20 Best Maps of 2014

Happy new year! In this post I have summarized my 20 favourite mapping projects from 2014. This has been an exciting year for me! I was promoted in my role at Golder Associates, working as a GIS Analyst and Cartographer on urban and environmental planning projects; however, I resigned in august and moved to Toronto to begin my Masters in Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson University. I have continued to produce maps for this blog in my spare time using open data and I was recently hired to create maps for Dr. Richard Florida at the U of T Martin Prosperity Institute. I already have some exciting ideas for 2015, so consider subscribing to this blog to see more cool maps in the future!



 Vancouver Property Values

Metro Vancouver Commuter Challenge Trips




Comparative Study of Bicycle Infrastructure

Population Density in Metro Vancouver and Toronto

Average Home Value in Metro Vancouver

Median Income in Toronto

Visible Minority Population in Metro Vancouver and Toronto

Social Determinants of Health Research for Cowichan Valley

City of Vancouver Integrated Stormwater Management Plan Analysis

Skate Park Planning Community Consultation 

Assessment of Building Permits in Toronto

Assessment of Park Accessibility in Vancouver

Analysis of Dog Licences in Toronto and Most Popular Dog Names

Community Gardening in Vancouver and the Arbutus Corridor

Street Lamp Density in the City of Vancouver

Neighbourhood Design Evaluation of Cabbagetown

Environmental Assessment for Woodfibre LNG Proposal

Environmental Assessment for BURNCO Mine Proposal

Valentines Map

Walkability Map of Vancouver

Want More? Check out my "Thirteen Best Maps of 2013"

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Dogs of Toronto

I love dogs. I love data. I recently found an Excel file in the City of Toronto's Open Data Library that contains the number of pet licences per 3-digit postal code in 2013. Naturally, I wanted to SEE what the data looked like. The following three maps explore different dimensions of this dataset. First I explored the number of dogs per household, then the number of dogs per square kilometre of residential land, and finally the ratio of dogs to cats in each 3-digit postal code.










Overall, there are approximately 55,000 dogs and 25,000 cats registered in Toronto. It is important to note that not all pets are properly licenced, so these data may not be fully representative. In particular, cats may be under-represented due to lower licensing rates. For more open data exploration about pets, be sure to visit my previous post about the Dogs of Vancouver and don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions!

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Dogs of Vancouver

I love dogs. People who own dogs are also statistically healthier - many owners meet their daily physical activity guidelines through dog walking alone! My own experience has also demonstrated that dog owners have more social interaction as dogs love to introduce their owners to each other.

I have always wondered how many dogs there are in Vancouver, so I finally decided to check if the Vancouver Open Data Site has any information about pet ownership. Indeed, there is a complete list of all registered animals. This is definitely not representative of ALL dogs in the city, as many are not registered, but I figured it is a fairly good sample. The list includes some other animals too, but over 95% are dogs. In total there are about 16,000 records, and I was surprised to discover there was nearly 50% more boy dogs than girl dogs - if you can explain this I would love to hear your ideas?

I was really hoping each dog would have a home address, but sadly there were no spatial attributes. However, there were other data to play, including dog species and name. I could not resist having a little fun with these text attributes on the following two figures:

1,000 Most Popular Dog Names in Vancouver

Click here to view this image in full size so you can zoom in.

100 Most Popular Pet Species in Vancouver

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