Urban Life

America’s Freeway Exit Mentality

Many Americans are of the belief that if something does not have a named exit off a freeway it must not exist. After all, the logic goes, all the best places must have freeway exits otherwise they wouldn’t exist.

There is a map in many people’s heads of the world that looks like a freeway map with nothing else on it. If there is 30 miles between freeway exits, then their must be nothing for the next 30 miles.

One Car

That logic is faulty. There are many beautiful small communities and great places not serviced by freeways. Freeways are very expensive to build and even very basic rural exits can cost several million dollars to construct. Many good places are far removed from the freeway.

Indeed, especially when your a toll highway with toll collectors at every exit, don’t expect every an exit for every town or place you’d want to neccessarly go. And just because a super-highway “flies” past hundreds of small towns, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Your just bypassing them.

The Log Homes of Albany County

I thought the world needed a map of the Log Homes of Albany County. So I made one up. Some of these are probably a bit fancier then just a log cabin in the woods. Notice how in more built up areas, log homes are uncommon -- it's a style more popular in rural areas.

Median Age of Buildings in New York State

Median Age of Buildings in New York State

While many cities are quite old in New York, so are many rural areas. Gray areas have no data in YR_BLT field in state tax records. You can't always trust the data though as some town assessor offices will just blank out the form with 1800 or 1850 for old buildings, as the exact year doesn't effect assessed value much.

Here is the Postgres query I used which took a few seconds over the 5.4 million records: SELECT swis, PERCENTILE_CONT(0.5) WITHIN GROUP(ORDER BY yr_blt) FROM nytax_ctr_point GROUP BY swis

Data Source: NYS Statewide Parcel Map Program, gis.ny.gov