Author: Jonathan Crowe

Jonathan Crowe blogs about maps at The Map Room. His essays and reviews have been published by AE, Calafia, The New York Review of Science Fiction, the Ottawa Citizen, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. He lives in Shawville, Quebec.

The Great Lake Winnipesaukee Map Fight

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Last month, the Boston Globe reported on a curious rivalry between two mapmakers and their boating maps of Lake Winnipesaukee, the largest lake in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. Bizer and Duncan Press, both family businesses, are locked in a bitter battle with one another, as each touts their own map of the lake as the best map. Bizer’s Map (above) claims to have charted more buoys, rocks and boating hazards; Duncan Press takes every opportunity to rubbish its competition on its website: see the comparison page and the FAQ. Some of Bizer’s claims seem unimportant, and so are some of Duncan Press’s critiques of Bizer’s map. All the same it’s fascinating to see such a rivalry on such a small scale. [Andy Woodruff]

Volunteers Mapping Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

When disaster strikes, crowdmapping kicks into high gear. Last Friday, six universities hosted mapathons where volunteers, using satellite imagery, contributed to the map of Puerto Rico and other hurricane-damaged areas on OpenStreetMap. More from one of the universities involved. Here’s the relevant project page on the OSM Wiki.

Between Stations

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

In Nicholas Rougeux’s latest project, Between Stations, subway maps “were broken down into the segments between each station and rearranged to fill a common simple shape: a circle. Each diagram shows every segment in a subway system while maintaining geographic orientation (no segments were rotated).” The project page is full of hypnotic animations in which the maps undergo their transformations. Nicholas’s blog post explains the data, code and design behind the project. [Transit Maps]

We last saw Nicholas in August 2016, when I told you about his Interchange Choreography project.

Three Map Exhibitions

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Historic Maps of the Southwest, an exhibition at the Los Lunas Museum of Heritage and Arts in Los Lunas, New Mexico (just south of Albuquerque), features maps on loan from the Albuquerque Museum. Opened on 9 September and runs until the end of December. The Valencia County News-Bulletin has details: “Most of the maps in the exhibit are originals of the Spanish colonial era, the Mexican era, the New Mexico Territorial period and the early statehood period, such as the 1926 and 1928 automobile trail maps.” [WMS]

Beneath Our Feet: Mapping the World Below opened last Friday at the Boston Public Library’s Norman B. Leventhal Map Center and runs until 25 February 2018. The theme: subsurface mapping. “In this exhibition, you will see how ancient Romans carved vast underground catacombs, how minerals and natural resources have been studied, engineered and transported since the 19th century, how today’s scientific and cartographic advancements have enabled us to picture the entire ocean floor, and what lies below the streets of Boston.”

Finland in Ancient Cartography, an exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of Finland’s independence, is being hosted by the National Archives of Finland in Helsinki, in cooperation with the Embassy of Italy in Finland and the Italian Institute of Culture. “The exhibition focuses on the depiction of Finland and offers a journey through ancient cartography history and the representation of the country from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. It places special emphasis on satirical cartography between the end of nineteenth century and the First World War, as these periods are strictly connected to Finnish independence. More than 40 maps from the Gianni Brandozzi Collection and the National Archives are displayed.” Opened 21 September; runs until 17 November. [WMS]

Mapping the Damage in Puerto Rico

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
NASA-JPL/Caltech/ESA/Copernicus/Google

At NASA’s Earth Observatory, before and after images of Puerto Rico’s nighttime lights illustrate the extent of power outages and infrastructure damage on the island. NASA has also produced a map of likely damaged areas of eastern Puerto Rico, based on before and after radar satellite interferometry and similar to the map they produced for the Mexican earthquake. At ground level, the CrowdRescue Puerto Rico Infrastructure Map displays crowdsourced reports of damage—downed power lines, bridge collapses, floods, mudslides and other incidents.

Map Error Costs Centre $1.7 Million in Tax Credits

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A map error has left a community centre in Burlington, Vermont scrambling to make up a nearly $2-million financial shortfall.

Specifically, the center had banked on equity from New Market Tax Credits to fund the final construction payment of $1.7 million. Its leaders believed the new building at 505 Lake Street fell in a qualifying U.S. Census tract for the federal program, according to the letter.

An online map based on the building address showed it within the tract, but it turned out that the building is actually just outside it.

[Bill Morris]

Sara Drake

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Sara Drake

Sara Drake’s 3D maps are a vibrantly coloured, whimsical combination of model-making, painting and sculpture.

I can normally be found carving miniature buildings from balsa wood and bandaging up the resultant scalpel wounds—or with my hands buried deep in wallpaper paste, as I papier mache the map base.

The maps are all hand-built and painted with acrylics, which give great vibrancy and long-lasting colour. The making process is pretty unique and combines a number of different artistic processes. I also use a huge range of materials—both new and recycled and can frequently be found head-first in a skip digging for special treasure! I am always looking for new and exciting techniques and materials to experiment with.

[Maps on the Web]

Looking Back at Hurricane Harvey’s Impact

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Here’s a CBS News gallery of before-and-after images showing the impact of flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. The page is undated but was published on 1 September. [Dave Smith]

And, via CityLab, here are a set of maps from the Urban Institute that show the impact of Hurricane Harvey on Houston’s neighbourhoods, based on income levels, home ownership rates, accumulated-equity rates, all of which looking at the economic impact of the storm. “Harvey’s aftermath puts an enormous hurdle in front of all homeowners and renters but will be a particular setback for low-income, minority families recovering from the 2008 housing bust.”

Previously: Mapping Hurricane Harvey’s Impact.

Atlas of the Irish Revolution

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Atlas of the Irish Revolution came out earlier this month from Cork University Press in Europe and New York University Press in North America. From the latter publisher: “Published to coincide with the centenary of the Easter Rising, this comprehensive and visually compelling volume brings together all of the current research on the revolutionary period, with contributions from leading scholars from around the world and from many disciplines.” The Irish Times’s coverage of the book’s launch focuses on the sheer size of the book: nearly 1,000 pages, more than 300 maps and 700 images—and weighing just over 5 kg. Amazon [WMS]

Related: Map Books of 2017.

‘Mildly Eccentric’ Maps of South Africa

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

South African cartographer Peter Slingsby, got a profile in the South African newsmagazine Financial Mail last month; his company, Slingsby Maps, produces a number of “mildly eccentric” hiking and tourist maps that contain “the idiosyncratic asides and flourishes that make Slingsby’s maps such a pleasure to consult.”

On his incredibly popular map of the Cape Peninsula, for example, there are helpful little clouds of information among the place names and contours. One such tells of the people of Brooklands, who lived on the tableland above Simon’s Town. “The Brooklands community, who farmed here and worked in Simon’s Town, were evicted under apartheid because they were not ‘white’. The ruins of their village are their monument,” says the bubble.

[WMS]

From Jared Blando, How to Draw Fantasy Art and RPG Maps (Impact, 2015).

The Territory Is Not the Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

There’s something I’ve noticed about the recent round of debates about fantasy maps, something I’ve been noticing about discussions of fantasy maps in general. They don’t talk about fantasy maps in terms of their cartographic merit. That is to say, they don’t judge fantasy maps as maps.

When Alex Acks vents about fantasy maps, it’s because the mountain ranges in Middle-earth don’t make sense, not because the cartography of Pauline Baynes or Christopher Tolkien wasn’t up to the task. It’s more that the territory is shaped to fit the story rather than the other way around, less that the maps of said territory frequently lack a scale. When Boing Boing’s Rob Beschizza says that “Game of Thrones has such a terrible map it could be presented as a parody of bad fantasy maps,” he’s not saying that the cartography of the various Song of Ice and Fire mapmakers, such as Jonathan Roberts (The Lands of Ice and Fire), James Sinclair (books one through four) or Jeffrey L. Ward (A Dance with Dragons), is deficient. He’s saying that the Game of Thrones geography is terrible.

Continue reading “The Territory Is Not the Map” →

New York Nautical

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Last month the New York Times had a profile of New York Nautical, a store specializing in nautical charts, publications, instruments and related goodies in Manhattan’s Tribeca district. If you’re wondering how they stay in business—because that’s inevitable when talking about a store that’s in the business of selling paper maps today—it turns out that most of their business comes from commercial ships buying charts required by the Coast Guard. [WMS]

A Humanitarian Crisis, Observed from Orbit

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Earlier this month Human Rights Watch released satellite imagery of burning buildings in minority Rohingya villages in Myanmar’s Rakhine State—evidence, human rights observers say, of a government-led campaign against the Rohingya, four hundred thousand of whom have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. Amnesty International has collated on-the-ground and satellite evidence and has produced a map showing active fires in Rakhine State. The Washington Post’s coverage also features maps, before-and-after satellite images and infographics.

More Maps of the 2017 German Federal Election

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Benjamin Hennig, Views of the World.

Cartogrammer extraordinaire Benjamin Hennig has produced cartograms of the 2017 German federal election results. A second set of cartograms looks at voter turnout and each party’s share of the vote. These cartograms distort for population to compensate for densely populated areas, so that the choropleth maps used for election results are proportionate.

The German data visualization studio webkid worked on a number of election maps; they have a roundup of election maps and infographics they worked on as well as from other media organizations.