The 13 Best Maps of the States in 2013

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Maps: Where would we be without them? This was banner year for beautiful, information-dense cartography, which provided a moment of self-reflection like a giant, geographic mirror. Here are our favorite maps from 2013 that helped us find our place in the world.

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A Map of Who’s Got the Best (And Worst) Internet Connections in America

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Why’s your internet so slow? We mapped relative download speeds by congressional district across the contiguous U.S. in 5,600 cities and towns. Sadly, most of the country is far below the country’s average of 18.2 megabits per second.

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A Map of the Closest Pizza Place to Anywhere in the United States

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I love maps that tackle the great unanswered questions in our lives. Like what is the closest pizza chain within a 10-mile radius?

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You Can Compare 16 Cities 35 Different Ways With This One Mapping Tool

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One of the coolest mapping tools we saw this year was Richard Saul Wurman’s Urban Observatory, a site that lets you compare maps of cities using various datasets.

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Mapping the Rise of Craft Beer

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The New Yorker (who we’ve never really thought of as Budweiser people anyway) provide interactive proof that independent craft beers are marching across the country.

Related articles

• You Are Here: The 13 Best Maps of 2013 (gizmodo.com)
• Maps of the Seven Deadly Sins in America (taxprof.typepad.com)
• The 100 Most Astonishing Images of 2013 (stephendarorionthebestof2013.wordpress.com)
• Wonderful and inventive maps (holykaw.alltop.com)
• Old-Fashioned Atlas Gets a New-Fashioned Update (education.nationalgeographic.com)
• MAPS: Old Maps Showing Slavery in the United States (davidmixner.com)
• The Most Innovative Maps of 2013 http://t.co/ebBnA8QjiF (theatlanticcities.com)
• Lab in Richmond Animates Comprehensive 1932 U.S. Atlas (nytimes.com)
• The USGS is Putting the Planet on the Map (gisuser.com)
• Maps of Seven Deadly Sins in America (memolition.com)