# Map your moves _A visual exploration of where New Yorkers moved in the last decade_ Published: 2010-07-01 Live project: [→ project link](https://archive.stefaner.eu/projects/map%20your%20moves/) This map distills more than 4000 moves from over 1700 people, collected in an informal survey by WNYC, a New York based public radio station. ## Key visuals - Full Map your moves overview with New York enlarged in a central circle and the rest of the world radiating outward - Close-up of the New York circle showing red and blue zip-code bubbles sized by number of moves - Europe cluster selected, 14 places, 31 moving in versus 43 moving out, with red and blue move lines to New York - Brooklyn NY 11211 selected, 131 moving in versus 136 out, radiating move lines and reasons breakdown - Radial selection of 19 New York places, 305 moving in versus 236 out, dense web of move lines - San Francisco CA selected, 19 moving in versus 24 out, with move lines and reasons dominated by work or school ## Data

This map distills more than 4000 moves from over 1700 people, collected in an informal survey by WNYC, a New York based public radio station.

For generating the geo–coordinates from the entered ZIP codes, I used the free bulk geocoder at gpsvisualizer.com. I did not check every single data row in detail, so a few of the moves might be misrepresented.

## Mapping As most moves occurred from, to or within the New York area, this area displayed enlarged in the white circle at the center of the graphic. The rest of the world is mapped with a damped distance function, in order to fit everything into one screen without losing too to white-space. ## Visual markers ![Legend: overlaid red and blue circles show a place with slightly more people moving out, equal flow, or more people moving in]() Each circle corresponds to one zip code area. Its size indicates the number of moves to or from the area. Actually, it is consists of two overlaid circles: a _red_ one for people moving out of the area, and a _blue_ one for people moving _to_ the area. So, a small purple circle with a thick blue outline indicates a place where people tend to move and stay, whereas a red outline indicates a less attractive place. ## Interaction Click one of the circles to inspect only moves to or from this area. Or, to inspect a whole cluster of areas, drag to create a radial selection bubble. To clear your selection, click on the background. Moves _to_ a selected place are indicated with a blue line, wheres moves _from_ a selected place are drawn in red. ## Details On the right, you can find some statistics on why and when people moved to the selected areas. ![Legend: paired blue moving-in and red moving-out bars compared against grey baseline proportions]() You can directly compare the lengths of the red (for people moving away from the selected areas) and blue (for people moving to the selected areas) bars to spot trends and peculiarities. Moreover, you can compare these values to the baseline (overlaid in grey), which indicates the relative proportion when we consider at all moves. If, for instance, the blue bar for "landlord issues" is smaller than the red bar, this means that the selected area has a _relatively low_ fraction of people moving away because of landlord issues. --- [View on truth-and-beauty.net](https://truth-and-beauty.net/projects/map-your-moves)