Planet Pox Pops

I felt like messing around and making some data art for Halloween. So I made a jelly Earth where cities break out as pimples. It’s called Planet Pox Pops.

Every pimple, mole and wart is a real city. It appears at its founding or first known mention and grows with its population. Fresh bumps are red; old ones fade and wrinkle. Some grow hairs. Roads are the veins between them. There are over 26,000 places, and the timeline runs from 10,000 BCE to 2026.

The dates come from Wikipedia, Wikidata and historical datasets; populations come from UN estimates and historical studies. A first mention isn’t a birthday, and a gap in the records doesn’t mean nobody lived there. The veins are today’s roads, rather than a reconstruction of ancient routes.

Spin it, zoom in and inspect the bumps. Click one to see the city and the source of its date. The full methodology is in the project. That’s about it: I just wanted to give the planet pimples.