Nicolas Crane reviews Jeremy Black’s Metropolis: Mapping the City (Conway, October 2015) for Geographical magazine. “The aim is to explore through time the visualisation of cities, so we start with a terracotta plan of the Mesopotamian holy city of Nippur, in what is now Iraq, then travel through Renaissance cities, New World cities, Imperial cities and mega cities. […] If you’ve ever wondered why cities work, you’ll find the answer in this beautiful book.” Buy at Amazon (Canada, U.K.)
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.
Mapping Aid Worker Attacks
An interactive map of attacks on aid workers since 2000. IRIN: “This map, a joint product between IRIN and Humanitarian Outcomes, is the first time ever the full scope of aid worker security events has been presented in visual form, which can be searched and filtered and browsed. It shows events from the beginning of 2000 until the end of May 2015. It’s a sobering testament to the dangerous work of saving lives.” [via]
Ji Zhou’s Civilized Landscape
Civilized Landscape was an exhibition of Ji Zhou‘s photographic art at New York’s Klein Sun Gallery. The Beijing-based Zhou merges physical art and photography in his work: “Ji Zhou collects maps, hand-sculpting them into peaks and troughs to mimic mountaintops. He includes books that are assembled into cantilevered towers resembling city skyscrapers. These ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ illusions are then photographed, further augmenting reality.” The exhibition apparently ran from September to October 2015, but the Huffington Post got hold of it this week, and it’s gone viral from there.
NYPL Offers High-Quality Downloads of 180,000 Public-Domain Documents
Yesterday the New York Public Library made available high-quality downloads of some 180,000 public-domain photographs, postcards, maps and other items from its digital collection—of which more than 21,000 are maps, based on my quick search. I can see spending an awful lot of time poking around in there, can’t you?
Pacific Ocean Time Lapse
The Railway Atlas of Scotland
Also from Birlinn, The Railway Atlas of Scotland: Two Hundred Years of History in Maps by David Spaven, which came out last October.
Previously: British Railways, Past and Present.
Glasgow: Mapping the City
The National’s Alan Taylor reviews Glasgow: Mapping the City by John Moore (Birlinn, October 2015), an illustrated book of maps of the city dating back to the 16th century (via). This is one of several map books published by Birlinn that cover the history of Scotland in maps: previous volumes include Edinburgh: Mapping the City by Christopher Fleet and Daniel MacCannell (2014) and Scotland: Mapping the Nation by Christopher Fleet, Charles W. J. Withers and Margaret Wilkes (2012).
Digital Geologic Map of Alaska
A new geologic map of Alaska has been published by the U.S. Geological Survey. From the USGS release: “This map is a completely new compilation, carrying the distinction of being the first 100 percent digital statewide geologic map of Alaska. It reflects the changes in our modern understanding of geology as it builds on the past. More than 750 references were used in creating the map, some as old as 1908 and others as new as 2015. As a digital map, it has multiple associated databases that allow creation of a variety of derivative maps and other products.” The map is available traditionally in two PDF sheets, as well as in geodatabase, Shapefile and other database formats.
The place needs decorating and a new coat of paint, there’s still a ton of things to do to make it feel like home, and more than a few glitches that still need fixing, but it looks like the structure will stay up and keep the inside dry and warm. Time to open the doors.
In other words: welcome back to The Map Room.
It feels good to be back at this.
The Weight of Imaginary Geography
Susan Dennard: “Because I’m currently writing the second book in the Witchlands series (titled Windwitch), I thought I’d discuss maps. Why? Because maps are really, really important in storytelling. I don’t care what genre you’re writing—knowing Where Things Are not only helps the drafting process, but it also helps ground the story.”
Designing Better Maps Reviewed
Gretchen Peterson reviews the second edition of Cynthia Brewer’s Designing Better Maps: A Guide for GIS Users (Esri Press, December 2015). “I’d say it’s much better than the previous edition. All the images have been updated and are now in keeping with modern cartography practices. All the typical things that you need to know are covered from fonts and labels to color and layout.” Buy at Amazon (Canada, U.K.)
LEGO Globe
Dirk’s LEGO globe consists of nearly 4,000 bricks. With the stand, it reaches half a metre in height (20 inches) and weighs 7.3 kg (16 pounds). The project page describes the project in obsessive detail, with lots of photos.
Map of Colonial New Jersey Rediscovered
A 1769 map of New Jersey by the famed colonial surveyor Bernard Ratzer, commissioned to settle a longstanding border dispute between New Jersey and New York, has been uncovered by a Harvard University librarian. The map, criss-crossed by competing and alternate boundary lines, has been digitized and is available to view online as part of Harvard’s Colonial North American project.
Mapping the Thaw
Scientists have been tracking seasonal freeze-thaw patterns for 30 years. This map, produced from data collected by NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite, “shows the freeze-thaw status of areas north of 45 degrees latitude on March 5, 2015, as spring approached. Frozen land is blue; thawed land is pink. The measurement is possible because frozen water forms crystalline structures that can be detected by satellites.” NASA Earth Observatory.
Things seem to be up and running. Let me make a few test posts to see if everything is working properly.