An R package called nycmaps provides spatial data for New York City geographies including Census Tracts and Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (NTAs). A companion package nychex generates hexagonal and square tile cartograms for these geographies. The post walks through creating choropleth maps and hexmaps at both NTA and tract levels using ggplot2, discussing the tradeoffs between geographic accuracy and visual clarity. It also covers the practical challenges of converting irregular polygons into regular hex grids, including algorithmic tiling with the tilemaps and rmapshaper packages plus manual adjustments.
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