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 Big Map of Kent’s South End

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Jennifer Mapes created a large corkboard map to illustrate the history of Kent, Ohio’s South End, a neighbourhood inhabited by railroad workers, immigrants, and African Americans moving north during the Great Migration.

I purposefully created this project as something that could be done cheaply, as a form of “analog” GIS, where students are asked to think spatially and consider how regional and national history played out in their own community. I am particularly interested in showing South End kids how the people who lived in their current homes contributed to Kent’s past.

The map is 60″×60″ and includes 350 3D printed transparent houses representing 25 different house styles in Kent’s South End. I’ve wired the map to light up based on answers to questions about the history [of] each house’s resident based on census records.

The map is currently on display at the Kent Free Library.

The Big Map is up in the Kent Free Library! This is a project highlighting the history of our South End, a neighborhood of immigrants, Black southern migrants, and railroad workers. communitygeography.kent.edu/index.php/20…

— Jen Mapes (@mapesgeog.bsky.social) 2025-08-21T22:55:50.379Z

The Map Behind the Preah Vihear Border Conflict

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Detail from a series of French maps published 1905-1909 depicting the boundary between Siam and French Indochina.
Wikimedia Commons

On the Geographical magazine website, Tim Marshall explains how a 1907 topographical map fuels a current-day border conflict between Cambodia and Thailand. And without any imagery of the map at all (right). It’s about the lands around the Preah Vihear temple; the temple itself was assigned to Cambodia in a 1953 ruling. (And not to be confused with Preah Vihear the province or Preah Vihear the provincial capital, which is some distance from. A reference map would have helped, honestly.)

Suspected Russian GPS Interference Affects European Commission President’s Plane

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Russia is suspected of engaging in GPS jamming that disrupted the navigation systems of a plane carrying European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on a flight to Plovdiv, Bulgaria: BBC News, The Guardian, Reuters. It’s the latest incident in which Russia has been accused of jamming or spoofing GPS signals in nearby states.

Previously: The Russians Are Spoofing! The Russians Are Spoofing!; Russia Accused of Jamming Civilian Flights’ GPS; CBC News on Russian GPS Jamming.

A Video About the Map Center

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A short video about the Map Center, the Rhode Island-based map store that, you will recall, Andrew Middleton took over two years ago. The video came about, Andrew says, when a customer came back and insisted on filming it. (“Is this the highest form of flattery? Most people just leave a review!”) What I appreciate most about it is being able to see what’s on his shelves and walls, especially since I can’t visit it in person right now.

Previously: Paper Maps: New Business, Lost Loves; A Map of Map Institutions; TPR on the Map Center.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the 29 July 2025 M 8.8 Kamchatka Earthquake

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
A screenshot of the first slide of the USGS’s StoryMap about the July 2025 Kamchatka earthquake.
USGS (screenshot)

The USGS has posted a “geonarrative” (i.e., a StoryMap) that delves into great detail about the seismology of the magnitude 8.8 earthquake that took place on 29 July 2025 off the Kamchatka Peninsula, providing history, context and so many detailed maps about the event. [Ryan Hollister]

Using Emoji to Depict Train Delays

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Bloomberg (screenshot)

It’s a single animated map in a larger, infographic-rich Bloomberg CityLab article about how NJ Transit is the least reliable New York City area commuter rail service, but you can’t help but pay attention to a map that uses emoji to indicate how late a train is. Surprisingly effective, though I doubt transit agencies would be brave enough to adopt it for themselves. The Intercity Rail Map uses colours (green, yellow, red, black) to indicate lateness, but the icons indicate train number so you couldn’t swap them out for emoji, more’s the pity. [Maps Mania]

‘The Correct Map Does Not Exist’

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Miguel García Álvarez weighs in on the Correct the Map campaign to replace the Mercator projection with Equal Earth:

I think the Equal Earth projection is an excellent compromise. But as a cartography enthusiast, it pains me deeply every time someone talks about the “true” map, the “correct” map, or that the Mercator projection is “wrong.”

I will never stop loving this scene from the West Wing of the White House, but please don’t say that any map is right or wrong simply because of the projection it uses. We should just focus on saying that some projections are more or less suitable for different purposes, but we have to avoid sensationalism.

(This is the English version; it was first posted in Spanish.)

Previously: In Case You Thought the War Against the Mercator Projection Was Over Long Ago.

The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

The Word for World is both an upcoming exhibition and an upcoming book exploring the maps of Ursula K. Le Guin—i.e., the maps she herself made for worlds like Earthsea.

When Ursula K. Le Guin started writing a new story, she would begin by drawing a map. The Word for World presents a selection of these images by the celebrated author, many of which have never been published before, to consider how her imaginary worlds enable us to re-envision our own.

Le Guin’s maps offer journeys of consciousness beyond conventional cartography, from the Rorschach-like archipelagos of Earthsea to the talismanic maps of Always Coming Home. Rather than remaining within known terrain, they open up paradigms of knowledge, exemplified by the map’s edges and how a map is read, made and re-made, together. The Word for World brings her maps together with poems, stories, interviews, recipes and essays by contributors from a variety of perspectives to enquire into the relationship between worlds and how they are represented and imagined. 

The exhibition runs from 10 October to 6 December at the Architectural Association Gallery in London. The book comes out from Spiral House in October. Preorder: Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop. Thanks to Zvi for the tip.

Previously: Limited Edition Earthsea Map Print Now Available.

Eclipse Atlas Launches

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Eclipse Atlas (screenshot)

Eclipse Atlas is the third iteration of Michael Zeiler’s solar eclipse map websites. First there was Eclipse-Maps.com, which launched in 2010; then came the Great American Eclipse website to cover the North American total and annular eclipses in 2017, 2023 and 2024. As with Zeiler’s past projects, it’s a collection of maps of historic, upcoming and future eclipses; he’s launched this new website “with the goals of expanding to a global scope, replacing his two prior websites over time, and to taking his work in eclipse cartography to new levels.” Press release.

Previously: Michael Zeiler’s Solar Eclipse Map Website; Mapping the August 2017 Solar Eclipse.

Some Asian Updates to Online Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Google has announced that Street View imagery is now available for Nepal.

Meanwhile, Apple observers are reporting that cycling directions are rolling out for Hong Kong and Taiwan in Apple Maps (AppleInsider, MacRumors).

Update, 22 Aug: And Singapore gets the Detailed City Maps treatment in Apple Maps.

In Case You Thought the War Against the Mercator Projection Was Over Long Ago

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A new front has been opened in the never-ending war against the Mercator projection. The African Union endorses Correct the Map’s campaign to replace the Mercator projection (which diminishes the relative size of Africa) with the Equal Earth projection. I think it’s awfully interesting that they’re proposing Equal Earth instead of the Peters map: Equal Earth is a better choice for maps of the world than the Peters or the Mercator, but then so are dozens of other projections. That the campaign against the Mercator is no longer necessarily a campaign for the Peters is something to take note of. [Andrew Middleton]

Though I’m still wrapping my head around the idea that campaigning against the Mercator is still a thing. Really, still? After all, it’s been decades since the Mercator was the dominant projection on wall maps. A quick look at the catalogues of Stanfords and World of Maps suggests maybe one in ten wall maps of the world use the Mercator, and the ones that do seem to be second-tier publications at best (because it’s been known for a long time that the Mercator is shit at being a world map). I guess the Mercator is too good a metaphor for colonialism and foreign domination to let go of it.

But then I have no idea which maps are used in classrooms, in Africa or anywhere else. And I’m often surprised at how much Mercator I see in online maps and infographics, because the tools they use default to Web Mercator. Web Mercator is perfectly fine—at large scales. Most online map providers use Web Mercator at all zoom levels (Apple Maps zooms out to a globe on Apple Silicon but not on older Intel Macs, Google offers globe view as an option on desktop). Web Mercator shows up a lot where an alternative would’ve been better. So it’s not like there isn’t a point here.

Previously: The Peters Map Is Fighting the Last War.