Commons:Featured picture candidates/File:Public Roads of the contiguous United States, from the 2018 TIGER GIS dataset.png

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File:Public Roads of the contiguous United States, from the 2018 TIGER GIS dataset.png, featured[edit]

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes.Voting period ends on 6 Apr 2019 at 06:39:55 (UTC)
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USA public roads map
  • Category: Commons:Featured pictures/Non-photographic_media/Maps#Maps_of_North_America
  •  Info created by WClarke - uploaded by WClarke - nominated by WClarke -- wclarke 06:39, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support I generated this high-resolution map from the most recent 2018 TIGER dataset, displaying every single public roads in the contiguous United States with the base map removed. The down-scaled thumbnail of this file doesn't do it justice, and I highly recommend opening it to its full resolution, where you can see a high level of detail (170.8 megapixels!). From far-away it looks like a typical map of the USA, but if you study it closely it reveals the history and expansion of the vast American landscpae. From the dark sections representing the dense metropolitan areas of the East Coast to the wide-open expanses of untouched land in the West, it creates a picture of America's relationship to its land and its settlement patterns, both past and present. I will admit I am not the first person to make a map in this style, but there was not a recent one on Commons in a resolution this high, so I thought it was worth uploading. Hope everyone enjoys the map as much as I have, and supports it for FP. Thanks. -- wclarke 06:39, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support - This is certainly both a useful and impressive map. However, your census link is no longer working, so please fix the link, and I believe I can imagine what you mean by the "base map": city and state names and boundaries, river and lake names, perhaps railroad lines, etc. But if I, as a literally 47-year map and atlas enthusiast, haven't seen or heard the term "base map" before, it might be useful to give a very brief explanation. I'll note that there is no article about base maps on Wikipedia, and the definition in the Free Dictionary really explains nothing. -- Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:02, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support--Peulle (talk) 07:30, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Great work. -- -donald- (talk) 08:12, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment Many areas show a very regular grid pattern. Is this for real, or because the dataset only contains some points, and a straight line has been drawn between them. I wonder if there is a more intelligent way to colour each pixel than using solid black. If each pixel contains only one road then use e.g. mid grey. But if two roads then 10% darker. Three roads 20% darker. Etc. Then it might not deteriorate to a black blob in urban areas, but better show the intensity of the road system at sub-pixel level. Another approach might be to create an even larger image, though you might then want to upload downscaled or tiled versions, for those who can't display huge images on their PC. -- Colin (talk) 09:01, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment - The grid is definitely real and its origins go all the way back to the land grants during the time of the Articles of Confederation (see w:Land Ordinance of 1785), before the Constitutional Convention that was charged with tweaking the Articles of Confederation to make them work better and instead substituted the radically different U.S. Constitution. But the square land grants were kept. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:19, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • The grid patterns also originate from the rectangular survey system, which divided property up into uniform squares — in between the properties they would build roads for public use. IMO that is one of the coolest features of the map. Before the rectangular survey system, roads often took very arbitrary paths, which can be seen in the Northeast. It’s also really cool to see how the roads on the map form around rivers, mountains, and other geographic barriers on the map. - wclarke 15:17, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Question I would find this much more useful as a vector graphic (SVG) with each road described as a path. That way you could theoretically zoom in all the way up to the smallest road grids. Would this be possible with your technique? As it is the roads look very jaggy and blurry at 100 %. – Lucas 10:20, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Lucasbosch: I doubt this would be feasible as an SVG — this was generated using over 6 GB of shapefiles from the TIGER dataset, likely way too much data to put in an SVG. Shapefiles are similar to SVGs, as they are a vector file format. To make this map, I had individual files for the roads of every single county and then rendered them on one map. If you want to see them in extreme detail, you can always download the TIGER dataset shapefiles and put in software like ArcGIS or QGIS, it’s really cool. (though I will note that is pretty computationally intensive with that much data, but you have a good amount of RAM and a good CPU & GPU it should work — regardless, you can load smaller sections of the data in a time to look at if technical limitations are a problem) - wclarke 15:17, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Wow! All those square grids look rather disturbing to me. --Cart (talk) 12:43, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Really interesting Cmao20 (talk) 13:24, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --Yann (talk) 15:54, 28 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support --Llez (talk) 05:28, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Good work. -- Colin (talk) 09:10, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Neutral Imagine this as 10.000 parts puzzle. I would freak out. I dont find this very helpful at all but I respect the big effort, so this get's me neutral here.--Der Angemeldete (talk) 12:54, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Support Wow. Where I live I can see just how different the population density is on the two sides of Harriman State Park. Of course, it's obvious in retrospect, but the map brings it out like I'd never seen it before. Daniel Case (talk) 15:14, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment WClarke, after reading Daniel's comment and since you have this huge original, do you think you could make a version(s) of this map in sections too to make it easier to check out just some part of the map? It took me forever to just open this. I think chopping it up in 4, 6, whatever sections, might be enough. Perhaps with a little overlap if you happen to want to check out a part right on a cut. That way the sections can be downloaded as well, which is not always possible with the Zoom viewer. --Cart (talk) 17:58, 29 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmed results:
Result: 12 support, 0 oppose, 1 neutral → featured. /George Chernilevsky talk 13:15, 2 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This image will be added to the FP gallery: Non-photographic_media/Maps#Maps_of_North_America
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