News feed for www.radicalcartography.net
Coming up for air just briefly to post a fun project with Dániel Margócsy tracking the spread of Andreas Vesalius's famous De humani corporis fabrica — the foundational work of the Western anatomical tradition — from 1600 to the present. Dániel and his collaborators have just published a book about their findings, and I helped map their data to show how copies of…
I'm excited to say that my arborregions project is a finalist for an "Information is Beautiful" award! If you're reading this before midnight on Sunday 10/29, could you spare a moment to follow this link and click VOTE for me? Most of the finalist projects are by professional media outlets, and I'm one of only a handful of individuals on the list. I'm looking for any clicks I can get! Thank you…
I'm happy to share two further iterations of my recent slavery mapping. First, a collaboration with Matt Daniels (of Polygraph fame) on the historical-geographic relationship between slavery and mass incarceration . Besides showing a remarkable overlap between the two (especially for prisons, but also for short-term jails), this was also an opportunity to put my new bubble-grid mapping technique…
Autumn is here — it's time for trees! Three tree-related projects. First is a relatively simple (but data-intensive) rethinking of tree distributions . Instead of the usual species-level blob maps, I've made a series of maps showing the actual distribution of major tree types, plus some interesting higher-level patterns. I've then used this same data as a starting point for a new kind of…
There is a book! At long last, there is a book! After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century has just been published by the University of Chicago Press. More info — along with high-res images, raw data, and a bibliography — is available on the book's website, www.afterthemap.info . I've spent almost a decade researching, writing,…
A quick bonbon! The global distribution of human beings by altitude : a histogram showing the number of people living at every elevation. Not surprisingly, coast-loving humans are a low-altitude species, and the distribution of humans is quite a bit lower than land in general — not even counting ice domes and barren deserts. Quick take-away: when you look out from the top of the Washington…
The last of my trio of slavery projects: an interactive map of slavery in the north , town by town. Although it's easy to overlook northern slavery in comparison to its huge presence in the south, at the founding of the United States it was a serious part of the northern economy, especially in areas in New York and New Jersey first settled by the Dutch. Over two thousand slaves lived in New York…
I'm pleased to share a major new project on the history of slavery in the United States . Even after 155 years of mapping slavery, there are still serious shortcomings in most typical maps. My strategy looks for a way around the straightjacket of county-based data and the false impression of spatial precision implied by sharp county boundaries. I incorporate historical data on more than 150 cities…
Two things! First is a collaboration with Michael Ralph on the history of slave insurance in the US. Most insured slaves were highly skilled, and they were disproportionately urban. They were usually rented to others — especially on Ohio River steamboats, in Virginia coal mines, and in skilled trades in Atlantic port cities. In many ways, what we see on the map is an unfree version of the…
The final edits on the book are now done! Stay tuned for the great unveiling of After the Map in the spring, probably late March. In the meantime, I had some fun with hemispheres. 1. Following up on my graphs of population by latitude and longitude from a few years ago, I got curious about other ways to divvy population besides the usual hemispheres of Northern/Southern and Eastern/Western. The…
Another big hiatus! I've been busy finishing my book (on the history of mapping in the 20th century) and caring for my new baby [!], which unfortunately hasn't left much time for making new maps. But I'm really pleased to have three of my maps appearing in The Best American Infographics 2014 — just released today! And I'm not at all ashamed to admit that being in a book with an introduction…
This week I've been a panelist on a Guggenheim Museum forum about space, place, and representation as part of their new exhibit of contemporary art in South and Southeast Asia . So far there have been three rounds of posts ; the moderator is the editor of Cabinet magazine, and the two other panelists are an artist and a writer. It's been a good conversation about "spirit," nostalgia, and bottom-up…
What did Europeans actually discover during the Age of Discovery? According to American Indians , not much. But I've been curious about those isolated parts of the world that really were unknown to humans before the 15th century. So this weekend I went ahead and made a map of Europe's original contributions to geographical knowledge , as subject to peer review by the rest of humanity. It mostly…
Another quick weekend bonbon! I'm very pleased to post a map that Aaron Reiss made for Hannah Weyer's forthcoming novel On the Come Up . It shows the neighborhood of Far Rockaway, Queens , as seen by the central character in the book — it's something familiar, comfortable ... and isolated. (It's also a good contender for the best use of white space in all of New York City.) Enjoy!…
For your weekend enjoyment, an indulgent exercise in nuance and beauty. I picked four of the flattest areas I know (and love) and decided to make their flatness sing with the power of a thousand mountains. The result: a series of unfamiliar and wondrous microtopographical landscapes . Now let's go climb some imperceptible cliffs! www.radicalcartography.net
Oop! After yesterday's post , I thought of another question. What's the biggest city in the United States — New York? Los Angeles? How about ... Anchorage! After spending an evening exploring the politics of metropolitan annexation and city–county mergers, I made a quick series of maps of the inkblot patterns of municipal limits — all in comparison to Rhode Island, naturally. I've also been…
Happy spring! It's a beautiful day for maps. I have three questions for you. 1. Where's the Midwest ? I went searching, and the results are in. 2. Where's my family from? After a few months of getting dorky with old governmental records, I have some answers. 3. What's for lunch? Animals ? Plants ? Fungi ? Algae ? It's a cornucopia of Darwinian delights. (I suppose these aren't really maps in the…
My eight-year-old niece just asked me how many times people in France kiss each other when they say hello. I remembered a fun web-survey project from a few years ago , but I thought that the maps shown on the web simplified the data too much, with each administrative département shaded a solid color — the tyranny of the majority! So I did a quick redesign using the same data , and voilà , we can…
Whew, it's been a while! Teaching has kept me busy, but now it's time for an update. I'm very pleased to present a project by Daren Keene, who has been drawing a magical sprawling imaginary city using only a pencil and dozens of 8½" × 11" sheets of paper. Appropriately enough, he's named his city Pencilvania . Daren's maps share a sensibility with the well-known project by Jerry Gretzinger , but…
A couple quick follow-ups to my dot maps of Chicago . First, I made some similar maps for the Bay Area showing race and ethnicity, poverty, and education. Standard solid-color statistical maps are especially problematic in areas where there's a huge contrast between sparsely populated and dense areas, as is in many western American cities. Second, I made a short video explaining my Chicago map,…
A motley collection of updates to help us through the winter! First, Andrew and Brian Jones have done an amazing thing. After Brian saw my astronomical calendar for New Haven , his brother Andrew decided to write a program that could make similar calendars for any place in the world. It's great! I've helped with some of the code and written a front-end interface to put the script on the web — now…
Perhaps not exactly a geographic map, but it is a mediation on place: I've made a two-year calendar for New Haven, Connecticut that shows the intertwining rhythmicity of astronomical and cultural times, all of which depend on location. Astronomically, this calendar is valid for four points on the earth, all in the United States (in Connecticut , Illinois , Nebraska , and Nevada ). With some easy…
Another geographic mashup ! Oh boy! www.radicalcartography.net
One last little bonbon before I have to put things aside for a while. What would happen if the 48 contiguous states decided to traipse around the world, jumping from sea to sea in search of fun, excitement, and new markets? The cultural story is perhaps a bit too complex for a small online map, but the physiographic answer is here . www.radicalcartography.net
Feeling patriotic ? www.radicalcartography.net