---
name: "Cartopolis"
subtitle: "Live OpenStreetMap data rendered exactly like a 1999 MapQuest GIF"
date: 2026-07-23
shortlist: true
link: "https://seriot.ch/drawing/cartopolis/"
linkText: "seriot.ch"
source: "Hacker News — Show HN"
topics: [web-tools, design-and-art]
tags: [maps, retro, openstreetmap, nostalgia]
description: "Cartopolis re-renders live OpenStreetMap data through a late-1990s web-map pipeline: a 216-color palette, no antialiasing, and aggressive line simplification."
---

Cartopolis re-renders live OpenStreetMap data through a pipeline built entirely from late-1990s constraints: a 216-color web-safe palette, zero antialiasing, aggressive Douglas–Peucker line simplification, and fixed discrete zoom levels, so roads staircase and curves turn jagged exactly like a dial-up-era MapQuest tile. Nothing is faked afterward with a filter — the grainy look falls directly out of the rendering rules, currently covering the whole of Switzerland as exportable GIF89a files.
