Producing a map with 5 lines of code

Over the past year, I have been exploring the geospatial capabilities of various R packages.  Today, I want to share the most basic of geospatial capabilities, which is producing a map.  Using R, you can do this in just 5 lines of code.

Let's produce a map of Boston, Massachusetts.  Boston has a longitude of -71.0588801 and a latitude of 42.3600825.  Since we list x and y coordinates in order (i.e. we list y after x), we list longitude (the horizontal coordinate) before latitude (the vertical coordinate).  Let's create our map!

Code line 1:

install.packages("ggmap")

This command installs the ggmap package in your R environment.

Code line 2:

library(ggmap)

This command loads the ggmap package in your R environment.

Code line 3:

boston <- c(lon = -71.0588801, lat = 42.3600825)

This line creates a variable called "boston" and assigns the lon and lat coordinates in it.

Code line 4:

boston_map <- get_map(boston, zoom = 13, scale = 1)

This line creates a variable called "boston_map" and assigns the get_map command to it.

Code line 5:

ggmap(boston_map)

This line generates the map.

And that's it!  If you reproduce these five lines in your R environment, you will generate a map that looks like this: