Visualizing the Spread of the OpenStreetMap Project

OpenStreetMap has released an animated map to illustrate the impressive growth of the project over the first ten years of its existence.

1 minute read

March 3, 2015, 2:00 PM PST

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Keir Clarke reports: "Mapbox has released an animated map visualizing the growth of OpenStreetMap data over the ten years since the project started. Ten Years of OpenStreetMap shows how OpenStreetMap has grown in ten years from a map of a few London streets to one of the most detailed maps of the world."

The animated map follows a few months after OpenStreetMap's ten year anniversary, celebrated in August of 2014. The animation will automatically jump from location to location while running through the chronology of the project's ten year history. But users can also zoom in an out to get micro and macro senses of how the map has grown over the years,

Visible in the animation, Clarke notes, is OpenStreetMap's rapid spread in the last five years outside of the United States and Europe into a truly global project.

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