Exploring New Territory -- Digital Map Sites

Finding Dots on a Map… Maps are the universal foundation for conveying a wide range of information about real estate. At a glance, a complex set of geographic and statistic data can visually present key property relationships and features. Casual navigation on the web produced a number of great mapping resources -- from basic destination routing to spy-level satellite imagery. www.maps.com offers one of the widest variety of digital maps for sale.

One exceptional site that offer links to thousands of free maps and cartographic data can be found at the Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection, at the Univ. of Texas at Austin. Another terrific online resource is located at TIGER. The TIGER Map service is a project sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Census to provide a free public resource for generating high-quality digital maps of the US using public geographic data. Users can customize maps with over 22 layers of information such as zip code boundaries, highways, census tracts, congressional districts, MSAs, railroads, etc.

Need to check out an area's topographic features? Three sites -- in addition to the US Geological Survey -- offer free maps for the entire county at the USGS 1:100,000, 1:25,000 and 1:24,000 scales: www.topozone.com, www.maptech.com, and www.terraserver.com. Want to find transit maps for subway systems in 22 major US cities? Go to www.nycsubway.org/maps/transit/ or to www.subwaynavigator.com. Need to reference airport maps for 40 US cities? Check out http://flight.trip.com/content/airport/index. Sites to download for free directions and route maps include: www.avis.com/maps, www.expedia.com, www.mapblast.com and www.mapquest.com.

To find a comprehensive list of Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping companies, go to www.gisportal.com. GIS technology integrates common database operations, such as query and statistical analysis, with the unique visualization and geographic analysis benefits offered by maps. GIS can be a valuable tool for managing business information such as developing targeted marketing campaigns for multi-family properties or modeling retail spending patterns. GIS stores information about a region as a collection of thematic layers, such as customer locations, population densities, transportation networks or zip codes, linked together by geography. A great site to understand how GIS technology works can be found at www.esri.com. If you know of other neat mapping resources, send e-mail to me.

--Eileen Circo