentation of the Processing framework instead of a general exploration of different ways to visualize data.
  • teambosun, on 05/03/2008, -0/+1Where we're going, we don't need... roads....
  • Iggins, on 05/03/2008, -0/+1Hooray for Schenectady, NY!
  • Talal, on 05/03/2008, -1/+0No love for Alaska...
  • Adam420, on 05/03/2008, -0/+1must not include gravel roads....cuz theres lots of empty spots in nebraska where u know there are dirt roads for farms n stuff.
  • devilsagain, on 05/03/2008, -0/+0Most of those roads lead nowhere.
  • devilsagain, on 05/03/2008, -0/+0most of those roads lead nowhere.
  • Jsnswif, on 05/30/2008, -0/+0Unreal.
  •  

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