In “Mapping with Purpose,” Heather Smith of Esri uses blueberry crops in Canada to make a very good point about mapmaking. “You have data, but that’s not enough to make a map. You also need a purpose. There’s no point in making a map unless you have something to say.” In other words: If you’re going to map blueberry production, why? Is it to compare the acreage of blueberry-producing regions? To compare it to other berry crops? A map is a statement: what are you trying to say? [Kenneth Field]
A Crowdfunded, Hand-drawn Atlas of Scotland
Artist and writer Andrew Barr is crowdfunding for what he is calling “the first major Scottish atlas for over 100 years”: a hand-drawn, hardcover Atlas of Scotland:
Produced as a visually striking hardback book, combining text with illustrated maps, the Atlas will shed new light on Scotland’s size and resources, its cultural and political history, as well as its long standing as one of the ancient kingdoms of Europe and the richness of its international connections.
As satellite images replace traditional paper atlases, modern technology leaves us with an incomplete picture of the nation. By returning to map-making in pen and ink, and by retelling the story of Scotland’s history and culture, this Atlas aims to delve deeper into the fabric of the land and reveal one of the world’s oldest nations in a whole new light.
Very much a nationalist project—and a personal project as well, which is not how atlases are usually done nowadays, hand-drawn or not. The atlas is projected to ship in October 2021. [History Scotland]
‘Maps and Society’ Lectures Go Online
The Maps and Society lecture series has been obliged to go online by the pandemic. Hosted by the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, they were normally something you could attend if you happened to be in London; but for this academic year, you can attend via Zoom (free registration required). [Tony Campbell]
Over the weekend I switched The Map Room over to a new site template. This is the first redesign of this site since I restarted it in January 2016. The old design was a stock template that over the years got modified and customized; I have yet to apply those modifications and customizations to the new design—right now it’s pretty much the stock Toujours template—so there are still a few things for me to do here and there. If things are wonky for a bit, that’s why.
Underground Cities
Bookshop
Mark Ovenden has made a career of publishing books about transportation systems and their maps that are both comprehensive and copiously illustrated. These include books about transit maps, railway maps and airline maps, as well as books about specific transit systems like the London Underground and the Paris Metro.
His latest, Underground Cities (Frances Lincoln, 22 Sep), is in some ways a natural progression from his past work: in the introduction he muses on the link between transit geekery and wondering about “what else lies down there beyond the walls” (p. 6). But in other ways this is quite a different book.
COVID-19 in Ottawa Neighbourhoods
Ottawa Public Health has partnered with the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study to produce this interactive map of COVID-19 rates in Ottawa’s neighbourhoods. Both the map and its underlying data are subject to many caveats: the differences between rural and urban zones, between where people live and where people are tested, and other factors affecting testing and susceptibility. Most notably, the map is updated only monthly, so the current map (screenshotted above) does not take into account the rapid increase in positive cases over the past week or two as Ottawa entered the second wave. [Ottawa Citizen]
Harvard on the Map
Harvard on the Map, a new radio program looking at geospatial topics, is hosted by Harvard Graduate School of Design student Jennifer Horowitz. Three episodes so far, each of which an interview with someone working in the field.
Mapping Climate Risk in the United States
Climate change isn’t just one thing: rising temperatures, or sea level rise. It’s also changes to rainfall, increased risk of wildfires, more powerful hurricanes. The extent to which any of these are threats depends on where you live: North Dakota doesn’t have much to worry about rising sea levels, but it should think about drought. That’s what this interactive map from the New York Times attempts to measure: the climate risks to the United States on a county-by-county basis.
Previously: How Climate Change Will Transform the United States.
Google Removing Uluru Street View Images
Google has agreed to Parks Australia’s request that user photos taken from the summit of Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock) be removed from Street View; climbing Uluru, which is owned by and sacred to the Pitjantjatjara people, has been prohibited since 2019. ABC Australia, CNN. As of this writing a couple of images are still visible. Aerial coverage is unaffected. [Boing Boing]
These Globes Are Uncanny
Twice now I’ve encountered globes that I find more than a bit unsettling, in that they wrap a map of a portion of the Earth around an entire globe.
The first one I ran across was the Globus Polski or Poland Globe, an inexpensive 12-inch globe which comes in two versions, administrative and physical, and depicts the country of Poland as if it were Pangaea. According to a comment on the Reddit post where I think I first saw it, there are apparently other single-country globes like this out there.
The second is the polar opposite of the Poland Globe: it’s large, expensive and one of a kind: a bespoke, illustrated globe of the Silk Route that took Bellerby more than a year to complete to the customer’s exact specifications. The main map on the globe covers the Silk Route itself, from the Mediterranean to Japan; the back of the globe—this globe has a back side
I have to confess that I’m weirded out by this sort of globe: they fall into a cartographic uncanny valley in which the thing mapped is ostensibly correct but in a form that somehow feels deeply wrong.
Beaded Maps of Canada and the United States
CBC News reports on a collaborative project to create province-by-province and state-by-state beaded maps of Canada and the United States. “Since March, dozens of Indigenous artists had been taking up a challenge to bead their states and provinces. Their hard work, diversity in beading styles, techniques, and cultural influences can be seen in a final map that was recently unveiled of both countries.” The project was coordinated by CeeJay Johnson of Kooteen Creations.
The Ceramic Map of Delft
Mappery has photos of the new Keramieken Kaart van Delft (Ceramic Map of Delft), a remarkable large ceramic mosaic map based on a 1672 map by Frederick de Wit that is mounted to a brick wall on a street in Delft, the Netherlands. Designed by artist Nan Deardorff-McClain, the map was supported by a crowdfunding campaign and built by around 500 local volunteers. The grand opening was to have been in March, but the pandemic intervened. More photos are available at the project’s Facebook and Instagram pages; a short video on the making of the map is below (and on YouTube). Coverage in the Algemeen Dagblad is in Dutch, as are most of the links.
How Climate Change Will Transform the United States
ProPublica has released a series of climate maps showing the impact of warming temperatures, rising seas and changes in rainfall on the United States. “Taken with other recent research showing that the most habitable climate in North America will shift northward and the incidence of large fires will increase across the country, this suggests that the climate crisis will profoundly interrupt the way we live and farm in the United States. See how the North American places where humans have lived for thousands of years will shift and what changes are in store for your county.”
Mapping the California Heat Wave
NASA Earth Observatory: “The map above shows air temperatures across the United States on September 6, 2020, when much of the Southwest roasted in a dramatic heatwave. The map was derived from the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model and represents temperatures at 2 meters (about 6.5 feet) above the ground. The darkest red areas are where the model shows temperatures surpassing 113°F (45°C).” Heat waves in southern California have become “more frequent, intense, and longer-lasting,” the article goes on to say.
Mapping Far-Right Vigilantism
Alexander Reid Ross of Portland State University has created an interactive map that tracks incidents of far-right extremist vigilantism in the United States. Laura Biss has the story at MapLab:
The map shows that certain regions seem to be hotspots for extremism, including Southern California, Oregon and Washington. Ross fears for what might be coming to Texas, which has seen pockets of violence at protests and is home to people whom Ross calls “experienced racists, armed to the teeth.” He views the concentration of incidents in the Pacific Northwest as “an inverted funhouse,” considering their historic parallel in the terror of the Civil Rights-era South, which has fewer incidents today.”