Road to Expansion — U.S. capital investment in 3D

Announced $500M+ projects · column height = capex

Drag to orbit · right-drag to pan · scroll to zoom · hover for details · click to lock · Esc clears

Demo designed & built by

Thomas Johannesen

thomas.johannesen@capgemini.com

Data research · geospatial analysis · build

← ThomasJohannesen.com

Height is scaled (square root of capex, not linear); exact values are on hover.

Methodology

Road to Expansion — 3D

What this map shows. Where large announced U.S. investment projects (≥$500M) land and how big each one is: data centers, semiconductors, EV & battery, auto OEM, power and grid, LNG, transport infrastructure, pharma, industrial manufacturing and warehousing. The 2D map keeps the heatmaps and the year slider.

Honest limit: height is scaled (square root of capex) for readability; exact values are on hover. The tallest column ($165B, Stargate Doña Ana / Project Jupiter) is a long-term program figure including energy, per the project's data notes.

Why 3D

Magnitude: a heatmap blurs one very large plant into the same glow as several small projects; a column keeps each project's size visible, so the capital corridors (Gulf Coast, Texas Triangle, the Ohio and Arizona fabs) read at a glance.

How to read it

Column height = announced capex on a square-root scale: height = 4.2 × √(capex in $B) scene units (1 unit = 10 km of ground). $1B → 4.2, $10B → 13.3, $100B → 42. Rows without a disclosed capex show as a short gray stub marked capex not disclosed.
Column color = the 10 investment categories, same hues as the 2D map.
Column style = status: solid = operational or under construction; translucent = announced or planned. Future projects (construction not started, kickoff 2027+) are translucent with a dashed outline. Rows from the 2026-10-02 research pass carry a New chip. Mesabi Metallics (Iowa, $15B) has no published parcel; it is drawn at the Wever, IA community point (USGS GNIS) where local reporting places the plant, and its card is chipped Approximate location.

Method

Projection: Albers equal-area conic (standard parallels 29.5° and 45.5°, central meridian 96°W), contiguous U.S. only. State outlines: U.S. Census Bureau cartographic boundary file cb_2023_us_state_20m (public domain), simplified for display. No map tiles; works offline.

Rows are drawn at the latitude and longitude in the source data (some are city or county centroids, as their notes say); rows without coordinates are not drawn. Projects that share one campus are fanned out on a small ring in the display only so each column stays hoverable. Category, status and minimum capex filters apply to all columns; the announcement-year range applies to investment columns but not to future projects (the same rule as the 2D map).

Data counts

Coverage limits

Projects come from public announcements, press releases and news reports; every card links its source.
Rows without valid coordinates are not drawn (counts above). One exception, labeled on the map: Mesabi Iowa, placed at the Wever community point.
Most project rows are located at a city or area centroid, as their own notes say; cards show this as a location line. Project Star uses the Encinal city-center point.

Data as-of

Sources

How to use

Start Tilted; switch to Top-down for a flat, 2D-style read where every column is visible.
Use Gulf Coast & Texas to fly to the densest capex corridor.
Raise Minimum announced capex to keep only the largest programs.
Hover anything for details and its source link; click to lock the card; Esc clears.

Open the 2D map · ThomasJohannesen.com