Because it's Friday: The river routes to Rome

The United States contains nine cities named Rome. Like almost everywhere in the USA, those cities are connected by roads, and from every point in the country, one of those cities can be reached by the shortest road route. If you then colour the map by the Rome that is closest by road (as the folks at RedBubble have done), you create nine distinct zones in the States within which roads lead to a different Rome.

The map was created using GraphHopper to follow routes using Open Street Map data. It's fascinating to me how the road networks look so much like watersheds. It's not too surprising in the sense that the road networks and watersheds are branching tree structures, but the structural similarity to Nelson Minar's all-rivers map is remarkable:

That's all from us this week. Enjoy your weekend, and we'll be back with more for the blog on Monday!

 

Comments

[Edward Carney]

This is so clever and pretty. The vias Romanorum remind me of photos the brain's surface, such as this one.