When I originally saw the premise of Cabspotting.org, I assumed the intentions to visualize San Francisco’s Yellow Cab service data only went skin deep… merely a slick cover on basic GPS plots. I think I underestimated their vision…

Cabspotting traces San Francisco’s taxi cabs as they travel throughout the Bay Area. The patterns traced by each cab create a living and always-changing map of city life. This map hints at economic, social, and cultural trends that are otherwise invisible.

… a multi-year project to explore alternate views of the Bay Area’s infrastructure, [it] hopes to reveal radically surprising and inspiring views of the systems interconnecting the communities of the Bay.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find the project encouraging further independent analysis by the general community. Two such projects use the CabSpotting data visualization to provide different perspectives and deeper analysis:

1. Fly Cab

This interactive fly through of one cab’s travels over the course of several days adds an extra dimension to your trip.



For an more interactive view. Click to Launch the Fly Cab Project

2. In Transit

In Transit uses the GPS data trails drawn by cabs as a starting point for looking at the city, and trying to find and make social sense of patterns that emerge visually from the data.



For a more interactive view, click to Launch the In Transit Project

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