Vivid Maps
vividmaps.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2019
Vivid Maps publishes maps and infographics on geography, demographics, history, and language.
What HN saysHN commenters use its maps as supporting evidence, such as the latitude comparison of Europe and America, and call it a great site.
45HN people shared it
38linked it in comments
8stories submitted
516story points
4 months agolast shared
2019people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Comparing the Latitude of Europe and America3 people · 74 points · first shared 2025 · 66 comments on HN
- 2The Scottish Highlands, Appalachians, and the Atlas are the same mountain range2 people · 436 points · first shared 2022 · 78 comments on HN
- 3The Human Development Index of US vs. Europe2 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 4Etymological Map of America1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 5How Big Is Mexico?1 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 6Animated map of population density in the U.S. (1790 – 2010)1 people · 1 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 7The world with a 70 meters sea-level rise1 people · 1 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 8Dangerous us counties1 people · first shared 2024
- 9The distance of states capitals from their centers of population and geographical centers1 people · first shared 2022
- 10Germany is still divided by east and west1 people · first shared 2021
- 11Population density egypt1 people · first shared 2021
- 12The top ten richest and poorest areas1 people · first shared 2024
- 13Abolition of slavery1 people · first shared 2023
- 14The nearest foreign nation at any point on land1 people · first shared 2022
- 15Rats 1024x548.png1 people · first shared 2020
What HN people wrote when they linked it
autoexec · 2025-11-19
There are millions of vacant homes in the US. There's even a fun little infographic that breaks it down by state https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/vacant-houses-per-hom…
Not all of those empty houses will be places people want to live in, but I'd bet a fair amount of them are perfectly fine places people would love to call home if they could only afford them.
nealabq · 2020-10-25
Thanks for the pointer. A direct link (not going thru pinterest) is:
https://vividmaps.com/global-rat-distribution-map/
Vividmaps.com is a great site.
pocksuppet · 2026-06-30
Most of Europe is at the latitudes of Canada. The whole UK is squarely north of Vancouver. https://vividmaps.com/comparing-latitude-of-europe-and-america/
jerlam · 2026-06-24
The US is generally much closer to the equator and warmer than Europe, hence air conditioning has been a requirement for much longer.
https://vividmaps.com/comparing-latitude-of-europe-and-america/
US states like Texas and Florida have no latitude equivalent in Europe. Los Angeles is farther south than all of Spain.
At the same time, the UK, much of Germany, and Poland are farther north than any state in the US lower 48.
seemaze · 2025-10-16
Food deserts appear to roughly correlate inversely with population density[0]. I don't interpret the existence of food deserts as evidence that food choice is not 'generally' available. Assuming we are serving people and not geographies.
[0]https://vividmaps.com/us-block-level-population-density/
fulafel · 2025-09-04
You could be forgiven to think that about northern places, but the dark winters are compensated by the long (or even round the clock) daylight in summer. It's still fewer sunlight hours than markedly sunny places like italy or california but not 50% less.
see eg this map where scandinavia is the same color as france or southern uk: https://vividmaps.com/annual-sunshine-hours-of-world/
But of course wind is more stable around the year and produces more in the winter when there's more need for energy. And the sunlight is more direct closer to the equator.
roenxi · 2025-02-17
> You have the current Trump administration repeatedly threatening to invade and annex multiple neighboring countries
What a shocking departure from the US's normal mode of operation. Are they finally going after Brazil?
https://vividmaps.com/countries-attacked-by-the-us/
cheriot · 2024-02-18
> Pollution increases, energy requirements increase
The lowest carbon emissions and least pollution per capita are in city centers. Also the lowest water usage per capita.
> crime per-capita increases
This is not a map of population density, https://vividmaps.com/dangerous-us-counties/
> babies per-capita tend to decrease
I keep hearing people say it's too expensive to have kids. Maybe lower housing prices would help.
> time spent in traffic or commuting increases
Housing closer to jobs makes commutes shorter.
> space per person decreases
You got me. I don't have to pay for more house than I want.
TheLoafOfBread · 2024-02-09
That's London and wider area, rest of UK is on same level like Eastern Europe.
Here is the map based on Eurostat data. Notice that richest area and almost all poorest areas are in UK
https://vividmaps.com/the-top-ten-richest-and-poorest-areas/
pcrh · 2023-10-06
Ireland would be excluded because GDP estimations for Ireland vastly over-estimate wealth due to many corporations being resident in Ireland for tax purposes.
Otherwise, I have long suspected that using the US/US dollar as a baseline results in some skewing of the data. For example, GDP per capita PPP comparisons would place Mississippi as wealthier than the UK (as mentioned in the OP). However human development indices paint a very different picture, and would place Mississippi on par with Eastern Europe [0].
[0] https://i.imgur.com/yPkHUNt.jpg Source: https://vividmaps.com/human-development-index-us-vs-europe/
tzs · 2023-09-17
For firearm suicides it sort of is, but not really so much for the rest. I'm looking at the density map here [1].
[1] https://vividmaps.com/us-population-density/
bluedino · 2023-08-23
It's really dependent on the area that you are in
https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Black2017-1024x768.jp…
pipes · 2023-08-14
You do make a valid point and it's not something I'd thought about before. However I think if you consider when slavery was by year/country around the world:
https://vividmaps.com/abolition-of-slavery/
You can see that given how late so many countries were to end slavery that many peoples through out the world must be directly impacted. Not just descendents of slaves in America. In fact in some places slavery still unofficially persists for these direct descendants.
My guess is that America gets more of the negative attention due to being the leader of the free world.
rejectfinite · 2023-08-12
Sewage and tap water situation is a metric I use to judge countries if they care about their citizens! :)
https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Water-Quality-World-m…
igravious · 2023-04-26
If the Chinese can “channel 44.8 billion cubic meters of fresh water annually”[1] with one of the world's largest mega-projects then I imagine Europe as a continent putting their heads together can figure out how to provide/redirect sufficient water for a bunch of nuclear power stations.
Also, there may be areas prone to drought but there's simultaneously plenty of precipitation[2] across Europe; heck – build nuclear power stations along the West coast of Ireland and send the juice across the interconnectors[3][4] to the UK and France
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Transfer_Proje…
[2] https://vividmaps.com/precipitation-in-europe/
[3] https://www.soni.ltd.uk/customer-and-industry/interconnection/
[4] https://www.eirgridgroup.com/the-grid/projects/celtic-interconnector/t…
photochemsyn · 2023-04-24
I'd keep in mind that 'time left' is a probabilistic estimate, not a guarantee, and probably closer to wishful thinking:
https://vividmaps.com/male-female-population-dying-before-age-65/
Tomorrow is not guaranteed - but that recognition doesn't have to be a morbid or depressing viewpoint, it can just as easily be a motivator to stop procrastinating.
Kon5ole · 2022-12-22
Nuclear disasters are not localized. Geographically the radioactive release travels large distances with the wind and causes severe radiation effects hundreds of miles away. Chernobyl was basically a prevented disaster (the worst we have seen but nowhere near a worst-case scenario) and the effects are still costing money to deal with today hundreds of miles from the site.
https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/cloud-of-radiation.jp…
But the main problem is that it's not localized in time. Chernobyl is a problem for several countries still to this day, and the actual site itself will continue to be a problem for generations to come.
thwayunion · 2022-11-23
Because birth month distribution is highly correlated with climate zone; see the heat-map in [1]. Climate zone, in turn, is highly correlated with race (and probably also immigration status in this case).
Even if we set ethics aside, this is still a terrible idea because credit risk analysis is highly regulated in most cases. There is enormous regulatory risk to using birth month in a credit risk model. Particularly because hen a jury asks "what's an alternative causal model that could explain the bank's incorporate of this data point into their models?" their answer is going to be "absolutely none".
[1] https://vividmaps.com/most-common-birth-months/
denton-scratch · 2022-10-27
This is the kind of nonsense that is produced by the US Constitution:
https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Texas.jpg
kasperni · 2022-09-05
A map of paper size usage throughout the world: https://vividmaps.com/paper-sizes-world-map/
myroon5 · 2022-06-30
California is one of the most extreme states in terms of how far the capital is from most of the population:
https://vividmaps.com/the-distance-of-states-capitals-from-their-cente…
There are also discussions about more remote capitals being less accountable
mdp2021 · 2022-06-04
You should probably check for "public land", which is found in almost all States but is very, very frequent west of Texas. See e.g. the map at:
https://vividmaps.com/non-private-land-in-united-states/
But you should check what you can do in it. It will be probably legal to park a vehicle there and very probably illegal to dig a moat around it (public means "of everyone", not just "free").
Viliam1234 · 2022-05-16
The picture is from here: https://vividmaps.com/the-nearest-foreign-nation-at-any-point-on-land/
dbg31415 · 2022-05-13
Similar tool.
https://vividmaps.com/cities-with-similar-climates/
briHass · 2022-04-02
> Here are two different takes on how cities subsidize suburbs and rural areas
Rural, perhaps, but not suburbs. Most of those studies play fast-and-loose with the term 'metropolitan area'. Most metros include inner-ring suburbs, outer-ring, and generally the exurbs as well. It's only once you start talking about 1.5-2 hours out from a major city does it become 'rural'.
At least with the metro I'm familiar with (Philly), the surrounding counties (suburbs) vastly subsidize the city itself. The wealthy taxpayers live in those 'burbs and commute in to work. The explosion of remote working, and the commiserate loss of city-wage-tax from those that used to commute, is already straining the system. If remote work continues at this level, many downtown areas could implode.
https://vividmaps.com/map-of-largest-metropolitan-areas/
kgeist · 2022-01-24
I understand, but the majority of Russian population lives along the Western and Southern borders. See the density map: https://vividmaps.com/population-density-of-russia Anything in that area of sizeable Russian population can be proclaimed "near Ukrainian borders". 75% of the country is uninhabited. It would make little sense to station most troops in completely unpopulated areas where nothing happens.
currycurry16 · 2022-01-21
I found Vietnam to be that case. https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Center-population.png
iskander · 2021-12-13
In Florida and much of the Gulf Coast though...
Check out this map of population density: https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/metropolitan-areas-po…
All those dense spots in Florida and along the Gulf are also more likely than most US urban areas to use septic tanks. That's a lot of brackish poop, clogged toilets, and environmental contamination coming in the next few decades.
smnrchrds · 2021-07-11
Also to put things in context, if they rename Egypt to Nile: The Country, it would be more accurate. Egypt is a country of 100 million people, all of them living next to the Nile or in its delta. It's unbelievable how much Egypt is dependant on Nile for its existence. Any disruption in Nile will have severe negative effects on the lives of 100 million people and be an existential threat to Egypt. Just take a look at Egypt's population heat map:
https://vividmaps.com/population-density-egypt/
https://i.redd.it/hs2wfeq62c511.jpg