A Map of the World As Plotted By Airports

Instead of using your typical cartography methods of mapping the world, James Davenport created a world map using just airports, runways and helicopter pads. That way you can see which countries are dotted and outlined with airports (hint: it's the rich ones) and which countries just disappear into the vapor (hint: it's the poor ones).

It's impressive that most of the continents are outlined enough to get a general shape (with North America, South America, Europe and Australia being more apparent) with the USA being almost excessively colored in. The map used a total of 45,132 runways to fill in the world.

See the full map here. [If We Assume via Fast Co Design]