[OC] I visualized all 97,000+ localities in the contiguous USA.

    by paveloush

    5 Comments

    1. Hey everyone! Thanks for checking out my project. Let me provide a little more context on what you’re seeing 🙂

      – Data Source: OSM dataset, filtered for all nodes tagged as place (city, town, village, hamlet). This resulted in over 97,000 unique localities.

      – Tool: my custom script.

      – Process: The script plots a single white dot for each locality at its precise geographic coordinates.

      The size of all dots is the same – whether it’s New York City or a tiny hamlet in Nevada. This isn’t a map of population size, but of settlement presence.

      For me it feels less like a map and more like staring at the galaxy 🙂 I found it really beautiful Art and wanted to share with a community that might appreciate it. Happy to answer any questions!

    2. I misread this as “I visited all 97,000+ localities” and I was about to calculate the incredible impossibility of doing so…

      I mean, visualization is still impressive regardless, but wow.

    3. Can you provide a link to the original high resolution version? It drives me crazy how Reddit recently started down-rezing images. Thank you!

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