New Prospect Park Map Shows All Roads Lead To Smorgasburg

PROSPECT PARK, BROOKLYN — There are one million walks in Prospect Park and most of them lead to Smorgasburg, according to a Bushwick startup.

The Bushwick tech company CARTO gathered data from more than million New Yorker’s phones to build A Million Walks in the Park, a series of maps that show how people use, among others, Prospect Park and Central Park.

“[The map] shows clusters of people based on what % of their time is shared with other people in that space,” researchers wrote. “We then identified unique points of interest near each cluster that may have brought those groups of people together.”

In Brooklyn, what brought people together in Prospect Park was the promise of okonomi, Dutch waffles and beef tartare — also known as Smorgasburg.

A hot pink splotch on the map near the Thomas Moore memorial meant that most shared experiences last summer happened over paper plates of exotic foods at the weekly culinary fair.

The runner up for communal fun was the Boathouse and Audubon Center — or the “let’s get married” capital of Prospect Park — which was a smaller, softer-shaded orange splotch.

CARTO also played around with data in community parks, waterfront areas, playgrounds and gardens across the borough, tracking how many visitors each area had, how much time they spent there and when they most liked to go.

So congratulations, you now you can see where and when the cool kids were hanging out. Unfortunately, CARTO cannot map why you weren’t invited.

Check out A Million Walks In The Park on the CARTO website.

Photo courtesy of Wenfei Xu/CARTO