The choropleth below (created by Baptiste Coulmont) is a sort of prosperity map of France: the blue areas have high levels of personal income (actually, median household income tax paid divided by the number of household members), while the red areas have the lowest:
The map was created with the help of GEOFLA "communes" shapefile (my high-school French begins to fail me here, but I gather a commune is like a statistical district in France), to which M. Coulmont mapped French tax data. He's also created a helpful tutorial pour les francophones to create maps like these.
Baptiste Coulmont: Ah… 36 000 communes feront toujours la différence
A "commune" is a municipality. There are around 36000 municipalities in France, often very small. The GEOFLA "communes" used to be very expensive, but it is now released as a free shapefile by the IGN (national geographic institute)
Posted by: Baptiste Coulmont | December 12, 2011 at 12:39
Thanks for the information, Baptiste!
Posted by: David Smith | December 12, 2011 at 14:48