In short: Each street tree is a green square, the larger the square the larger the diameter of the tree, and each pedestrian death by vehicle is shown by a dark smudge.
Description: An uncomfortable image to look at that combines two kinds of data that have no right to be presented together. The trees are shown in green against a contrasting orange which gives the necessary geographical representation of New York but in a way that makes it unfamiliar to the viewer. The pedestrian deaths overlaid seemingly have no correlation with the position of the trees and act as a dark cloud, or a black-mark, against that area.
Point of interest: As this is “Street Tree” data the parks show up as negative space in the same way as water. The correlation between the data makes little sense, as I imagined any accident did at the time to the people involved in it. In that aspect there really is no point of interest in this image.
Technical: The 2005 New York Street Tree Census data with each tree added as a green square with the size proportional to the tree diameter, each position added in linear Latitude/Longitude coordinates. Overlaid is the position of every pedestrian death as a result of a vehicle collision as recorded by the NYPD. Both available at https://nycopendata.socrata.com/.
The Graph Is Dead 