London 2012 - Transforming the Lea Valley

In one month's time, on July 27th, just a mile down the road from where I now sit, the 2012 Olympic Games will begin.

Over the last five years I've watched as the Olympics Park has been built on an under-developed and run down part of my home town. Looking at the area now it is quite hard to remember what this area of the East End looked like just five years ago.

Luckily photographer Toby Smith has created a Google Map showcasing his photographs of the area taken in 2007. The Lea Valley Map places Toby's photos on top of Google Map's satellite imagery of the Olympic Park.

The contrast between the bleak landscapes portrayed in Toby's photographs and the shiny new stadiums in the satellite imagery helps to highlight the transformation of this area, whether if it's for the better or not.

The London Bloggers Tube Map

The London Bloggers website is a directory of blogs written in and around London. The site includes a clever Google Maps interface to access the listed blogs by location.

The map uses the Google Maps API with the iconic London Underground map. If you click on any of the stations on the map you can view a list of bloggers who are based nearby. It is also possible to browse the over 4,000 blogs listed by individual underground line.

London Calling on Google Maps

With the summer Olympics and the Queen's Golden Jubilee being held this year, London is expecting a lot of visitors this summer. BBC Australia has created a great looking Google Map to help those visitors explore the English capital.

London Calling is a great way to find things to see and do in London and whilst you explore the map there are even opportunities to win prizes. Australian and New Zealand residents can complete challenges as they use the map for the chance to win a $4000 travel voucher and a brand new iPad.

The map as well as providing a great guide to London also looks great as well. The map uses the Styled Maps feature to give the map tiles a nice sepia tone. The information windows are also very unique. They include a circular smaller map to give the illusion of a cut-out in the window to highlight the location of the map marker beneath the window.

Via: The Google Geo Developers Blog

Silicon Alley & Roundabout on Google Maps

Made in NY is a Google Map of New York's digital industry. The map shows the locations of over 500 homegrown startups, investors and coworking spaces across the city.

It is possible to refine the companies shown on the map by 'Digital Companies', 'Investors' and 'Coworking / Incubator Spaces'. As well as their locations being displayed on the map the companies are also listed in the map sidebar.

If you are currently looking for work in New York's tech industry then check out the companies listed in the sidebar. Those companies that currently have positions available are indicated with a 'We are hiring' link.


Tech City Map is a visually striking Google Map of the technology companies and startups in east London.

The map shows the locations of London's silicon roundabout area. The 'show networks' option on the map allows users to visualise the connections between the over 800 companies. If you click on an individual map marker there is also an option to view the latest Tweets from the selected tech company.

Cussing London on Google Maps

Ed Manley, a researcher at University College London and author of the Urban Movements blog, has analysed Tweets in London looking at the prevalence of swearing on Twitter.

Manley looked at the swearing patterns on Twitter by time (swearing seems to get more popular the longer the day progresses) and geographically. A Google Map of the spatial patterns of swearing in London can be viewed on The Guardian website.

The map shows that swearing is less prevalent in the centre of the city and more widely practised in London's outer boroughs.

So do Londoner's swear more at home than at work?

Manley thinks not.You can read his theory about why swearing is more prevalent in some boroughs that others on the Urban Movements blog.

Is East London Dead on Google Maps?

With East London about to host the 2012 London Olympics Dazed magazine poses the question 'Is East London dead?'.

The magazine argues that East London has been a centre of cultural activity with a vibrant grassroots, underground creative scene. With The Secret History of East London Google Map Dazed are trying to build a crowd-sourced memory map of East London's cultural scene. They are asking readers to post a memory to the map of a music, art, fashion or film related event or happening that they have taken part in, in East London.

Users of the map can browse the submitted memories by location and can use the time-line slide control to refine the results shown by date.

Creating a memory map of the East London cultural scene is a great idea. Looking at the number of events added for 2011 and 2012 I think we can also safely say that East London isn't dead yet.

The London Mugging Map

UK charity Witness Confident has launched a new Google Map called StreetViolence.org that allows victims of street robberies and assaults to add the crime to a Google Map. The charity believe the map will alert the community to potential risks, allow victims to post appeals for witnesses and can be used to thank passers-by who helped.

The UK government already provides a crime map for all of England and Wales, which is available at Police.uk. However Witness Confident argue that the government's map does not allow users to distinguish violent crime carried out by strangers from domestic or acquaintance violence, which leads users to believe that 'the risk to them of violent crime is worse than it is'.

Currently the map appears to be populated with 'Test Markers' which I'm pretty certain will also lead users to believe that crime is worse than it is. Presumably the test markers will be removed soon.

John Snow's Cholera Map on Google Maps

CartoDB is a great platform that allows you to map data and develop location aware applications quickly and easily. In CartoDB's demo gallery you can find this example of John Snow's Cholera Map of London presented with CartoDB.

The map demonstrates how CartoDB is able to quickly combine different data-types and display them on a map. John Snow's spot map of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London in 1854 helped to prove that the disease was caused by water (coming from one pump in Broad Street).


If you want to see John Snow's original map using the Google Maps zooming and panning tools then you should check out Hypercities.

Hypercities is a Google Maps mashup of historical maps available for many of the world's cities. Hypercities allows the user to navigate a selection of historical maps using the familiar Google Maps navigation tools. If you zoom into London on Hypercities you can choose to view John Snow's map overlaid on top of the modern map of London.

Interactive Bus Stops on Google Maps

Bus-Tops is a very exciting interactive art project launching in London today. Thirty red and black LED screens have been installed on the roofs of bus shelters around London. Absolutely anyone in the world can create artwork and hopefully get a chance to see their work displayed on one of the screens.

If you want to view the submitted artwork then you will need the Bus-Tops Screen Locations Map. It allows Londoner's to find their nearest Bus-Tops screen. The map also uses the Google Maps Styled Maps feature to give the map an appropriate red and blank design.

London's History on Google Maps

Locating London's Past is a superb tool for exploring London's past on Google Maps.

The map allows users to visualise data relating to seventeenth and eighteenth-century London against John Rocque’s 1746 map of London. The data sets that can be viewed on the map include records of Old Bailey Proceedings, coroner's records, historical directories, plague deaths, archaeology finds and much more.

Locating London's Past has big plans for the application. They say that additional maps of London and relevant mappable datasets concerning any aspect of London's medieval, early modern, and modern history will be added to the application as they become available.

London's Tech Scene on Google Maps

Tech City Map is a visually striking Google Map of the technology companies and startups in east London.

The map shows the locations of London's silicon roundabout area. The 'show networks' option on the map allows users to visualise the connections between the over 800 companies. If you click on an individual map marker there is also an option to view the latest Tweets from the selected tech company.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

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London Bus Waiting Times on Google Maps

Transport for London recently started beta testing a new Countdown API to provide real-time departure information for all buses at every bus stop throughout London.

Next Bus London has quickly released a Google Map that shows the location of London bus stops and informs you how long you will have to wait to catch a bus.

To find out exactly how long you will have to wait you simply need to click on a map marker and an information window opens displaying the bus number, destinations and waiting times for the next few scheduled buses at that stop.

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The London Riots & Social Equality

In the UK I think it is now illegal to try and connect the recent rioting with social deprivation or economic inequality. The government and the mainstream media has decided that unless you blame bad parenting, social networking sites or a breakdown of moral order for the riots then you should be publicly castigated as a supporter and excuser of wanton criminality.



The Centre of Full Employment and Equity seem to be ignoring this new political orthodoxy by creating a Google Map overlaying the location of riot incidents on top of unemployment data.



The British Local Unemployment and the August 2011 Riots Map includes two layers: the local area unemployment rate range and riot incident data from the UK Guardian Open Data Blog.



The dark blue areas on the map show areas with high employment rates. At the risk of encouraging a visit from the UK thought police I have to say that the areas with high employment rates seem to have been largely unaffected by the recent rioting.



The Guardian themselves have used the riot incident data to create a Riots & Poverty Data Map.







The Guardian says that "The darker reds represent poorer places, the blues are the richer areas. What do you think? Is there a correlation between the two?" I'm going to say it - 'Yes, there is'.



Someone has also taken a KML from the London Riots - Verified Areas map and displayed it on MapTube Map with the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). The IMD is a method of identifying deprived areas across the UK.







Overlaying the locations of the riots and looting on top of the IMD layer reveals that most of the trouble is occurring more in areas with high deprivation than in more affluent locations.



Curating Geodata from Social Media to Map the London Riots:

Whilst we are on the subject of the UK riots Directions Magazine has a good podcast discussion looking at the challenge of using social media as geodata and what journalists, geospatial professionals and the public can learn from these efforts.





OK, with that done we can now get back to blaming the parents and Twitter.



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Get Around London with Google Maps

London is a very large city that can be very confusing to travel around, especially if you are a visitor to the UK capital. CityMapper London can help you navigate the city by providing you with bus, subway, cycling and walking directions. Or, if you want to get a taxi, it can give you an estimated cost for your journey.



To get directions the user just needs to add their starting point and destination, either by text input or by simply clicking on the map, and then selecting the mode of travel.



If the user selects bus or tube directions CityMapper London shows you the route of your journey on Google Maps and in the sidebar explains which stops you need, any transfers you need to make, the estimated time of your journey and the cost.



The biking directions show the user the locations of London bike hire stations near your start point and how many bikes are currently available at each station.



Both the walking and biking directions give the user an estimated time for the journey and an estimation of the number of calories that will be burnt.



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Real-Estate Heat Map

Real-estate website Zoopla has created a heat-map of UK property prices.

The Google Map provides a quick overview of where properties are affordable and where houses are more expensive. For example if you zoom in on London, you can see a distinct pattern of expensive property in the commuter belt around the capital.


Zoopla: UK Property Heat Map

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Tube Directions Now On Google Maps

Public transport directions for London has been added to Google Maps. If you want to get around in London you can now get transit directions that include the London Underground, DLR, buses and trams.

To get public transit directions in London on Google Maps you just need to select 'Get directions', type in your starting point and destination and click on the train icon that appears in the side panel.

The resulting direction will then tell you which underground station you need to go to and even which tube line you need to catch.

Official Google Blog

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London Olympics Tweet Map

There is one year to go to the 2012 London Olympics. A number of events are being held in London to celebrate the occasion (including the flying of musical hot air balloons).

CASA is tracking all of today's Twitter messages that include the hashtag '1yeartogo' and have created a nice heat map of all the Tweets.

The map is actually a little sneak preview of a new heat map visualisation that will be made available to the general public in the next few weeks on MapTube. CASA are responsible for some of the best Google Maps tools (for example the CASA Image Cutter) so I can't wait to play with this new heat map tool when it is released.

#1yeartogo Twitter Map

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Boris' Cabs on Google Maps

This certainly qualifies as the strangest map I've seen for a while. The map creates the scenario of the user wanting to catch a taxi from a famous London landmark to the ICC London Excel conference centre.

The map displays a number of videos of London mayor Boris Johnson moonlighting as a London taxi driver. Each of the videos contains a brief description, by Boris Johnson, of a famous London landmark. When you click on one of the landmarks you can watch the appropriate video and, at the same time, a route is displayed on the map from the landmark to the ICC London Excel conference centre.

There seems to be a little bug in the map that stops the video displaying properly in FireFox but it worked fine for me in Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Take me there Boris!

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UK Average Incomes on Google Maps

The UK's Office of National Statistics has used Google Maps to show the average household income estimates for different areas in England and Wales.

You can select the income measure you want to view on the map via a drop-down menu. By clicking on the map you can then view the average household income estimate at that location. You can also search the map by an address or a postcode.

The map seems to show that the nearer you live to London the more your average income is likely to be. There are a few pockets of high earning areas outside the capital but it would be interesting to compare the data on this map to a map of commuting times into London.

ONS - Income by Location

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London Bus Planners on Google Maps

There are around 7,000 red buses in London transporting passengers on over 700 different routes. BusIt London is a bus route planner that can help you navigate London's extensive bus network.

To plan a route just click on the Google Map to select your start and end points, or use the search box to find locations. BusIt London will then display your route on the map. If more than one route is available you can select from the alternatives given.

The sidebar explains where to catch your bus and which number bus you should get on. If you need to change buses on your route the stops where you need to change are also displayed in the sidebar.

BusIt London

Also See

• What Bus? - a Google Map of all London bus lines
• On a Bus - enter a London bus number and view the bus's route on Google Maps

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