Got Mail? Mapping the Expansion of the Post Office Network (1700-1900)

Posted this one for my brother-in-law, who keeps the US mail moving "rain or shine" (thank you, Juan Carlos).

I recommend pausing the time series for the War of 1812 and the Civil War in 1862. It helped me gain a geographic perspective of our nation's expansion from its colonial beginnings.




Posted: Visualizing US expansion through post offices. from Derek Watkins on Vimeo.
This is a visualization of US expansion in North America from 1700 to 1900, seen through changes in the spatial distribution of post offices.

Data from the USPS Postmaster Finder, with lat/long coordinates extracted from placenames through correlation with the USGS Geographic Names Information System.

Mapping Migration - a Visualization of Inflow & Outflows by Nation

As the election season matures and the Census decennial data slowing "leaks" out, there has been a lot of focus on America's changing demographics.  Below is a neat site that visualizes the migration inflow & outflows by nation.

Here is a screenshot (from peoplemov) of the US migration inflows, interesting how the drop off in count is dramatic after the Mexico-USA corridor is tabulated (oceans will do that to migration...).

"Cut & Paste" Highlights from peoplemovin:

"...the flows of migrants as of 2010 through the use of open data (see Data Sources below).... are presented as a flow chart that shows the connections between countries. The chart is split in two columns, the emigration countries on the left and the destination countries on the right ... [t]he thickness of the lines connecting the countries represents the amount of immigrated people. ..."

This isn't exclusively limited to US data.  The "world's top migration corridor" list makes me "muse" a bit.  It's fascinating where the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are "moving to".

Migration Data:

The World Bank Open Data
Bilateral Migration and Remittances 2010

Refugees and Asylum

Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011

World Population Data

U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base

 

Data Sources - All the presented data are the latest available as of 2010.

peoplemovin is an experimental project in data visualization by Carlo Zapponi. Credits also go to FlowingData for bringing this site to my attention.