The United States of 2012 : Esquire Magazine pulls together five maps that they believe reflect the zeitgeist of the current era. Of special interest is the "Where's Waldo"-like fourth map, which illustrates how minorities and the poor are either included in or excluded from American communities. (2805 x 1813 px version) Also, the aforementioned Eric Fischer's Flickr photostream is excellent collection of his maps.
posted by desjardins on Feb 10, 2012 - 12 comments

Dangerous by Design: an interactive map of pedestrian fatalities in the United States "From 2000 to 2009, 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the United States, the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of passengers crashing roughly every month." How the U.S. Builds Roads that Kill Pedestrians
posted by desjardins on Jun 1, 2011 - 60 comments

Europe according to... is a project to map stereotypes of European countries according to other countries and groups of people. [more inside]
posted by desjardins on Sep 22, 2010 - 57 comments

How segregated is your city? Eric Fischer maps the top 40 US cities by race, using 2000 census data. Each color-coded dot represents 25 people: Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, and Orange is Hispanic. The maps are oddly pretty, and revealing. Compare, for example, Detroit and San Antonio. via [more inside]
posted by CunningLinguist on Sep 20, 2010 - 174 comments

Make a Map is a website that lets you create your own maps of the US and areas thereof using various demographics data. It's still in beta stage but it's got all of the US (at least everywhere I've thought to look) and so far has datasets for median household income, population change 2000-9, population density, median home value, unemployment rate, average household size and median age. It's fun to use and taught me a great deal about my home city. The sitemaker, ESRI, also has a pretty good free globe map software, ArcGIS Explorer, for which you download map layers and add-ins.
posted by Kattullus on May 2, 2010 - 13 comments

NPR looks at American States That Might Have Been You've probably heard of the proposed Mormon state of Deseret, but have you heard of Nickajack? What about Absaroka, the 49th state? I bet you forgot about Forgottonia. The author of Lost States has a blog.
posted by desjardins on Apr 7, 2010 - 33 comments

CensusScope. US Census 2000 data displayed through maps, rankings, and charts. [more inside] Warning: some pages render funny, but usable, under Firefox 1.5.0.4.
posted by Slithy_Tove on Aug 18, 2006 - 7 comments