Airdrome

Here is a small multiple showing the 12 busiest airports by passenger traffic.

Many thanks to Dylan Moriarty who helped me navigate the tantalizing, but somewhat intimidating, world of OpenStreetMap extracts. And thanks to Ken Field and Wes Jones for their graphical advice.

I am surprised at the remarkable variation in scale (Hong Kong??) for airports with relatively similar (and massive) passenger traffic. And of course I was not surprised to see the sprawling nature of Amsterdam airport, where Danielle and I ran for miles to just barely make our connection on the other side. I plopped down into my seat utterly relieved but 98% sure I was going to throw up. I didn’t, which was a relief.

I had the idea for this map some time ago, but dismissed it since I was sure a million people had already done it. Then the other day I decided to google around for one. And I just couldn’t find any. How could that be?? So I went ahead and made it. Then Wes Jones showed me a beautiful print shop called NOMO selling posters remarkably like this. Ah well. There is nothing new under the sun. But it was a fun map to make and I now know just enough about OSM feature extracting to be dangerous.

Here is a how-to, walking through the creation of this map, for the most nerdy among you.

Happy Small-Multiple Mapping! John

P.S. Here is an assortment of alternately-colored versions, for whatever it’s worth…