A relief worker checks road conditions on a map of Puerto Rico during aid distribution planning in San Juan. Colin Chaperon for the American Red Cross

The year's biggest stories in maps—and a few of the best maps, in stories.

There’s no one right way to make sense of a tumultuous year, but at least maps offer one kind of insight: Even in a digitally connected world, geography is still, frequently, destiny. From the effects of DACA elimination, to Hurricane Harvey’s impact on Houston, to Uber’s wild year, CityLab has reported many of the year’s top stories through the lens of physical place. As a special edition of MapLab, CityLab’s biweekly maps newsletter (sign up here), I looked at some of 2017’s big stories in maps, and some of 2017’s best maps, in stories.

Women march

Missiles move (KCNA via Reuters) North Korea rang in 2017 by claiming it was making “final preparations” on a missile capable of reaching the U.S. Doubts about the country’s technological capabilities remain, but the country did indeed test multiple long-range ballistic missiles (and possibly a hydrogen bomb) this year, as promised. In return, Trump threatened the country with “fire and fury,” undermining U.S. diplomatic efforts in the process. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (shown above in an undated photo, apparently measuring distances on a map with officials of the Korean People's Army) replied, “I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire.” The situation is expected to escalate in 2018. Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. Subscribe Loading... Megaregions dawn

(Rae + Nelson)

For all the hand-wringing after the 2016 election, the divides between “urban” and “rural” aren’t really so clear-cut. Many planners and economists now argue that the U.S. economy is powered by “megaregions”: interlocking workforces in clusters of neighboring cities. To illustrate the point, the researchers Garrett Dash Nelson and Alasdair Rae built an algorithm to measure commuter flows and produced vibrant maps that stitch together towns like San Francisco, San Jose, and Sacramento; and Des Moines, Springfield, and Peoria. Bright lights, bigger cities. Mass shootings accelerate The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history came in October, when a gunman pent up in a Las Vegas hotel tower showered gunfire on concertgoers across the street, leaving 59 people dead and more than 500 others injured. A month later, a man opened fire on churchgoers in Sutherland Springs, Texas, killing 26. There were dozens of smaller-scale events this year. The Gun Violence Archive reports more than 14,000 people were killed and over 29,000 were injured in mass shootings (defined here) in 2017. That might make it the worst year on record. Mass shootings affect communities of all shapes and sizes: CityLab charted that geography here. (The map shown here does not include incidents after October 2.) Cities resist (CityLab Latino/Univision/US Climate Mayors) In June, President Trump announced the U.S. would pull out of the Paris accord. The landmark climate agreement, signed now by literally every other recognized country in the world, established a goal of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius by cutting carbon emissions. The accord may have never been enough to save the planet from climate disaster, but the U.S. withdrawal left many world citizens concerned about who’d fill the vacuum in leadership. One unlikely leader: an alliance of cities. The mayors of nearly 400 U.S. cities (some of which are mapped above), representing 60 million Americans, signed a commitment to “adopt, honor and uphold” the goals of the Paris agreement. Possible? We’ll see. But it was one of the year’s most powerful statements of local resistance to federal policy.