Nat Henry

@nathenry.com

1274 Followers 1517 Following

Director of Henry Spatial Analysis | Professional Geographer | Seattleite | Into maps, health data, walking places

Video of new Close+ features: - Up to 12 destinations - Custom destination OR groups (for example, travel times to a library OR a community center) - Job access by salary range and industry - Overlay custom location isochrones - Location reports
Views of Houston, Washington DC, and Los Angeles showing commutable jobs. Features shown include: - Info box: Selecting a block shows the total number of jobs commutable from that block - Commuting modes: options include walking, cycling, and public transit. - Travel thresholds: options include 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes, plus "Source" (locations of jobs) - Overlaying points of interest on commutable job maps.
Will Dreher's campaign About page, describing him as a "former [...] public school teacher"
White Tesla parked in bike lane
Landing page at nathenry.com. Pixel map representing downtown Seattle, specifically the 3rd Avenue transit corridor. One blue pixel labeled "M" has a popup showing it represents a "Metro Match Day Shuttle"
A picture of Alex Hudson, taken in winter near the Stimson-Green Mansion.
Me, blurry, on the night bus
Names of my two talks at OSM US State of the Map this week: Friday - "OpenPOIs: a superset of open place data" Saturday - "What is real? Estimating the fidelity of OSM data using changesets"
Light rail direction signs now have a "via Seattle" subheader
New splash page on nathenry.com
Excerpt from the article: There is a phrase that does a lot of work in arguments like this one, even when it is not said out loud. "Our way of life." "Neighborhood character." "What makes Seattle Seattle." Those phrases are not nothing. People love their neighborhoods. They love the maple on the corner that turns orange in October. The view of the Olympics from the porch. The coffee shop they walk to on Saturday mornings. The school their kids can get to on foot. The forests up Highway 2, the farms in the Skagit, the orca whales in the Salish Sea. These are real things, and they are worth preserving. We are trying to preserve them. A walkable neighborhood with a corner store and a bus that comes every 10 minutes is not a threat to a way of life. It is one. The kid who can bike to school instead of being driven, the grandmother who can age in her home because the pharmacy is three blocks away, the family that can afford to stay in the city where their parents grew up: those are ways of life too, and the current rules in our region have made them harder, not easier, to live.
OpenPOIs web explorer showing confidence-scored points of interest (POIs) across downtown Chicago. The confidence scores show an interesting spatial pattern: POIs near the lakefront and Chicago River tend to have higher scores than inland POIs.
STOP DOING MATH meme NUMBERS WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE GIVEN NAMES YEARS OF COUNTING yet NO REAL-WORLD USE FOUND for going higher than your FINGERS (Etc etc) THEY HAVE PLAYED US FOR ABSOLUTE FOOLS Guest star: gamma function on the complex plane
The mountain is out, and because I'm not driving I can actually take a proper look!
Mariah Carey enjoying the second most wonderful time of the year: Seattle in mid-March 🌸
Revive I-5: a community conversation with WSDOT + SDOT. March 17, 6:30-7:30 PM at U District Partnership (2 blocks from U District light rail station)
On September 23, 1909, an underground comfort station opens in Pioneer Place, a small park located downtown in Seattle's Pioneer Square (corner of 1st Avenue and Yesler Way). The public toilets are built underground below an ornate iron and glass pergola. The comfort station is ventilated through nonstructural pillars in the pergola, which are hollow. The restrooms have marble stalls, brass fixtures, oak chairs, white-tiled walls, and terrazzo floors. These are believed to be the world's most luxurious underground toilets. After opening, they are flushed approximately 5,000 times a day; 8,000 times on Sundays when saloons are closed. The Eighth Wonder of the World? A 1910 article in the Seattle weekly, Pacific Builder and Engineer, described the facilities as follows: "The man of travels will find nowhere in the Eastern hemisphere a sub-surface public comfort station equal in character to that which has recently been completed in the downtown district of Seattle; and in the United States there are very few that will be found to equal it. ... Roland W. Cotterill, secretary of the Park Board, states that the comfort station has been one of Seattle's best advertisements. He has expressed himself as surprised at both the character and geographical distribution of the inquiries he has received about it."
Graphic for "Revive I-5: a community conversation with WSDOT + SDOT" on March 17th at 6:30 PM.
Seahawks players celebrating from the top of a double-decker bus, surrounded by adoring fans
Screenshot from https://bluesky-map.theo.io/ showing my followers mapped across the Bluesky ecosystem
Life expectancy around the world at three spatial scales, all for the year 2014. Top panel: for countries of the world. Middle panel: for counties of the US. Bottom panel: for census tracts in King County, WA. All panels use the same color scheme. Dot sizes within each panel are proportional to relative population.
Me and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson in City Hall
Map showing a detail of Burien's spatial camping prohibition, Ordinance 832, at Southwest 132nd St and 8th Pl SW. Orange parcels (and presumably the rights-of-way in front of them) were included in the camping prohibition zone, while green parcels were not. This map demonstrates how even a resident with an internet-enabled device using an interactive map of the prohibition zone could draw an incorrect conclusion about a right-of-way's prohibition status due to GPS errors. Note that this spatial camping ban is no longer in effect: as of January 2025, the City of Burien banned all camping within city boundaries.
Washington Bikes board: Roxana Gomez, Chair Luke Distelhorst, Vice Chair Demi Allen, Secretary Matt Latimer, Treasurer Mary Hoshizaki Brice Maryman Marlene Druker Mark Mercado
Initial email from Cascade Bicycle Club on November 17th, 2025, inviting me to vote for the Board of Directors.
Invitation letter to participate in the Census American Community Survey
Excerpt from Katie Wilson's victory speech: "People of Seattle, this is your city." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6KJoYKESZk
Event poster for Rooted in Roosevelt, happening on Saturday, September 20th, 2025. Musical performances by The Ari Joshua Band, Small Yards, Whozyamama, Kelp Wanted, Modern Faults, and Jet Lag. There will also be free fun for all ages, classes by local businesses, a clothes swap, food trucks, and more! Address is 6801 Roosevelt Way NE. Website: https://rooseveltseattle.org/rooted/
Northeast Greenways Happy Hour, happening TONIGHT (August 14th). The group ride starts at 5:30 PM from Roosevelt Station Plaza, at the intersection of 12th Ave NE and NE 66th St in Seattle. The ride ends at Burke-Gilman Brewing, leading into a happy hour from 6 to 7 PM. Non-alcoholic options are available, kids and dogs are welcome, meet us at the start or at the brewery!
Excerpt from Storper et al 2025 (https://www.planningreport.com/2025/07/25/storper-et-al-yes-yimby-ism-profoundly-conservative-and-wrong-housing-policy) critique of Davis 2025 (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/housing-abundance-antitrust/683504/). The authors criticize Davis for not properly referencing the literature; later in the same paragraph, they cite two studies without linking to the original papers or including a bibliography below. By comparison, Davis properly cites 11 sources in his original op-ed.
Me standing next to the last remaining "standard meter" created during the French Revolution
Guy pointing at himself meme
Child mortality rate by country income group from 1990 through 2023. The share of children who died before age 5 in low-income countries declined from nearly 20% in 1990 to 6% in 2023.
A pair of coyotes standing at the edge of the woods
Announcement poster for Rooted in Roosevelt, a neighborhood celebration happening in Seattle's Roosevelt neighborhood on September 20th. We are seeking a local artist to help us come up with a poster and other graphics for the event!
People congregating near the bar of Human People Beer
People walking on Pike Place on a sunny day. The street still has a barrier up due to construction: about two-thirds of this street section used to be reserved for vehicles. People are walking on both sides of the barrier, and sone people on the left side of the street are buying flowers from market stalls.
Interactive maps comparing walk time to transit stops (top map, in green) against proposed future zoning in Seattle's comprehensive plan (bottom map, in brown and orange). Outside of Regional, Urban, or Neighborhood Centers, the comprehensive plan proposes to only upzone thin strips of housing along hazardous arterials, proposing very little new housing capacity on safer low-traffic streets.
Split fingers typing scene from Ghost in the Shell
Table 1 from Tram et al. (2025) showing estimated excess HIV-related deaths from a pause in PEPFAR funding, broken down across countries served by PEPFAR. Across all countries, the authors estimate 109,552 excess HIV deaths from a 90-day pause in PEPFAR funding.
Photo of me holding a map showing the "Frequent Transit Corridor" along Lake City Way south of NE 100th St. Blue parcels are a short walk to public transit, yellow parcels are zoned multifamily or commercial in OPCD's draft zoning maps. The takeaway: capacity could be added to the blue zones, shifting new residents onto quieter side streets and creating little walkable neighborhoods all around the city!
Racial composition of students at Seattle Public Schools (SPS) compared to private schools across Seattle. In SPS, white students make up 45.4% of the student population; black students, 15.3%; hispanic students, 13.5%; Asian students, 12.7%. In Seattle's private schools, white students are 61.3% of the student population (15.9 percentage points higher for SPS); black students, 6.9% (8.4 pp lower); hispanic students, 4.8 (8.7 pp lower); asian students, 10.7% (2.0 pp lower).
Map of Madrona and surrounding areas showing walking times to six amenity types: supermarkets, libraries, parks >1 acre, public transit stops, restaurants, and coffee shops. Most of Madrona is less than 15 minutes from all six of these amenities, and central Madrona is less than 10 minutes from all amenities. A Grocery Outlet is located at MLK and Union, and a public library is located at 33rd and Union along with an elementary school. The map was exported from https://close.city
My "Orca Wrapped 2024", from https://moshobo.github.io/orca-wrapped . I rode 16 different routes (primarily the Link 1 Line), visited 52 stops, and tapped my card 160 times.
Low-angle cat saying "pathetic" meme
A list of the first 27 figures in the book. Topics include cholera, zoonotic diseases, global calorie and protein intake, cancer, and tuberculosis.
Snippet from page 54: "The United States led the way in demanding the strictest control of milk and insisted on pasteurisation. For long it was a special pride of a dairy or dairy farm to market TT milk (Tuberculin tested) and a higher price was charged."
Snippet from the book: "The story of the unravelling of the riddle of malaria is one of the great romances of science, and we ourselves are living in the very midst of the campaign for complete eradication of the disease." Malaria remains one of the top infectious disease killers of children under 5 worldwide.
Table of leading causes of death across the United States in 1949 and 1960. Deaths from infectious diseases, including TB, syphilis, typhoid, diptheria, whooping cough, and polio all drop precipitously from 1949 to 1960. Strokes, nephritis (kidney inflammation), and prostate cancer are all listed as "deaths of old age".
This "climagram" figure shows estimated physical strain for moderate activity, shown via sloping lines that range from 10% to 90%, under different temperature and humidity conditions. Example ranges are shown for six different cities and times of day.
Distribution of stomach cancer among British men, 1954-1958.
Estimated distribution of the tsetse fly and sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis), based on data from 1920 to 1960.
John Snow's 1854 map of a cholera outbreak in London. The map shows cholera deaths clustered around a pump at the intersection of Broad Street and Lexington Street in Soho. Removing that pump handle ended the cholera outbreak, which demonstrated that cholera was a water-borne disease.
Two maps showing the progression of a cholera pandemic from 1816 to 1823. The book claims this pandemic spread cholera from its original home in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia to the Middle East, Madagascar, modern Malaysia and Indonesia, and coastal East Africa.
Book cover of "The Geography of Life and Death", by L. Dudley Stamp, written in 1964. The cover is black and features two globes: the left globe is illuminated by a full starburst, while the right globe highlights just a few segments of the starburst, hinting at the book's theme of geographically-concentrated disease and health burden.
Description for my talk on Wednesday, November 20th in Savery Hall room 409. The talk title is: "Close: An Interactive, Multi-Modal Travel Time Map" The talk abstract is: Walkability is a popular alternative vision to car dependence in American cities; however, inconsistent definitions and a lack of comprehensive measurement tools have impeded action to build walkable neighborhoods. This talk introduces Close (https://close.city/), an interactive web map showing travel times to nearby amenities via walking, biking, and public transit across every block in the United States. I demonstrate how to conduct a travel time analysis using open data sources, then explore findings from a nationwide analysis of Close data. Population density and city design explain much of the variation in travel times across U.S. cities; travel times to key amenities also vary by race/ethnicity, income, and age. I argue that travel time-based metrics are necessary, but not sufficient, for understanding and designing walkable places.
Screenshot from the Bluesky API documentation (docs.bsky.app) showing maintained software development kits for Typescript, Python, Dart, and Go