iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The map is built on top of my R packages tidycensus, freestiler, and mapgl, with data packaged as PMTiles and hosted on Cloudflare then visualized in MapLibre. There's a bonus in the map as well - expand the "About this map" panel to find it!

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The dot view shows density and patterns the best, but can be tricky to read. The hexagons highlight broad patterns; click a hexagon to see a group breakdown within it. And the cluster donut view won't be everyone's favorite - but I like the way it shows relative proportions at various scales.

Dot locations are simulated within Census blocks; they are not actual residential locations. Plus, the Census protects respondent privacy with noise infusion. Read the dots as broad spatial patterns, not precise information about individuals.

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View: - The classic dot map with all 331 million Americans represented when fully zoomed in; - H3 hexagons that transition on zoom, color-coded by the most common group in the hexagon; - Donut chart clusters that break into smaller clusters, and eventually individual dots, when you zoom in.

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The classic Racial Dot Map inspired me and a whole generation of mapmakers. Today, I'm publishing a modern take on this map, built with the geospatial tools I've been developing over the past decade. Interact with the map here: walker-data.com/maps/census-...

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haha 64GB M2 Max. challenge accepted though - I bet I can make it more memory-efficient!

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

New post: how to visualize millions of parcels on a map. Learn how I go from 14.3 million Texas parcel records in a 7GB geodatabase to a published interactive map. Featuring tools like DuckDB, PMTiles, R, and Cloudflare R2. Read it here: walker-data.com/posts/millio...

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Mapped: % of US-born adults, by PUMA (~100k-200k people), born in their current state of residence. Lots to unpack in this one. Explore the interactive map: walker-data.com/maps/born-in... For those so inclined, the source code is here: gist.github.com/walkerke/875...

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Identifying possible gas-flare operators from satellite heat signals. Mapping persistent NASA VIIRS thermal detections across Texas, then matching the strongest candidates to nearby on-schedule RRC wells and their operators.

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GitHub - walkerke/tigris: Download and use Census TIGER/Line shapefiles in R

If you're a Census data user and there are features you'd like to see in either package, now is a great time to file an issue or feature request. tigris: github.com/walkerke/... tidycensus:

github.com

Download and use Census TIGER/Line shapefiles in R - walkerke/tigris

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Everything will just work better and more reliably under the hood. I'll also be clearing out the issue backlogs, fully supporting the existing APIs and adding new features that have long been shelved.

This summer, I'll be overhauling the backends of both packages to make them more modern and sustainable. The R interfaces will look the same for users - you won't have to worry about breaking changes to your existing data pipelines.

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While I and other contributors have maintained them - and they both still work well - I've wanted to modernize the infrastructure to ensure they keep working for users for the next 10 years. The R Consortium is generously supporting this project.

Together, they've been downloaded nearly 2 million times from the Posit CRAN mirror alone. Much of the underlying code that runs the packages, however, is a decade old. I taught myself R while writing these packages... and if you browse some of the source code, it shows.

Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

I'm excited to share that I've received a grant from R Consortium to modernize R's tigris and tidycensus packages this summer. Over the past decade, tigris and tidycensus have become fixtures in R's demographic and spatial data ecosystems.

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Understanding site accessibility by time-of-day is critical for emergency services, supply chain management, retail analytics, and more. Communicate this with @mapbox.com isochrones visualized with mapgl's new slider control in R.

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

mapgl 0.5.0 for R lets you sync up as many maps as your browser can handle. Shown here: 16 distinct demographic maps for the Atlanta area; interact with one, the other 15 are kept in sync. Now I'm not necessarily recommending a 16-panel map... but it's fun to see what's possible.

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Vignette: optimized corridor routing over cost surfaces in R. Useful for pipeline routing, transmission line planning, trail planning, wildlife connectivity modeling, and more. walker-data.com/spopt-r/arti...

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Version 0.2.0 of freestiler, a Rust-powered vector tiling engine for R and Python, has landed on CRAN and PyPI. The highlight: produce vector tiles with dynamic H3 hexagonal binning built-in. Learn how: walker-data.com/freestiler/a...

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

The new slider control in R's mapgl package (v0.5.0) isn't just for time-based filtering. Give it a list of paint expressions and you can animate changes over time on your map. Example: population changes at the tract level in Florida, animated in 3D.

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

seems like it would kill that program, plus a bunch of others. I don't have any extra info about it.

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

A bivariate look at high-tech employment share and net migration across NUTS2 regions in Europe. Interactively mapped with R's mapgl using the new bivariate choropleth feature, now available in the package's 0.5.0 release. Credit to @milos-makes-maps.bsky.social for his inspirational examples!

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

lehdr under the hood, by the way

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Animated, hierarchical origin-destination commute flows in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX. Downtowns, medical districts, airports, and suburban job hubs light up from 2023 LODES data. Now available in R's mapgl 0.5.0. Credit to @ekotov.pro for the implementation and @ilyabo.bsky.social for Flowmap.gl!

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

The upcoming v0.5 release of mapgl for #rstats is going to be massive. Included: a slider control that allows for interactive data filtering - no Shiny required. Thanks to @ekotov.pro - brush a window over a histogram, see your data filter in real-time Lots more examples to share this week

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

I have used duckspatial! it's great.

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Kyle Walker @kylewalker.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Working on H3 integration into freestiler, my R/Python vector tiling tool. The new feature uses @duckdb.org internally to dynamically aggregate points into a multi-layer hexagonal tileset based on some function (summary stats, or your own custom SQL). Tiled here: 12M US groundwater wells

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Local Air Conditioning Estimates

My home Census tract in Corvallis is now at 94.7% with AC (my parents eventually got it too) More about the data: census.gov/data/experim... Map it at the tract level yourselves: gist.github.com/walkerke/71e...

census.gov

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I grew up in Oregon without air conditioning, it seemed quite normal at the time, we just pulled out the box fans when it got hot in the summer. Fascinating to explore the patterns in this new Census data - lots of areas around Oregon / the US where AC prevalence isn't as high as you might expect.

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All workshops clearance bundle

Final reminder: today's the last day to grab my Census / mapping workshop catalog before the store shuts down tonight. Lifetime access to 25+ hours of recordings, 11 custom tutorials, $99. I really appreciate all of you who have bought it this week!

walkerdata.gumroad.com

CLEARANCE: All past workshops can be purchased together for only $99!Get access to over 25 hours of recordings for thousands of dollars in savings. Workshops will be retired May 22nd - so act now!

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Mapped: the % of occupied housing units without air conditioning by Census tract. Uses the new U.S. Census Bureau LACE dataset. Map the data yourselves: gist.github.com/walkerke/71e...

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Get lifetime access to 25+ hours of recordings and 11 annotated tutorials for $99: Friday is the last chance to buy - all workshops will be archived for good after that.

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- A single-year-of-age profile chart comparing 2000, 2010, and 2020 decennial distributions, with tips on making these for all US states in parallel; - Animating drive-time areas in DC by time-of-day and traffic patterns.

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- A 3D swipe map comparing population density in Dallas-Fort Worth between 2010 and 2020; - A "story map" of Canadian cities with 3D buildings and weather effects;

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