German Döner, English Curry & American Pizza / / No Comments German Döner Kebab restaurants have started popping up all over London. For some reason, the idea of a German kebab still strikes me as slightly incongruous – a bit like a Swiss curry or a French taco. However, according to a recent analysis of OpenStreetMap food venues, there are far more döner kebab restaurants in Germany than there are in Turkey. In fact, 51% of the world’s döner shops are Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: American, Curry, Döner, English, German, Pizza
The Most Optimal Road Trip Maps / / No Comments In 1954, a landmark paper in computer science famously solved the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) by proving the exact, shortest route to visit all 48 contiguous state capitals plus Washington D.C. The underlying puzzle is deceptively simple: given a list of destinations, what is the shortest possible route that visits each location once before returning to the start? That breakthrough Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: maps, most, Optimal, road, Trip
Free Map Tiles for Everyone / / No Comments Free Map Tiles Providers:OpenFreeMapVersaTilesMaptoolkit.orgOne of the biggest barriers to building web maps has always been the cost and complexity of map tiles. Services such as Google Maps and Mapbox offer excellent infrastructure, but commercial pricing can quickly become prohibitive as projects grow. Self-hosting OpenStreetMap vector tiles is an alternative, but maintaining a global tile Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: everyone, free, Tiles
The 5 Best 3D Subway Maps / / No Comments Shinjuku Station has a well-earned reputation as one of the world’s largest and most bewildering transport hubs. The Shinjuku Station Indoor interactive 3D map tackles that complexity by turning the station’s official indoor mapping data into a clean, schematic three-dimensional blueprint. This map strips everything back to the essential geometry of corridors, platforms and rooms, making Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: best, maps, Subway
SimCity Meets AI: Exploring New York’s New Digital Twin / / No Comments NYCSim is a truly impressive digital twin for New York City. Part real-time spatial platform and part living sandbox, this browser-based simulator allows you to explore a virtual Manhattan from the comfort of your own home. By pulling in live municipal transit data, real-time air quality metrics, and local weather feeds, the platform transforms a static city plan into a living, breathing map.& Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: digital, Exploring, Meets, SimCity, Twin, York's
This is Still Not Normal / / No Comments Last month I posted a review of Klimadashboard’s European Heat Tracker, which visualizes how many people across Europe are exposed to extreme heat in real time. Since then, temperatures have continued to exceed seasonal norms across much of the continent, and new mapped visualizations have continued to document the unfolding heatwaves. El País’ How Extreme is this Heat? uses a Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Normal, still, this
The Entire History of Human Warfare / / No Comments Launched in late 2025, Prakrit Ojha’s War Atlas is an interactive map that visualizes more than 8,500 historical battles. Spanning from 1500 BC to the present day, it offers an immersive, guided tour through the history of human conflict.Now there’s another War Atlas on the scene. Not only does this new map share the same name, a very similar URL, and a nearly identical thematic DNA, it also Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Entire, History, Human, Warfare
How Maps Save Lives / / No Comments Fifty thousand people were killed on February 6, 2023, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck southern and central Türkiye and northern and western Syria. The Night the Earth Shook, Strangers Started to Draw tells the story of how the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and thousands of volunteers responded by rapidly creating detailed maps to support rescue efforts. The Night the Earth Maps Mania… more → Posted in: Interactive Maps Tagged with: Lives, maps, save