The map library

It looks almost like Italy!
:sob:

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The country’s busiest airport is now in central Missouri.

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Atlanta – now with 95% more polar vortex!

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Kenan Thompson Snl GIF by Saturday Night Live

You put my state back! I ain’t livin’ that far from the coast…

The Office No GIF

We don’t have the snow plows!!!

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[citation needed]

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A couple more USA-centric maps (all OC):

US counties / county equivalents, excluding AK and HI, that are larger than the state of Rhode Island (smallest state in the US)

Percent of U.S. bridges in “poor” condition, by U.S. county / county equivalent, 2021.

The denominator is total bridges in each county.

Almost all U.S counties have at least one bridge, but there are about eight counties without any bridges: three in west TX, three in western NE, one in SD, and one Alaska borough. The U.S. county with the most bridges is Harris, TX (Houston), with 3,885 bridges, only 33 of which are in poor condition.

It’s interesting that many state boundaries are visible in the data. Clearly, highway infrastructure is less of a priority in Iowa, WV, Maine, PA, LA, etc. than it is in Georgia and Texas.

Source: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration. National Bridge Inventory, 2021.

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Clearly the harsher climate and/or reduced season of feasibility for roadworks is visible in a North-South gradient as well.

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That’s plausible.

I just found another map I made from the same data collection that shows average year bridges were built. It doesn’t line up very well with the poor-bridges map above. Louisiana, for example, has mostly newer bridges, but still a lot in poor condition. Hurricane damage combined with a lack of maintenance funding? Whereas in Maine, the condition of bridges seems to be a direct consequence of their ages. :thinking:

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I’m somehow reminded of these,

(not really maps, but who’s going to notice)

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I wondered about that, too. I wonder what it looks like if you can see dollars spent on road/bridge construction and maintenance by mile of roadway. And how that looks overlaid with regional climate zones.
Really interesting maps, @MrShiv , even if the Maine bridges one made me cringe.

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For some perspective, Iowa and Michigan see higher numbers of freeze-thaw cycles in any given year than pretty much any other states. For example, the last two weeks in SE Michigan came in with snow and a deep freeze, creating frost for the second time this winter, and today it’s about 40, raining and the frost is getting melted out of the top layer of soil. Today is very much reminding me of several Januaries in Iowa while I was attending ISU. :woman_shrugging:

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That’s what I was thinking, climate-wise, that cold- and very cold-wet climate zones would have the highest per mile maintenance costs.
Makes me wonder what it is about WV in that one map. I guess all those mountain highways come at a cost.

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Earth if all the land mass were condensed to a band on either side of the equator. The band is 33.5 degrees N-S, and of course 360 degrees around. Northern and southern oceans are separated by about 3,700km.

Here’s a possible land-use plan for this new, vastly improved planet.

There will be no more deserts, finally. All air travel would be over land, as polar routes would be no shorter than equatorial ones. (However, jet lag would become a more serious problem.) All time zones would be simple 15-degree bands. The difference in sea levels between the two oceans would enable hydroelectric power generation at vast scales.

No more projections needed; Mercator should cover this nicely.

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About that… I think we might need a different approach to air conditioning if land mass would be organised like this. And to buildings, as well. I suspect we might live underground and talk with our hands.

Anyone here who can run global climate and weather models? Ocean currents? Atmosphere?

Nice idea with the mountains in the middle, though. The richest one percent goes on the one side of the mountains, the other 99 % goes south?

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I can haz Ringworld?

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It’s more like One Piece

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from

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Also rivers.

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Does your island prototype have obvious tyre tracks? No problem, just work “chariots of the gods” into your fantasy world creation myth.

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Re the conversation about maps the size of the territory, this one’s not close but it’s still pretty big:

I make it out to be about 1:1,574 scale.

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