FSQ Spatial Desktop

Foursquare Studio and FSQ Spatial Desktop are geospatial analytics platforms built on kepler.gl, the open-source large-scale data visualization framework originally created at Uber and now maintained by Foursquare. With kepler.gl 3.0, the default basemap renderer was switched from Mapbox to MapLibre GL JS.

The switch to MapLibre

In December 2023, kepler.gl 3.0 changed its default basemap from Mapbox to MapLibre GL JS. As the OpenJS Foundation announcement put it:

“The default base map renderer has been changed from Mapbox to Maplibre to ensure that kepler.gl is using an open source basemap that is actively supported by a strong community.”

The migration was implemented in PR #2461, which also took advantage of MapLibre v3’s WebGL2 support for GPU-accelerated layers.

From kepler.gl to Foursquare Studio

Foursquare has maintained kepler.gl for several years, using it as the open core for their location platform products. As Foursquare describes it, “the original creators are using kepler as an open core for building location platform products such as Foursquare Studio.” FSQ Spatial Desktop extends this further by pairing kepler.gl’s visualization engine with native DuckDB for desktop-grade performance.

How MapLibre fits in

MapLibre GL JS handles the vector basemap — tile loading, styling, and WebGL rendering. On top of that, deck.gl renders analytical layers like hexbin aggregations, arc layers, and heatmaps. The two libraries share a WebGL context, so the map and data layers stay in sync during pan and zoom.