The Map Room

Cycle Lifestyle’s London Cycle Map a bicycle map of London designed by Simon Parker in the style of Beck’s tube map, is one of six winners of the 2011 GeoVation challenge. The award came with £6,000 in funding. Here’s a list of all the GeoVation award winners.

Previously: GeoVation.

A Flash animation that morphs between the Beck tube map, the modern variant thereof, and a geographical map of the London Underground, previously on the Transport for London website, has resurfaced on its designer’s home page. No idea when it moved, but it’s worth another look all the same. Via @HodderGeography.

A small exhibition of 11 hand-drawn maps of London (really, only 11?) at the Museum of London opens this Thursday. Done in partnership with Londonist, which has been soliciting such maps for some time, the free exhibition runs until September 11. Here’s a post by one of the artists, Paula Simoes, about her map, “Loos of London” (above).

Previously: Londonist Still Wants Hand-Drawn Maps; Londonist Wants Hand-Drawn Maps.

Via Mapping London, a couple of neat visualizations of trips on London’s public transit systems. This animation (above) shows a five-percent sample of Oyster card users on the Tube throughout the day, with trips inferred from start and end points. This animation is a simulation of buses on London’s 744 routes.

Mapping London is a new blog by James Cheshire and Oliver O’Brien, whose work we’ve seen before. Here’s how James announced it on his own blog: “Oliver O’Brien and I have decided to team up to launch the mappinglondon.co.uk blog for people who like to see maps of London without the techie blurb/ code you often see here. This is timely as there are some fantastic London mapping events in the pipeline (stay tuned) that I know will spread the good word about the geography and cartography of this great city.”

An exhibition called Harry Beck and the London Tube Map, which is “based on a local private collection and traces the development of the London Underground map from the 19th Century to the present day,” is running at the Church…  •  Continue reading this entry.

I mentioned Stephen Walter’s detailed hand-drawn typographic maps of Liverpool (and London — which made the Magnificent Maps exhibit) all too briefly in this entry. Fortunately, the Guardian had a profile of him this week: apparently Berlin is his…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Following hot on the heels of the typographic map of U.S. surnames that he worked on for National Geographic, James Cheshire has announced an interactive typographic map of London surnames. A slider allows you to select between the most,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

To illustrate the impact of a four-degree rise in global temperatures and a four-metre rise in sea levels, Practical Action has released a London tube map showing which stations would be underwater. Via io9 and Londonist; thanks also to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Londonist continues to look for hand-drawn maps; there will be an exhibition of them next April at the Museum of London. They’ve been steadily publishing submissions over the past year, and want more. Previously: Londonist Wants Hand-Drawn Maps….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Peter Watts (the British journalist, not the Canadian science fiction writer) pours cold water on the urban myth that Phyllis Pearsall walked 3,000 miles of London streets — repeated by yours truly as well as many others — to create…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Londonist has put together a directory of online maps of London. Via geoparadigm….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via many sources (for example, Ed Parsons and Google Maps Mania), this live train map of the London Underground, showing the real-time position of each train. It’s a mashup of Transport for London data with the Google Maps API, but…  •  Continue reading this entry.

MAPCO, which makes high-resolution scans of antique maps available online, has added a lot of material since I first blogged about them in 2007; one of their more recent additions has been showing up a lot in my Twitter…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Grub Street Project: Topographies of 18th-Century London “aims to map the city and its texts to create both a historically accurate visualization of the city’s commerce and communications, and a record of how its authors and artists portrayed…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Joe B. has this to say about the differences between the diagrammatic, iconic London Underground map and the hash that has been the maps of the New York subway system: “The simplicity of the London diagram comes in part from…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Londonist is putting out a call for hand-drawn maps of London: “Draw a map of your local area, be it home or work, indicating all the corners, bars, parks, features and characters that are important to you. You can…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Google Maps Mania and Mapperz are enthusiastic about Transport for London’s new Google Maps-based bus route map; the area bus maps, in PDF format, are some of the most confusing system maps I’ve ever seen….  •  Continue reading this entry.

So, how do you implement zoom on a paper map? Here’s how: each square of the “map2” folds out to reveal a smaller-scale map of the same area. Beyond neat; Anne Stauche’s £8 map of London is the only…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Another one of Transport for London’s maps is in trouble: this time, a bicycle-rental map switches the locations of two well-known London museums. TfL says they’ll be fixing the error. Via Londonist….  •  Continue reading this entry.

London mayor Boris Johnson to Transport for London: put the Thames and the fare zones back on the Tube map (see previous entry). They’ll return to the map’s next version, due in September….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Uh-oh. The latest version of the Tube map omits fare zones and the Thames. That controversy has ensued should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the mapping of the London Underground. (I expect that a parody based on…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Here’s a new Tube map for you. Transport for London has released a map showing how hot it gets on London Underground station platforms (PDF). Which is to say, very. (And I thought Paris Metro stations were bad.) The…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via Boing Boing, a cross-stitch version of the London Underground map….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Phyllis Pearsall’s famous 1936 map of London is available again. The company she founded, A to Z Maps, has published a fascimile reproduction of her map, coloured to simulate aging (the original was black ink on white paper, but…  •  Continue reading this entry.

In an article posted on the ABAA’s Web site, Elisabeth Burdon of oldimprints.com argues that MacDonald Gill, the artist responsible for the 1913 Wonderground Map of London Town, had a “profound” influence on later pictorial mapmaking. “Not only did…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Randy Plemel has been making stroller- and wheelchair-accessible maps of transit systems — in other words, maps where only the accessible stations are shown; non-accessible stations are erased. After earlier takes on the London Underground and New York Subway,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A 1987 BBC documentary on Beck’s diagrammatic map of the London Underground; it’s nearly 26 minutes long: Via Kottke and MapHist….  •  Continue reading this entry.

I should have mentioned MapTube long ago; Andrew Hudson-Smith wrote to me about it in May: MapTube, the new mapping site from the guys at Digital Urban and CASA at University College London to view, overlay, mix and match…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A Sony ad campaign for its Walkman digital audio players shows subway network maps made from black Sony earphones. (Because they can’t be white earphones, silly.) In addition to the New York subway map poster making the rounds, there…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This is interesting: thermal images of London from space, from the air, and from a high vantage point. Part of a site dedicated to thermal imagery of London, but this page is what’s of interest to us. At right,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Tubemap Wallet is one of those ideas that sounds really neat — even practical — in theory: a special wallet that folds out to reveal a map of either the London Underground or the New York subway. The…  •  Continue reading this entry.

London’s Kerning is a map of London done in type — you have to step back from the large (153 cm × 101.5 cm), limited-edition poster to recognize the city. Interesting. Via Kottke; more at Moon River….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The London Pedestrian Routemap is a work in progress the aim of which “is to encourage walking in London. It does this by providing a simple, memorable picture of key walking routes in the Capital. At present there is…  •  Continue reading this entry.

There are hardly any posts up yet, but the London: A Life in Maps exhibition now has an accompanying blog. Via MapHist. Previously: London: A Life in Maps — Now Open and Online; Peter Barber on “London: A Life in…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The British Library exhibition, “London: A Life in Maps,” is now open, both in real life and online. The virtual exhibition that Peter Barber referred to is now online as part of the overall London: A Life in Maps web…  •  Continue reading this entry.

For an exhibition that doesn’t even open until next week, “London: A Life in Maps” is generating all sorts of attention — it’s the launching-off point for this essay on mapping London by Peter Ackroyd in next week’s New Statesman,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Peter Barber — Peter Barber! — writes: London: A Life in Maps will be accompanied by a virtual exhibition, available on the BL website, for people who can’t visit. Though the emphasis of the exhibition will be on the great…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Telegraph has more about “London: A Life in Maps,” the upcoming exhibit at the British Library (see previous entry). It opens on the 24th. Via MapHist….  •  Continue reading this entry.

In response to Transport for London’s crackdown on London tube map remixes (previous entry), the Wikimedia Commons is putting together a series of freely available maps of the London Underground. The maps are generated using PHP to process GPS…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Coming up at the British Library and running from November 24 to March 4, an exhibition called “London: A Life in Maps”: “Maps, views, letters, and ephemera from the British Library collections, show the city’s transformation from a Roman…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Sure, laminated paper versions are cheaper, but a credit-card-sized, stainless steel map of the New York subway or London Underground is, well … it’s something, isn’t it? It’s fifteen bucks, anyway. Via Gizmodo, where they seem to think it’s…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Map of Early Modern London is an interactive annotated map of London based on the 16th-century “Agas” woodcut map, with clickable points (akin to Google Maps pushpins) that take you to more detailed information about a given location….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The 100th anniversary of Phyllis Pearsall’s birth was celebrated in the UK on Monday. She founded the A-Z Map Company in 1936 to publish a (now-legendary) map of London — which she compiled by walking 3,000 miles’ worth of…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Simon Elvins’s “Silent London”: “Using information the government has collected on noise levels within London, a map has been plotted of the capital’s most silent spaces. The map intends to reveal a hidden landscape of quiet spaces and shows…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Old meets new: Google Earth layers for London in 1666 and 1690. Suddenly the purpose behind e_Perimetron becomes clear. Via Things Magazine….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Old London Maps is a gem of a collection of antique maps and engravings depicting London from medieval times to the nineteenth century. Greenwood’s map of London (pictured at right; see previous entry) is there, as are many others. Thanks…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Charles Booth’s late-nineteenth-century map of London poverty (see previous entry) is getting some additional attention lately: Boing Boing and Cartography link to this page, which compares Booth’s map with a 2001 map of London, and this Economist article, which discusses…  •  Continue reading this entry.

If you’ve got an iPod with a colour screen, you can put subway maps on it. It’s a simple matter to put digital images on an iPod; where maps are concerned, though, it’s a challenge to make sure they’re legible…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Feòrag’s London Underground map (343 KB JPEG) edits out the lines that were closed due to yesterday’s bombing incidents. Via Boing Boing….  •  Continue reading this entry.

During World War Two, London County Council kept maps showing the damage caused to the city by German bombs. They did it by hand-colouring Ordnance Survey maps, each colour representing a certain amount of damage. Now, the BBC reports, the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Fed up with delays on the London Underground, Stef took Transport for London’s tube disruption maps and spliced them together into a three-minute time-lapse movie that shows delays over a 15-day period. The result? “London Underground is disruption free, a…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Don Sattler writes, “I’m in London on vacation and would love to purchase a large map of the tube system to hang on my office wall. I can’t seem to find one. Do you know of any shops that might…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Tube map fanatics should not miss the ultimate MetaFilter post on the London Underground. Some stuff you may have seen before, even here, but it’s all in one spot, see?…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Transport for London (London’s transit agency) has a journey planner that I would try if I knew anything about the city; alas, I’ve never been. (Many of my readers have, though, so let me know if it’s any good.) Their…  •  Continue reading this entry.

From a Grauniad special report on London’s ethnic diversity, a couple of maps showing concentrations of ethnic and religious minorities in that city. The maps use only four gradations of shading, which can be misleading: in one, the darkest shade…  •  Continue reading this entry.

After all that election nonsense, now for a bit of fun. Naturally, as a benighted colonist, I don’t get the joke, but here, via The (always nifty) Cartoonist, is London (and the rest of the known universe) as seen by…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The London Tube Map Archive has a new URL, now that sitehouse.net is no longer operative. I don’t know when it happened: I linked to the old address in April 2003; The Cartoonist linked to the new address on Sunday….  •  Continue reading this entry.

MultiMap uses JavaScript to toggle between maps and satellite images of a given locale. One of a part of London has been making the rounds of the blogosphere this week (see Boing Boing and MetaFilter)….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Last Thursday’s Guardian — they do seem do have a lot of map-related content, don’t they? — had an article about Henry Beck, the creator of the iconic London Underground map that ditched scale and proportionality in favour of clarity….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Last year I blogged about a noise map of Paris. Now the concept has jumped the Channel: there’s a noise map of London available, and it looks like there will be more such maps across England. There are two official-looking…  •  Continue reading this entry.

For you Tube map freaks: R. Gardiner has taken a geographically accurate map of the London Underground and superimposed it on a satellite image of the city. Very effective. Via Here Be Dragons….  •  Continue reading this entry.