Design
Brooklyn Wins New York's (Literal) Rat Race
MIT visualizes how the city is swarming with rodent-based complaints.
If there was ever a data visualization that could make the skin crawl, it's this one: a history of 311 calls that shows the sewer rat's complete dominance over New York.
Put together from city data by the folks at MIT's "You Are Here" project, the verminous viz contains 38,163 location-tagged rodent complaints from 2010 to the fall of 2013. The tiny white specks that swarm all over the map represent rat sightings, evidence of rats, or foul conditions suitable to rat life. They come in an average of 28 times a day. Of the five boroughs, Brooklyn takes top prize for infestation with 31 percent of the total volume of complaints, while Manhattan and Queens are the runners-up with 22 percent each.