Mapping Where People Run

Inspired by a 2011 project that mapped popular running routes in a few European cities, Nathan Yau at FlowingData has done the same for 22 major cities, including 18 in the U.S.

To make these maps, Lau simply grabbed public data from the exercise-tracking app RunKeeper. While these visualizations are not representative of all runners in a city, they do offer useful information on urban spaces. For one, we see that people really do love running near water and in parks.