The Art of San Francisco Crime

I’m a sucker for infographics and data visualizations. To create these raised-relief maps, Doug McCune used a full year of San Francisco crime data from 2009. The maps show a visual rendering of crime peeks in particular neighborhoods of San Francisco.

You should check out the full data set on Doug’s blog here. Beyond the obviously interesting nature of the way this information is presented, I found the disclaimer worth quoting:

These maps were generated from real data, but please don’t take them as being accurate. The data was aggregated geographically and artistically rendered. This is meant more as an art piece than an informative visualization.

I agree that these maps exist dually in the data and art worlds. I decided to take two of the maps into Photoshop and overlay them with a map of San Francisco neighborhoods. As you can see from these two visualizations, Neon Monster HQ (located in Noe Valley) is looking good on prostitution and narcotics crimes! Go us!

Hat tip to Sergey Safonov all the way in Moscow for pointing me to these San Francisco maps!