Map Junk

On Vertederos Localizados Por Los Internautas, the Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia invites readers to send in photos and descriptions of illegal garbage dumps. Photos and descriptions are plotted on an interactive map of the country. The intent seems to be embarrassing officials into cleaning it up.

Built by coder Jim Nachlin and friends, the Garbage Scout plots some of the things New Yorkers are throwing out, so that others may claim them. (Many of the shelves in my apartment were inherited from the street.) Sadly, the experiment only lasted a year, though I hear the code may be GPL’d soon.

It’s interesting to me that two maps with the same interaction and functionality and with similar focus can have such different approaches — one top down, the other bottom up.