jwchou-LookingOutwards-09

 

A few weeks ago, my friend Allissa featured NYCHenge in her Looking Outwards post. NYCHenge is a product of Carto, a company that uses location data to help businesses.

It’s a really cool interactive map that displays ManhattanHenge, which happens with the sun’s position is lined up with the city’s east-west streets during sunset or sunrise. The map shows which streets line up with the direction of the sun on a particular day.

Allissa found the project interesting because of how particular and unique its goal was. I agree with her, because it’s often interesting to see projects about something relatively small and intriguing, because so many projects seem to focus on solving big, wicked problems.

I also love projects about mapping, and I’ve written some of my other Looking Outwards posts on projects that use mapping/geography.

Allissa said that non-New Yorkers would probably have trouble identifying the streets, and I fully agree. Another critique I have for the project is that for the tool to be more useful, they could incorporate sunset times and sunset forecasts. Obviously, if it’s going to be overcast, there’s no point to watch the sunset.