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Have you ever wished Google Maps could tell you what a particular street in New York sounds like? No? But you think that sounds like a cool idea nonetheless? Well buddy, you're in luck!
A new project called Chatty Maps has put together colorful interactive online schematics of urban territories which map the area's most common sounds. Created by researchers Luca Maria Aiello, Rossano Schifanella, Daniele Quercia and Francesco Aletta, the project currently includes maps of New York, London, Boston, Madrid and Barcelona.
The researchers created the project by pulling data from geotagged Flickr photos with sound-related tags. The information gets culled down into five categories of sound, each represented by a particular color: transport (red), nature (green), human (blue), music (yellow) and building/mechanical (white). Expect an area like Central Park, with its chirping birds and running water, to show up green. A location like Myrtle-Broadway, on the other hand, shows up red with the sound of the JMZ running overhead.
Check out the full New York City map here.
Unfortunately, some pieces of the map seem wildly inaccurate: specifically, this below analysis of the most repulsive of locations, Times Square, which lists the "emotional atmosphere" of the area's sounds as "high" in "anticipation and joy," but "low" in "disgust and anger." I don't know about you, but that makes me disgusted and angry.
Times Square
These glowing transit sounds on Roosevelt Island show that apparently the place is, in fact, inhabited (seriously, who goes there?).
Roosevelt Island
And these glowing yellow "music" lines show that apparently you'll find Governor's Island rocking out to tunes even when GovBall isn't in session.
Governor's Island