Shanghai Urban Planning

Last year I was in Shanghai, China on business. A friend suggested we visit the Shanghai Urban Planning building, and the first thing I thought was "ohhh, I bet that's exciting...not". But, he convinced us to give it a try, and here are a few photos I took.

On the top floor of this building is the largest model of urban planning in the world. For an American, seeing Shanghai is a shock at how large the city is, and how many skyscrapers there are. For reference, Shanghai's population is about 22 million people, compared to about 8 million in New York. Most U.S. cities have a "downtown" type area where the most skyscrapers are clustered, but Shanghai is a city of skyscrapers everywhere.

The World Population Map is one way to understand the scale difference between the U.S. and China, but this model city is astounding. Even better than riding around town (you definitely don't want to be the one driving), the model city really drives home the scale of Shanghai, and what has been accomplished in urban development. The model is built at 1:2000 scale.

Those are the building support columns in the middle of the model, NOT some new super skyscraper!

Earth At Night

This satellite photo from NASA spans a 24-hour period showing the entire surface of the Earth in darkness. The lights obviously show the highest areas of concentration of civilization.

Note the Nile River delta, the Siberian Express railway route, the Australian coastal cities, and Africa, literally "the dark continent".

From Princeton's International Networks Archive, the old project of Jonathan Harris.

searchCrystal

Check this one out! The graphic above is an embedded object from searchCrystal that lets you search multiple sources for images (or other forms of information). I've preloaded it to search for "inforgraphics" from GoogleImages, Flickr, AskImages, YahooImages and MSNImages. When you dig a little deeper, you can choose the different sources you are searching from, save searches, share results with others, etc.

The arrangement shows the overlap of the results from multiple sites. Simple navigation like scrolling over images enlarges them, and clicking takes you to the source image.

Also works for video, blogs, tags, news, etc...blah, blah, blah. We only care about images don't we?

The Wealthiest Americans Ever

From the NYTimes in July 2007, an interactive infographic ranking the Wealthiest Americans after you convert their fortunes to today's dollars using the relative share of G.D.P.

Scrolling your pointer over the photos or the fortune amount shows more detail of the individual. Lots of black & white portraits! Only current rich folk Bill Gates and Warren Buffet made the list with color portraits.

Running the Numbers

Chris Jordan has created some fantastic photographic artwork depicting the massive scale of some statistics about American life. This is where infographics actually become artwork.

The image above "Depicts nine million wooden ABC blocks, equal to the number of American children with no health insurance coverage in 2007." The complete image is 16 feet tall x 32 feet wide.

There are 17 different images available to view on his website. You can see the images magnified there to show the small pieces that each image is made from. Each image is based on an actual statistic about American life.

FYI: This series will be exhibited at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, opening Sep 8. More info at www.paulkopeikingallery.com.

Bodies in the Solar System

Another great infographic on kokogiak.com showing the relative size of large objects (88 of them, at least over 200 miles in diameter) in our solar system. The largest (of course) being the sun down to the smallest, which is Davida, an asteroid 203 miles in diameter.

Consumer Product Jungle

unaesthetic.net has posted this fantastic high-res image of a grocery store. This is the nightmare of working in consumer products (like I do). The challenge is getting your product to stand out in this jungle and getting the consumers' attention.

This is a different type of infographic. There are no numbers or values, but you still get the message. Consumer products is a hard business.

This is now hanging on the wall in my office. A constant reminder of all the noise that our products must get through to reach a consumer.