The Map Room

Alien Loves Predator’s New York Movie Map: “This is an illustrated 18″x24″ map of the history of films set in New York — more specifically, all the movies I could cram into a tiny 12-square-mile chunk of Manhattan. There’s exactly 91 movies on here. Can you name them all?” Thanks to Eric Riback for the link.

NYU professor Steve Hutkins wrote in to tell me about his collection of links to maps of New York.

To illustrate an article marking the 200th anniversary of Manhattan’s street grid, the New York Times has put together an interactive map superimposing 19th-century maps of Manhattan on the modern city. (Flash required; at some point NYT links may be paywall-encumbered, if I’m not mistaken.)

The Washington Square News, NYU’s student paper, reports on efforts to improve navigation guides for tourists in New York’s Little Italy and Chinatown, who apparently are getting themselves lost with current guides. Apparently many kiosk maps are “upside down” — which I think means that “up” points away from the direction the person reading the map is facing.

A whole cloth quilt based on a map of the New York subway system. Karyn’s used a diagrammatic map that confused me for a moment: since the map comes from the New York City Transit Authority, it dates from between 1953 and 1968 (pre-Vignelli, in other words), but diagrams of that sort were produced by Salomon in the 1950s, and Goldstein and D’Adamo in the 1960s, according to Mark Ovenden’s Transit Maps of the World. Via Rebecca Blood.

Previously: Map Quilts by Leah Evans; New York Subway Map Quilt Fabric; Soft Maps: Map Quilts of Cities.

New York City’s 311 service, which handles non-emergencies, has a map showing the number of service requests by community board district. You can search by service request category as well. No, I don’t know what’s happening in Manhattan 12 either….  •  Continue reading this entry.

This preposterously detailed map of New York’s Central Park took two years to survey and includes every trail, building, monument, recreational area and waterway in the park. It also includes every single tree — all 19,630 of them. (See the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Times maps the shifting ethnic mosaic of New York’s neighbourhoods. Via @geoparadigm….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Alexander Chen’s “Conductor” recreates the New York subway map as a musical instrument, with subway lines as pluckable strings. It’s based on Vignelli’s 1972 subway map, which makes sense for this kind of project. It’s a work in progress, and…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Times describes the process of restoring a 240-year-old map that the Brooklyn Historical Society discovered in their possession — a rare 1770 map of New York City by Bernard Ratzer, only three other copies of which were…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Benjaman Kabak has a detailed report on the panel on the design of the New York subway map held last night at the Museum of the City of New York (previously). Via Mark Ovenden. Update, Dec. 11: Another report on…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Eddie Jabbour writes to let us know about an event at the Museum of the City of New York on December 7 about designing New York subway maps “for the riding public.” Featuring John Tauranac and Massimo Vignelli in addition…  •  Continue reading this entry.

New York magazine maps gang activity in New York City (PDF). Cartographically not very much: neighbourhoods coloured where there is some, with icons indicating which gang. Then again, wouldn’t getting more detail get someone killed? Via @brownpau….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Eddie Jabbour’s KickMap — an imaginative redesign of the New York subway map that tries to address the confusing and complex network of express and local lines — first came to my attention in 2007. Since then, the KickMap…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via multiple sources, the New York Times’s taxi map shows the average number of taxi pickups by street for Manhattan for each hour of the week — an incredibly deep portrait of where New Yorkers get their cabs. (Interesting to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Post finds fault with Google Maps’s bike directions in New York City. The feature, the Post says, “is filled with potentially fatal flaws, including routes that cut across Central Park’s treacherous tranverse roads and steer cyclists to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Brett Camper’s 8-bit map of New York City is geographically accurate (it uses OpenStreetMap data), but renders it like a map of a role-playing or adventure game from an old 8-bit gaming console. Via Kottke….  •  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.

Kottke notices that New York City’s mapping portal has aerial photos of the city from 1924. Deroy Peraza has some fun comparing them to aerial photos from the present day. Previously: NYCityMap….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Electoral Map reviews Mapping New York, a new book that looks at the cartographic history of New York City: “I expected a glossy table book, but what I got was a richly illustrated history of New York City…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The following is a guest post by Mark Ovenden, who relates how, in the cavernous confines of the abandoned Court Street Subway station in Brooklyn, now re-used as the Transit Museum, three great innovators in the world of transit map…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Etsy seller studiokmo produces interesting map cuts — maps of cities where the city blocks are cut out, leaving a transparent lattice of streets. So far, she’s produced maps of New York and Paris; London is next, and she…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Erin Jang: “This was my present to my nephew for his 3rd birthday. He loves, loves, loves the subway so my sister asked me if I could make a custom map with all the places that mean something to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

“Augmented reality” superimposes computer graphics on real-world imagery; here’s a demo of a forthcoming application for the iPhone called New York Nearest Subway, which superimposes directions to nearby subway stops on top of imagery taken with the iPhone’s camera. It…  •  Continue reading this entry.

John Tauranac writes, “Last November I came out with a new map [of the New York subway], which combines a Beck-like map on one side with a truly geographic map on the other.” He writes about it on Gotham…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The design consultancy firm Schulze and Webb have produced a pair of maps of Manhattan called “Here and There”: each map starts at street level and curls upwards, like a bird’s-eye view without a horizon that melds into a…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Geography of Buzz, a project of Columbia University’s Spatial Information Design Lab, “set out to analyze the unique spatial and social dynamics that are created by the arts and entertainment industries in New York City and Los Angeles.”…  •  Continue reading this entry.

It’s a pity that this hoodie with a map of the New York subway printed on it seems to be sold out, because, you know, want. Via Platial….  •  Continue reading this entry.

USA Today’s map of 2006 and 2008 foreclosures shows “that rising rates of foreclosure were most severe in a few areas. Last year, 35 counties accounted for half the nation’s foreclosure actions.” (Those counties are outlined in red on…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Times has created an interactive map showing, by borough and by neighbourhood, how residents feel about crime, municipal services, quality of life and a host of other things, based on a city survey of 2,500 residents…  •  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.

Korean design firm Zero per Zero has done some interesting things with urban transit maps; in addition to subway maps of Seoul, Osaka and Tokyo that look like Beck diagrams through a fisheye lens, they’ve done a rather unique…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The City of New York’s health department has, since last November, been mapping the city’s rat population in an effort to get a better handle on its rodent control efforts. Time has an article: Today, rodent complaints by residents from…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Google “has added New York City transit directions and brought its ads to the Big Apple, wrapping an ‘S’ shuttle train that runs between Grand Central and Times Square. Trouble is, the directions it gives in the ads aren’t always…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Times’s Verlyn Klinkenborg takes a look at the City of New York’s mapping portal, NYCityMap: At first, NYCityMap feels a little clunky, especially if you’re used to navigating in Google Maps. But what’s interesting are its hidden…  •  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.

It’s been a long time, but the mapping technology that was first presented under the name Dynamap in 2004 has finally left the realm of vapourware and will very shortly result in a shipping product. Well, two products, but…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Mannahatta Project’s goal “is to reconstruct the ecology of Manhattan when Henry Hudson first sailed by in 1609 and compare it to what we know of the island today. The Mannahatta Project will help us to understand, down…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 map of the New York subway system, which introduced a Beck-style diagrammatic transit map to the city (and which New Yorkers were not prepared for; the map was controversial and encountered opposition before it was replaced in…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York City Public Toilet Map lists 250 public restrooms in Manhattan; the wallet-sized map costs $2. As I noted before when discussing Australia’s National Public Toilet Map, this is exactly the sort of thing us weak-bladdered travellers need…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Ouch: Riding While White on the NYC Subway, an MTA subway map with minority-neighbourhood stops removed. “This map, though intended for white folks, can be used by people of color who live in the unmarked areas because the last stops…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The New York Public Library’s skunkworks is currently experimenting with a number of blogs, one of which — quite naturally, given the existence of the NYPL’s map division — deals with maps: Maps @ NYPL is still at an early…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This time it’s for real. A year and a half after John Emerson proposed compass points at subway entrances, and guerrilla-style compass roses began appearing on city sidewalks, the New York City Department of Transportation announces temporary compass decals…  •  Continue reading this entry.

An animated map depicting the history of the New York subway: “[a]n animated GIF starts with a blank subway map and draws each line in the sequence in which it was built.” For more maps showing the history of New…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Get Lost: Artists Map Downtown New York “is a collective portrait of downtown New York. Twenty-one international artists were invited to create a personal view of the city and draw a map of downtown New York, uncovering a territory…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Yes, the iPhone has Google Maps on it, but Khoi Vinh feels the need to carry along a mobile version of the official New York Metropolitan Transit Authority subway map on his iPhone. His solution is what he calls…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The big news so far from Where 2.0 is the announcement of Google’s street-level imagery for five U.S. cities — Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and (of course) San Francisco — which, in a fit of originality, they’re…  •  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.

In this four-minute outtake that didn’t make it into the final version of the documentary film Helvetica, designer Massimo Vignelli talks about his 1972 map of the New York subway system — which, you may recall, encountered stout opposition….  •  Continue reading this entry.

After posting the entry about the new Madrid Metro map, it occurred to me that familiarity may be as important as good design: a new map design will almost certainly encounter resistance from users of the current design if the…  •  Continue reading this entry.

“Manhattan,” by Howard Horowitz, first appeared in the New York Times on August 30, 1997: it was a poem in the shape of Manhattan Island, about Manhattan, with references to various neighbourhoods and landmarks in the appropriate locations. It’s…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Dave Kellam has scanned a panoramic map of New York, dating from 1939 or thereabouts, that he picked up a few months ago at a used bookstore. (Lucky find, that.) Via Plep….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Fire insurance maps, with their incredible detail, are always a great find; we’ve got a couple in local collections here, and I just think they’re magnificent. Unfortunately, they originally had onerous copyright restrictions that prohibited making copies, so these treasures…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Making subway maps is more than just choosing between Beck-style diagrams and geographically accurate maps, or something in between; as with any good map design, colour choice matters too. Yale Daily News tells the story of alumnus R. Raleigh D’Adamo,…  •  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.

Gawker’s New York City Subway Smell Map, a Google Maps mashup with attitude: “Created from reports sent in by Gawker readers, the map displays particular smells — horrific and sublime — encountered throughout New York’s subway stations.” And you thought…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Despite the success of Beck’s London Underground diagram, New Yorkers have historically resisted diagrammatic subway maps, preferring instead maps that are a bit more geographically accurate and take into account surface features like parks, bodies of water and neighbourhoods….  •  Continue reading this entry.

For a so-called “remaindered link,” this is an impressive post: Jason Kottke began by linking to a story in today’s New York Times about Egbert Viele’s 1874 map of Manhattan — still used today by civil engineers because it…  •  Continue reading this entry.

With Manhattan Elsewhere, Jason Kottke updates Bill Rankin’s Errant Isle of Manhattan using Google Maps and Google Earth (Rankin used MapQuest). The idea is to play off the differences in size and density; in both projects, it’s very surprising to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

To mark the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the September 11 Digital Archive has used the Google Maps API to create an interactive map of New York with photos (blue markers) and stories (red markers) from that day. Via…  •  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.

Computer geeks are the ones hacking Google Maps. Computer geeks like WiFi. No surprise, then, that several of the map hacks using the Google Maps API involve wireless hotspot locations. Maps of free WiFi access points are available for New…  •  Continue reading this entry.

A GPS traceroute of a year’s worth of walking and biking in New York — mostly Manhattan and Brooklyn — by a single person. Beyond neat. Via Gadling….  •  Continue reading this entry.

HopStop provides directions, by public transit or by foot, for New York City addresses: enter starting point and destination and it provides the route and a small map. Via Kottke….  •  Continue reading this entry.

A homemade New York subway map that includes other railroads and is based on the London diagram. Says the designer: My design goals were to present a simple, clear diagram of all the passenger railroads in the city and just…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Why should the London Underground map get all the attention (see previous entry)? The New York Times has a brief story (usual registration caveats) on the origins of the current New York subway map, which dates to 1979. Thanks James….  •  Continue reading this entry.