The actual map is an amazing piece of work, but let's give credit where credit is due!

Bill Rankin posted maps in this exact visual style back in 2009. You can see them (and many other amazing maps he's done) at his blog -- http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?chicagodots

Eric Fischer picked up Bill's project and ran with it, composing maps for most of the major US cities with census 2010 data. You can see them all on his Flickr page -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/7215762481267496....

I love great maps, but it's a little disheartening that these precursor projects aren't mentioned anywhere in the article/comments.