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Canonical: https://semiotic.nteract.io/examples/equal-places-atlas
The Equal Places Atlas
Representation
Geography
Mark
Density
U.S. land · projected lattice
The United States, built from occupied grid cells
58lattice columns
A regular screen-space grid meets an Albers USA projection. Cell centers that land inside the country become dots; all other cells stay dark.
Cell center inside landCell center outside land
How to read a map that is not a map
Dots turn polygons into signal
A dot field still carries projected area and coastline, but its visible unit is the sample cell. More columns reveal finer edges; fewer columns make the raster construction explicit.
Squares make a table geographic
A tile cartogram is a table with a spatial memory. It keeps broad direction and familiar neighbors while making alignment and label scanning unusually strong.
Circles can refuse territory
Switch to place tiles and equal circles give every state or country one visual voice. That is a different question from sampling land, so the interface names the representation.
Method
Two grid contracts, one geographic scene
geographicDotGridLayout samples fitted polygons in screen space. It inverts each lattice center through the current projection, tests that longitude/latitude against the GeoJSON mask, and emits a mark only for occupied cells. The chart-wide origin keeps the grid regular through resizing.
geographicGridLayout remains alongside it for a separate task: one mark per named place. The U.S. version uses an authored state table; the world version snaps projected country centroids to free cells. Both paths emit nativeGeoCustomChart scene nodes for canvas performance, SSR, selection, and reusable styling.
U.S. population:2020 Census resident population. World geometry: Natural Earth via the bundled world-atlas reference. Coarse dot grids can omit islands smaller than a sample cell; place grids intentionally make boundaries, exact distance, and land area schematic.