KPCC’s AirTalk has a nostalgic look at the Thomas Guide, which at one point was to Los Angeles what the Gazetteer is to Maine or the Sherlock map is to Winnipeg. [Kottke/WMS]
Tag: cities
The Pictorial Maps of Jean-Louis Rheault
KelownaNow reports that a pictorial tourist map of Kelowna, British Columbia will be updated by the original artist later this year. The original version, first released in 2012, was featured in the NACIS Atlas of Design in 2014. This local news item was my segue into the work of pictorial map artist Jean-Louis Rheault, who’s been producing map illustrations for cities, agencies, organizations and businesses for decades. His Flickr account contains many examples of his work, as does the portfolio section of his website. [WMS]
The Chiswick Timeline
The Chiswick Timeline, a public mural of historic maps of Chiswick, London, situated along the walls of the underpass next to the Turnham Green tube station, opened earlier this month. A project of Abundance London, the mural is a series of panels reproducing maps of Chiswick from as early as the late 16th century, and traces its development into the London suburb it is today. An accompanying fold-out book is also available. [Londonist]
A Fantasy TTC Subway Map
There have been plenty of fantasy transit network maps—maps that imagine the subway, rail or bus system they think their city should have. BlogTO points to a good one: a map that reimagines the Toronto Transit Commission’s subway network posted to Reddit by architecture student Henry Lin. BlogTO calls it “one of the most ambitious and beautiful (like, if you’re into that stuff) yet. It’s the subway map Toronto deserves to have—though we probably never will. I mean, if a one stop subway extension costs $3.35 billion, this system would cost a few trilly to build, at least.” Lin’s done a few maps like this one that seem be modified from the original maps (see, for example, Ottawa’s or Montreal’s); the point of exercises like his, though, isn’t the originality of the design, but imagining the expanded network.
Transport for London’s Historical Archive of Car Line Diagrams
IanVisits has stumbled across Transport for London’s cache of car line diagrams (CLDs)—the linear maps that appear inside each train car. The TfL page includes CLDs ands CLD stickers for all lines going back to 1996; each line has its own PDF file that contains every iteration of its diagram, one per page. “No one will care about this whatsoever,” says IanVisits. IanVisits is, I suspect, wrong. [WMS]
Where Passengers Get on and Off the Tube
A data visualization by Gwilym Lockwood looks at where passengers get on and off the tube—it’s “a geographically accurate map of the London tube lines, sized by number of passengers getting on and off at each station.” Hovering over and clicking on each station reveals more data. [Maps Mania]
A Book Roundup
The Routledge Handbook
Out last month, the expensive, 600-page Routledge Handbook of Mapping and Cartography (Routledge). Edited by Alexander J. Kent (who co-wrote The Red Atlas) and Peter Vujakovic, the book “draws on the wealth of new scholarship and practice in this emerging field, from the latest conceptual developments in mapping and advances in map-making technology to reflections on the role of maps in society. It brings together 43 engaging chapters on a diverse range of topics, including the history of cartography, map use and user issues, cartographic design, remote sensing, volunteered geographic information (VGI), and map art.” [The History of Cartography Project]
New Academic Books
New academic books on maps and cartography published over the past couple of months include:
- The Social Life of Maps in America, 1750-1860 (University of North Carolina Press), the latest work by the historian of early American map literacy Martin Brückner;
- Paul Robert Magocsi’s Carpathian Rus’: A Historical Atlas (University of Toronto Press), a cartographic look at a strategic borderland in central Europe;
- Jasper Van Putten’s Networked Nation: Mapping German Cities in Sebastian Munster’s ‘Cosmographia’ (Brill), a study of city views in Renaissance Europe; and
- Claire Reddleman’s Cartographic Abstraction in Contemporary Art: Seeing with Maps (Routledge), an extremely theoretical study of modern map art.
More on Books We’ve Heard of Before
National Geographic interviews Malachy Tallack, the author of The Un-Discovered Islands, and The Guardian shares seven maps from James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti’s Where the Animals Go.
Related: Map Books of 2017.
Andrew Douglas-Clifford’s Maps of New Zealand
New Zealand cartographer Andrew Douglas-Clifford (“The Map Kiwi”) recently got profiled by The Press, a Christchurch-based newspaper. I’ve been aware of his work for a while; it includes some interesting items, like a map of state highways in the form of a metro map, a series of circle-shaped city maps (so-called “map dots”), and, most recently, a map of New Zealand’s uninhabited places. Prints available via his website. [WMS]
The Melbourne Map
The Melbourne Map is getting a new edition. The original came out in 1990. Inspired by bird’s-eye maps she’d encountered on her travels, Melinda Clarke teamed up with illustrator Deborah Young to create a pictorial map of the city that became something of a local success. Now, decades later, they’ve teamed up with illustrator Lewis Brownlie to create a new, updated version of the map. A crowdfunding campaign earlier this year was 584 percent successful, raising the equivalent of $88,000; production has been delayed a bit by revisions to the map, but it’s on track to be completed in 2018. They’re taking preorders; copies of the original map are also available. [ICA]
Wymer’s D.C.
Wymer’s D.C. is an online collection of the hand-drawn maps, notes and (especially) photographs of John P. Wymer (1904-1995), who in a four-year period between 1948 and 1952 systematically photographed and documented the streets of Washington, D.C., taking thousands of pictures and drawing and describing the city, which he divided into 57 equal sections. The photos are displayed via an interactive map that overlays them over modern-day Google Street View imagery. The site is the brainchild of Jessica Richardson Smith, who as an intern stumbled across the Wymer collection in the holdings of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. as an intern and made the online collection part of her M.A. thesis work, and her husband, software engineer Thomas Smith. More at CityLab. See also Curbed, DCist, Forest Hills Connection and Washingtonian. [WMS]
Fast Food vs. Schools in London
One of the proposals in the new draft London Plan is to prohibit new fast food establishments within 400 metres of an existing school as a means of combatting childhood obesity.1 This is going over about as well as you’d think. Dan Cookson has mapped the locations of London’s fast food establishments and the 400-metre exclusion zones around each school; his map suggests a problem: there would be few places in the city able to host a new fast food joint.
Related, via Maps Mania: the Guardian’s interactive map of fast food shops in England.
London Underground Architecture and Design Map
Blue Crow Media’s latest map of urban architecture is the London Underground Architecture and Design Map, a collaboration between transit system guru (and friend of The Map Room) Mark Ovenden and photographer Will Scott. “The guide includes a geographical Underground map with featured stations marked, with corresponding photography and details on the reverse along with tips for where to find unique and unusual signage, roundels, clocks, murals and more. The map is protected by a slipcover featuring a distinctive die cut roundel.” Costs £9. More at Mapping London.
Previously: Architectural Maps of London.
Londonist Mapped
Londonist Mapped: Hand Drawn Maps for the Curious Explorer came out last month from AA Publishing. (It’ll be out in North America next February.)
Future and Alternate Melbourne Transit Networks
Geospatial scientist Adam Mattison also dabbles in maps of a more speculative bent, including maps imagining Melbourne’s future transit network, including a tram network map of 2048, a metro map of 2070, and the above train network map of 2070. There’s some alternate history as well: maps of transit systems that might have been, but weren’t. For some reason this was picked up by the news section of Australian property and real estate portal Domain. [WMS]
Michelin Acquires Streetwise
On 1 September Michelin announced that it had acquired the assets previously held by Streetwise Maps, in an all-cash deal. Streetwise announced that it was closing last year. Michelin will continue to publish maps under the Streetwise name; their publishing wing already produces a ton of travel guides, restaurant guides and maps (my Michelin map of Paris was essential during my trip there). [MAPS-L]