They say the best way to get to know a new software is to use it, so we created our own riffs on the Squirrel Census of Central Park (as featured in Denise Lu’s early 2020 article “There are 2,373 squirrels in Central Park. I know because I helped count them.”) using ArcGIS.
My map is embedded below. I used the same data set as the Times article, but used some public domain squirrel images instead of the Times more elaborate hand-drawn ones. Although the Times illustrations are unique to each squirrel, I find that they are too large and busy-looking for my taste. I added two layers: first, a publicly available layer with outlines of building in Manhattan, which added depth and a sense of the physical environment surrounding Central Park, and secondly, a heat map showing the estimated walking time from a given location to the entrance of a park. You can see that the heat map is imperfect, given how it fluctuates in the middle of a park, but I still find it makes the space more tangible.
Be First to Comment