The Michigan Mitten...with emphasis on the thumb

 

Feeling Blue in Flint and San Francisco

The more things change, the more they stay the same, at least when it comes to politics.

My old Flint precinct in Civic Park is decidedly blue, just like my current precinct in San Francisco's Bernal Heights, according to this great New York Times "extremely detailed map of the 2016 election."

Flint Artifacts: TRXLAND Music Men Map

Flint Artifacts: 1986 G.M. Poster

A Color-Coded Shrinking City

 

A map used in the City of Flint master planning process reveals the extent of abandonment and sub-standard housing in the Civic Park neighborhood. Go here for the master plan map gallery. 

How to Understand Flint Expatriates Stationed in San Francisco

This is just a joke. Sort of.

Flint Maps: The Long Lost St. John St. Neighborhood

Click to Enlarge

This is a section of a AAA map from 1966. I found it in a dissertation written by Andrew R. Highsmith, which is an excellent source of information on St. John and the urban renewal project that erased the neighborhood. You can access it here. It's worth reading.

Detroit's Racial Divide

Think the Detroit area isn't racially segregated? Check out this map.

Migration Maps

Where are Flintoids going when they move out of the city? Click here for the answer.

Say yah to da U.P., dude!

Flint Expatriate Joe "The Quilter" Cunningham passed along this intriguing map, perfect for anyone interested in both sourdough bread and pasties. Or gay bars and snowmobiling. Or the Golden Gate Bridge and the Mackinac Bridge. Or cable cars and hockey. Or Golden Gate Park and Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. Okay, I'll stop now.

Mapping the Economic Mess

The Geography of Jobs is a highly informative animated map that "provides a striking visual of employment trends over the last business cycle using net change in jobs from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on a rolling 12-month basis."

"The timeline begins in 2004 as the country starts its recovery from the 2001 recession, following the bursting of the dot-com bubble. At first, broad economic growth was apparent across most of the country. Two notable exceptions are the Bay Area — the hub of the tech boom that drove job growth during the prior decade — and several metropolitan areas within the Midwest. The map reveals that much of the industrial Midwest never fully recovered from the previous recession, as manufacturers continue to shed jobs while other parts of the country were adding them in large number."

Go here to view the map.

Thanks to Haskell Community Center's Jim Holbel for passing this along.

Pop Versus Soda

Click on the map to enlarge it.

Michigan is extremely pop-centric, according to this map detailing the preference for the term pop versus soda. In fact, it appears to be the most pro-pop state in the union.

Notice how the battle lines are drawn between the western UP and northeastern Wisconsin. Things must be very tense along the state line up there.

And Alaska appears to be having a real soft-drink identity crisis.

Thanks to Strangemaps for this gem.

Shrinking cities on parade

Here's a map highlighting shrinking cities over time.


World Map of Shrinking Cities from 1kilo on Vimeo.