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Poke Around This Interactive NYC Death Map
By
Lauren Evans
Published Oct 28, 2015
Modified Oct 28, 2015
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By
Lauren Evans
Published Oct 28, 2015
Modified Oct 28, 2015
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It's important to know how many people have died in your house, but it's equally important to know how many people have died outside your house, or on your favorite street corner, or in the place you normally park your bike. Finally, we have a death map to illustrate how many homicides occurred on the park bench where you normally eat your lunch.
The Death Map (this is really fun to repeat under your breath in the voice of Sean Connery) actually has a rather personal backstory from its creator, Zach Schwartz:
On July 7, 2015 I was riding my bike to work and was in a freak bicycle accident on Vanderbilt Ave in Brooklyn. I was doored, but in a very unlikely way. The driver opened the door just as I was passing in the bike lane, and only got the door open a few inches before I struck it. Unfortunately, the surprisingly sharp top corner of the Toyota door collided with my neck, and my neck absorbed all the force, which is to say, the door made a six inch hole in my neck and severed my carotid artery.
This generally kills people, I'm told.
Schwartz was rushed to the hospital, where he underwent an extremely risky surgery. Incredibly, he wound up with no permanent damage. A week or so later when he was finally ambulatory again, he was headed to a coffee shop when he saw that the intersection at Atlantic Avenue and 4th Street was filled with emergency vehicles—a cyclist had been hit by an SUV and killed. He walks by the area all the time still, he wrote, and is always struck by the difference in mood from the one that day:
I started to think about the relationship between location and death, that the couple making out on the corner would likely be uncomfortable if they knew they were mere feet from where the cyclist lay, but that they shouldn't be, that a part of the complicated relationship we have with death could be explored geographically, that maybe if we were more aware of the way it surrounds us, we wouldn't be quite so uncomfortable with it.
In the end, the most striking part of the map is the magnitude and locations of homicide deaths, how many occur at specific addresses, as well as their absence in some affluent areas. I'd like to explore this aspect further.
Schwartz collected records for 2,810 vehicle deaths and homicides over roughly the past two years, though homicides account for 2,237 of the total figure. Vehicle deaths are represented by a skull, and homicides are represented by the skull with a glock aimed at it. The map is not complete, so there's still a very good chance your local mailbox was still the scene of a horrific crime. Have fun!
Tagged
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death map
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Lauren Evans
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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