Tag: Classification
-
Ghost towns of the world: where places were abandoned, and why
I mapped 5,448 abandoned settlements in open data and coloured each by why it emptied: mining, war, disaster, reservoirs, Chernobyl and medieval decline. 80% of Wikidata’s ghost towns are American, and only 5% say why.
-
How the world is governed: 197 countries, 112 systems
Democracy or not is only the first question. Compare head of state, executive, federalism, chambers and voting system, and the world’s 197 countries fall into 12 families and 112 exact systems. 80 countries have a system nobody else shares.
-
Styles in stone: the world’s architectural styles on a map, century by century
180,451 buildings with an architectural style in Wikidata, sorted into 25 families and mapped through time. Romanesque gives way to Gothic, Baroque and the revivals, Gothic Revival sails to Toronto and Melbourne, and the gaps show who keeps the records.
-
The renamed world: who changed the names of places, and why
Tsaritsyn, Stalingrad, Volgograd. I read every dated official name of a place in Wikidata and found 6,842 true renamings, in waves of revolution, its undoing, war, independence and nation-building. The busiest year of all: Romania, 1964.
-
Chips, curry or kebab? The UK’s takeaway map
I sorted all 62,949 takeaways and 141,306 restaurants on the UK’s food hygiene register by what their names say they sell. The chip shop capital is the seaside, the curry capital is Hounslow, and the old Chinatowns still show.
