Mapping Indie Coffee Shops in SF, Portland, and Brooklyn

Online mapping project You Are Here — a joint effort by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Social Computing Group and Media Lab — has committed to producing one new map every day for a year, and this past week, it's been releasing a series of independent coffee shop maps that colorfully highlight the walkability factor of each in their respective neighborhoods. So far, maps exist for coffee communities in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Portland, and Cambridge, Mass. Each combines data culled from Google Places and the Google Distance Matrix API, which estimates travel time and distances in between each point.

According to the YAH team, independent coffee shops provide signs of "positive markers of a living community," so mapping them provides a visual way of knowing "where, by placing new coffee shops, we can help form them." Presumably, the same doesn't apply to locations of corporate coffee giant Starbucks, but just in case you're wondering, there's a map for that, too.

· You Are Here: Coffeeshops [YAH via Fast Co. Design]
· All Coffee Coverage on Eater [-E-]