This first map shows the internal migration of US residents based on the economic climate. The map was drawn from mint.com, a blog sources itself, and the initial map draws sources from US Census and pewsocialtrends.org. The map illustrates the movement of Americans since the economic shift and increase in unemployment. You can see that there is a large shift from the coasts, specifically the west coast (California) and the northeastern and north midwestern states to the southern portion of the country. This map specifically stuck out in my mind because last quarter in Geography 142: Population Geography, we looked at the general trend of internal net migration and how everywhere except the south was decreasing in population size due to this internal flux.
The above map displays the density of different types of cultural events in Los Angeles organized by their entertainment category. The map comes from a study called “The Geography of Buzz.” The authors, Elizabeth Currid, an assistant professor in the School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and Sarah Williams, the director of the Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University‘s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. The map was gathered from the New York Times "Arts" section. The Los Angeles map as well as the pictured below Manhattan map are broken down into six categories of entertainment: art, fashion, film, music, theater and television. The dots for each micromap are drawn from Getty Images that chronicled one full year of entertainment soirees, ranging from "flashy parties" to "smaller affairs." The researchers combed through the images and mapped them according to geographical area and based on their distinctive categories. The above map is most significant to me because of my location in Los Angeles and my interest in the arts in LA. It is extremely interesting to note that the art and theater categories are the smallest in occurrence while music and film are the largest. 
The map above is from the same study as the Los Angeles map, but is a representation of the same entertainment categories for New York. Attributable to the same researchers and the New York Times, the Manhattan map looks at these categories and in relation to Los Angeles show different results. While the Los Angeles map showed low party occurrences in the art and theater categories, the Manhattan map shows a relative strength to every entertainment group. Another interesting thing to note about these two maps is that the photographs used to create the sample had to not only be purchased from their original source, but also were from social events that were only "large" and "important" enough to be photographed in the first place. The other factor of interest I would like to point out is the design of the maps themselves. The study is on entertainment and creative culture and does the aesthetic of the maps cater to these groups?
