Maps of cities are great. By visualising information about a place you can see geographical patterns that can yield dozens of insights.
The city of Amsterdam clearly agrees. The municipal authority has put together a collection of about 70 maps of the capital of the Netherlands.
The batch of cartography covers everything from the city’s solar panels to its Airbnb prices and even the breeding grounds of swifts, sparrows and starlings.
The collection was started by Klaas-Bindert de Haan, a mapping specialist who has worked for the city of Amsterdam for 15 years. He says the maps are not just used by interested citizens but also by colleagues looking at city planning and sustainability.
A neat feature is the ability to choose up to three maps to display alongside one another. You can then see, for example, current house prices alongside the parts of the city that were attacked during the second world war.
While the majority of the maps on the site are produced by the municipal authority itself, there are some external ones featured. These include an animation showing the development of the city’s canal system over the course of the 17th century.
And one of the most intriguing maps on the site is another animation, showing the development of Amsterdam over time. It uses the ages of different buildings to show how the city swelled rapidly after 1860.
De Haan said: “With the animation of time a simple story is told.” He added that one map he is particularly keen on creating in the future is one showing which neighbourhoods people are moving into and out of.