Ed Cotton posits that geography is becoming cool again, and I’m not certain that I disagree.

We can now tell where a plane is mid flight, we know how many miles we ran and if we are clever, we can map those miles, we can see exactly where photographs were taken and our cars can be effortlessly guided to our destination by satellites.

A great point. As we immerse ourselves in both maps of our creation (think Flickr), maps we need (think GoogleMaps), and an overwhelming volume of data that can be plotted in near-real-time about just about everything, a greater understanding of both where it is that we operate, and where we are in context of the world around us seems equally inevitable and appealing.

Ed points to a fantastic project from MIT, Trash/Track, that is using custom chips to help visualize the journey an object (an aluminum can, a coffee cup) takes from the point of purchase all the way to the dump:

TrashTrack uses hundreds of small, smart, location aware tags: a first step towards the deployment of smart-dust – networks of tiny locatable and addressable microeletromechanical systems.These tags are attached to different types of trash so that these items can be followed through the city’s waste management system, revealing the final journey of our everyday objects in a series of real time visualizations.

In an entirely different vein, Playaround NYC is an effort geared towards using available data to identify New York neighborhoods most conducive to family play. To elaborate:

The first step was assigning playgrounds a quality rating. Currently quality is determined by nearness to major and minor truck routes. Major truck routes cause a slightly greater loss in quality than minor truck routes. Major truck routes affect playgrounds within 300 meters while minor truck routes only affect playgrounds within 200 meters. The second step involves sampling points regularly on the map. The nearest playgrounds, walking distance to these playgrounds, and the quality of these playground are then determined. These factors are combined to assign each point an overall rating which estimates how well that area is supported by playgrounds. Next, the various support ratings are interpolated to generate the PLAYAROUNDNYC playground support map.

A much more local take on geographic data – and one of untold value to both parents and city planners.

Related posts:

1. Utility Utilities
2. Fun with TraceRoutes
3. Innovators Outpaced by the Need for Innovation
4. Data Talks, Data Walks
5. Mobbed-Up and Out