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.

A Map of the Ideological Leanings of U.S. Congressmen

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Maps on the Web

Based on data from GovTrack, this map displays the ideological leanings of current (at the time) members of the U.S. House of Representatives by their district. “The data is based of numbers from 0-1. If the congressman is a 0 he is the most liberal in the House. If a congressman is at 1 then he is the most conservative. If the congressman is a 0.5 they are centrist. […] The most conservative congressman is Jeff Duncan, a Republican from South Carolina’s 3rd District. The most liberal congressman is Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California’s 13th District.”

The Business of Making Maps for Self-Driving Cars

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

CNN on the big business involved in creating detailed maps—called HD maps—for self-driving cars. “If you believe self-driving cars will eventually operate everywhere, then every city and street will need to be mapped out in granular detail.” How granular? During one test, a single-pixel error on one map caused cars to avoid a patch of road as though it was raised 10 inches. [Osher]

Previously: Human-Annotated Maps for Self-Driving Cars.

Baltimore’s Radi(c)al New Transit Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Maryland Transit Administration

Baltimore gets a radical new transit map (direct PDF link) to go along with its redesigned bus network, which goes into service on Sunday. The map, which Greater Greater Washington reports was designed by Marc Szarkowski, adopts a diagrammatic radial style—essentially, a diagrammatic map based on concentric circles rather than a grid.

For those who find such a map just a little too out there, the Maryland Transit Administration also has a system map with a more familiar design (PDF).

Maryland Transit Administration

They call it a geographic system map, only it isn’t: it’s still a schematic, just less radical—or, if you like, less radial. [Planetizen]

Facebook’s Disaster Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Facebook

Today Facebook announced disaster maps for use by relief organizations. Based on aggregated and anonymized user data, the maps of users’ location, movement and check-ins can, Facebook says, provide relief organizations with valuable information about where the need is greatest. At launch only the Red Cross, UNICEF and the World Food Programme will have access to the data; a process will be established to determine how it will be shared with others. [Engadget]

NOAA to Move Away from Paper Charts

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Baltimore Sun: “In a potential sea change for a nautical industry heavy on tradition, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s recent National Charting Plan suggested that, eventually, ‘the reduction or elimination of traditional paper nautical charts seems likely.'” (This is NOAA looking into the future, but note that private companies, rather than NOAA, already do the printing and distributing of paper charts; NOAA’s charts are, of course, available online and can be printed.) [WMS]

Roman Roads, Subway Style

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Sasha Trubetskoy

There are a lot of Tube map-inspired maps of non-Tube map things out there, and not all of them are worth mentioning. This one, however, is: Sasha Trubetskoy’s map of the major roads of the Roman Empire in the year 125, done up like a subway diagram, colour-coded by name (both real, where available, and “creatively invented,” where not) and with all text in Latin.

A Year’s Worth of Changes in Google and Apple Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Justin O’Beirne is back with a look at how both Google and Apple Maps have changed incrementally over the past year.

Shortly after I published my Cartography Comparison last June, I noticed Google updating some of the areas we had focused on[.]

Coincidence or not, it was interesting. And it made me wonder what else would change, if we kept watching. Would Google keep adding detail? And would Apple, like Google, also start making changes?

So I wrote a script that takes monthly screenshots of Google and Apple Maps. And thirteen months later, we now have a year’s worth of images […]

It’s cool to see how much Google Maps has changed over the past year. But it’s also surprising to see how little Apple Maps has changed[.]

Previously: What Happened to Google Maps?; The Universal Map; Comparing Google and Apple Map Styles.

CCA Annual Conference in Ottawa

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Canadian Cartographic Association’s annual conference gets under way tomorrow at Carleton University in Ottawa. Here’s the conference program. It’s just an hour’s drive from where I live, and by all rights I should be attending, but I’ve been moving house all month and there’s no way I can spare the time. Best wishes to the conference organizers and attendees.

Recent Auctions: Joan Blaeu and Australia, Sam Greer and Vancouver

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Joan Blaeu, Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus, 1663. Map, 118.5 cm × 152 cm. National Library of Australia.

Joan Blaeu’s Archipelagus Orientalis is to Australia what Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 world map is to America: a case where a first appearance on a map is referred to as a country’s birth certificate. The 17th-century map included data from Tasman’s voyages and named New Holland (Australia) and New Zealand for the first time. The National Library of Australia is working on conserving its 1663 copy, but an earlier, unrestored version dating from around 1659 recently turned up in an Italian home; earlier this month it was auctioned at Sotheby’s and sold for nearly £250,000. [Tony Campbell]

Meanwhile, at a somewhat more modest scale, an 1884 hand-drawn map of what would later become the tony Vancouver neighbourhood of Kitsilano by colourful local Sam Greer went for C$24,200—five times its estimated price.

Exhibitions in the Northeast

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A new exhibition at Harvard University’s Pusey Library, Manuscript Maps: Hand-Drawn Treasures of the Harvard Map Collection, “highlights the process of mapmaking by looking at maps drawn by hand.” Opened yesterday; runs until September 27.

Meanwhile, in Schenectady, New York, there’s another exhibition at Union College’s Kelly Adirondack Center: Parts But Little Known: Maps of the Adirondacks from 1556 runs until September 29.

New York Subway Track Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Last year I told you about Andrew Lynch’s posters of individual New York subway lines. Now Lynch has created something that will be of interest to anyone who likes the London Underground’s track network map or Franklin Jarrier’s detailed rail maps: a geographically accurate subway track map for New York City, which can be downloaded as a PDF here. He describes how he went about making it (with apologia that sound like standard mapmaking compromises):

Collecting every historical map I could find, using GIS data, satellite imagery (both current and historic), YouTube videos of fan trips, my own observations looking out the window of trains through tunnels, and talking to retired track workers I was able to draw what I believe to be the most accurate track map of the NYC Subway ever. Features I’ve added to the map are all provisions for future expansion and abandoned sections with a notes section explaining each one as well as an exploded view for the more complex stations and areas obscured by overlapping tracks. I’ve elected to remove all streets as not to clutter the map and also not to imply that specific sections (such as crossovers) are perfectly aligned to the street grid. While the map is geographically accurate at this scale tracks had to be spaced far enough apart to read correctly so lines are not perfect aligned with the widths of the streets. Also some train yards have been truncated to fit within the geographical boundaries of the map.

Previously: New York Subway Line Posters; A Map of the London Underground Track Network.

Mapping Bristol

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A wide-ranging article at Bristol 24/7 explores at the different ways that Bristol has been mapped throughout history. It begins with a look at Jeff Bishop’s 2016 book, Bristol Through Maps (Redcliffe), which includes 24 maps of the city from 1480 to today. Then it goes on to Bristol City Council’s Know Your Place, which layers historic maps on top of a web mapping interface, and finishes with a roundup of the work of local artists and graphic designers. Quite the microcosm: so many kinds of mapping activity, all focused on one British city. [Tony Campbell]

Children Map the World, Volume 4

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

So it turns out that the Children Map the World series, which collects entries from the Barbara Petchenik Children’s World Map Drawing Competition, is still a going concern: the fourth volume, which includes 50 maps drawn by children aged 5 to 15 for the 2015 competition plus another 50 maps from previous competitions, came out last month from Esri Press. Amazon. [Caitlin Dempsey]

Previously: Children Map the World: The Book; Children Map the World, Volume Two.