You know the scenario… you want to move to a new city and you’d like to find out where the best places are to live, however, you know nothing about the region at all. Have you been there? Well, there’s great news, particularly for people wanting to locate great places to live in England thanks to the awesome resource illustreets (illustreets.co.uk). The powerful, map driven, data rich resource empowers users with data, TONS of it, thanks to all that fabulous open data in and around the UK. Using illustreets, users can pinpoint a place on the map, then browse loads of social variables, economic indicators, housing market data, crime stats, transportation links and much more.
What really impressed yours truly about illustreets was the simplicity of use, the amazing cartographic clarity and beauty, and the incredibly detailed data presented in many ways to help paint a very clear picture and convey exactly what I’m looking for. Illustreets boasts a plethora of opendata from a variety of sources, including, but not limited, to: Nestoria.co.uk, Office for National Statistics, Ordnance Survey, Gov.uk, Police.uk, Environmental Agency, Department for Transport, and Department for Education.
Using illustreets the user simply hovers over an area of interest and a window pane displaying a number of data variables is automatically updated for the location of interest. Some of the parameters revealed include:
- standard of living score
- crime rates
- house price
- employment rate
- travel times
- school performance
- more!
Variables displayed/updated in a handy window
If anything, illustreets is a fine example of everything that a local, regional, or national web mapping portal can and should provide to users and best of all its testament to what some savvy developers can build thanks to access to a wealth of Open Data – kudos!
Check it out for yourself and explore England