Friday Eye Candy: SPUR's Urban Cartography Exhibit

San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) recently unveiled its latest exhibition on maps depicting a wide variety of topics and themes for both San Francisco and the Bay Area region.

Some of the fantastic maps highlighted in Allison Arieff's piece on Medium show the transit networks in the Bay Area through a variety of methods. One of them is the "City from the Valley" map by Stamen Design, showing the different tech bus shuttle routes throughout San Francisco. Stamen Design usually pulls data from online sources, but in this case all of the information was private so they went out and collected it themselves. The map displays the different companies, their stops, and the amount of trips along the lines.

Another excellent map comes from cartographer Brian Stokle and San Francisco institution "Burrito Justice." This set of maps portray the future of the peninsular city with various scenarios of sea level rise. On the more extreme side, a 200-foot rise in sea levels creates the San Francisco Archipelago, with Sutro and Funston Islands, China Beach, and the Bay of Castro. A 25 foot sea rise, which according to the New York Times could be expected in the coming centuries, would flood most of the eastern side of the city, which used to be part of an extensive creek system.