The Relationship between Historical Redlining and Crime in San Francisco

This map shows the relationship between crime and historical redlining rankings in San Francisco. It features three main data layers: redlining polygons, crime counts, and police stations. The effects of redlining and the manner in which it reduces beneficial resources in certain neighborhoods is evident as historically redlined areas feature higher crime counts as well as more police stations, increasing the odds of unfortunate encounters between citizens and police officers.

San Francisco Peninsula City Populations in 1960

This map shows the population counts for Peninsula cities in 1960. In addition to a map aspect, the final layout also included the raw population numbers for each city.

San Francisco Peninsula City Populations in 2020

This map shows population counts for each Peninsula city in 2020, based off Census numbers. Like the previous map, hard numbers are also included in the layout.

Los Angeles Public Transit Diagram

This is an original map that I created in Inkscape of a hypothetical public transit system serving the Westside of Los Angeles. The lines were first mapped out in ArcGIS Online. Then, Inkscape was used to create vector based graphics of the lines, ensuring that angles were kept to 45 and 90 degrees, as per common transit diagram guidelines.

Santa Monica Mountains Study Area for my Undergraduate Capstone

While this map is pretty basic in terms of content, I find it visually appealing and successful at showing what it needs to show.

General Vegetation Cover in the Santa Monica Mountains

This map is also fairly basic, but a clean layout with nice colors makes it quite effective.

Major Roads around the Santa Monica Mountains

At this point in my cartography career, I have become upset by the ArcGIS basemap options that feature labeling you cannot change. As such, I took the liberty of creating custom labels for the major roads around the study area and used halos to improve visibility.

Santa Monica Mountains Fire History

This map is bright and eye catching, perfect for illustrating catastrophic events. Areas that have burned most recently are colored in red, the color of fire, whereas areas that have not burned recently are more green, a trait matched by the lush vegetation that has grown in those locations over the years.

Sonoma Region Wildfire, Part 1

This map is meant to explain how it is possible to live with the threat of wildfire in the Sonoma area. The text better explains this. This layout was created for a project where we were meant to create two different maps of the same thing, but with different colors leading to different interpretations; view this map in conjunction with the next slide.

Sonoma Region Wildfire, Part 2

This map is meant to spark fear and show how wildfire is an extreme risk to those living in the Sonoma area. It should be viewed along with the layout on the previous slide. The in-layout text provides more context and a better explanation of what the map does.

Lake Tahoe Ski Resorts

This map illustrates the locations of ski resorts in the Lake Tahoe area. For this project, we were tasked with creating a map of a tourist location in California. We were also meant to demonstrate our ability to use halo effects, shadows, serif and sans-serif fonts, letter spacing, and callouts. The decision to strategically use these throughout the map was intentional and based on fundamental reasoning presented in Cynthia Brewer's book, "Designing Better Maps".

Urban Trees Initiative Study Area Tree Census

This map was created for Phase I of the Urban Trees Initiative. Although it was designed using certain standards set by the project leadership, it allowed me to discover the importance of good cartography.

School and Park Locations within the Urban Trees Initiative Study Area

Like the previous slide, this layout was constructed using specific standards. However, I enjoyed creating the detailed legend that lays out the names of each location; this is a skill that I have continued to employ following my time working on this project.

Thesis Study Area

This is one of the preliminary study area context maps created for my thesis. It illustrates the study area, which is a section of Redwood City, CA. It includes major arterial roads and the city's neighborhoods.

Cartography

After a few years of using GIS for analysis and spatial data visualization, I have learned the importance of good cartography. If you cannot portray your work in an aesthetic and easy to read way, then what is the point of even doing it? I have found myself getting better at cartography throughout my time as an undergraduate student, but two major events really opened my eyes to the benefits of great cartography and how I can optimize my map-making skills.

The first was my time working on Phase I of the Urban Trees Initiative. Dr. John Wilson and Beau MacDonald, the two PIs, set specific standards for my and my colleagues maps in order to maintain a consistent and clean look on our maps, which were ultimately included in the final publication. I learned about layout organization and font choice and from then on, paid extremely close attention to my layouts.

The second experience was my time taking SSCI 589 at USC with Dr. Bernstein. The class was all about cartography and how to design well. I learned a lot of fundamental skills and also developed the ability to use a variety of design techniques in order to create quality maps dependent on the anticipated audience.

Below, I have included a selection of some of my best maps (and one of my worst ones) and I hope you enjoy looking at them!

(Click on the arrow to the right of the layout to advance to the next map, or click on the image to zoom in and scroll through with better visibility)