Curiously Cartographic Creations #1 – The Tourist Tube Map

London seems to have gone ever so slightly maps crazy of recent. Not only is there the Magnificent Maps exhibition opening at the British Library at the end of this month but BBC4 has joined in with two documentary series on the subject, Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession and The Beauty of Maps.

It’s all very geotastic …

One of the themes that threads through both the BBC4 series is that a map says as much about the fears, hopes, dreams and prejudices of its target audience as it does about the relationship of places on the surface of the Earth. Nowhere could this be more ably demonstrated in some of the bookmarks that have been appearing in my delicious stream over the past year or two …

First in this occasional series is the Tourist Tube Map. It’s the iconic, Harry Beck, design of the London Underground map. Or is it?

Some of those stations don’t look like they’re in the right place … and can you really get free admission to the Elephant and Castle?

Another Piece Of Bloggage By Gary

Self professed "geek with a life", geo-blogger, geo-talker and geo-tweeter, Gary works in London and Berlin as Director of the Places Registry for Nokia; he's a co-founder of WhereCamp EU, the chair of w3gconf and sits on the W3C POI Working Group and the UK Location User Group. A contributor to the Mapstraction mapping API, Gary speaks and presents at a wide range of conferences and events including Where 2.0, State of the Map, AGI GeoCommunity, Geo-Loco, Social-Loco, GeoMob, the BCS GeoSpatial SG and LocBiz. Writing as regularly as possible on location, place, maps and other facets of geography, Gary blogs at www.vicchi.org and tweets as @vicchi.

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Other bloggage that may or may not be geo-related to this one:

1. Curiously Cartographic Creations #2 – Alternative Maps Of Europe

   In the first of this occasional series, I looked at a curiously familiar but not quite right map of the London Underground evilly designed for tourists. In this second part...

2. Curiously Cartographic Creations #3 – The Special Relationship

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3. Where’s My Tube Train? Ah, There’s My Tube Train

   Back in December of 2009, I wrote about Paul Clarke trying to solve the problem of where’s my train; that there must be a definitive, raw source of real-time (train) information...

4. Crowd Sourcing The London Underground Tube Strike

   From as early as 9.00 PM tonight, the London Underground network will be hit by a strike called by the RMT and TSSA unions. Again. For Londoners this will probably...

5. Putting The Tube On The Grid; A Geeked Out Cartographical Recipe

   Here’s a simple, cut-out-and-keep recipe for making a very geeked out update on a cartographical classic. First, take a classic and iconic map which appeals to both the map geek...