Posts Tagged ‘london’

150 Years Of The London Underground Map. In Lego.

On the way through South Kensington Tube station this morning, I spied a new Underground map. That’s nothing new, the Underground map seems to be changing frequently these days. But this map was very noticeably different.

There was no Victoria or Jubilee lines at all. The Piccadilly line terminated at Hammersmith and Finsbury Park and had stations that have been closed for years; Brompton Road, Down Street and York Road. The Central Line stopped at Liverpool Street.

Did I mention the entire map was made of Lego?

It’s all part of the celebrations marking 150 years of the London Underground network. In addition to the South Kensington map, which shows the tube network circa 1927 and which also explains the closed stations and missing lines, there’s another 4 maps scattered across the network, if you know where to look.

At Piccadilly Circus there’s a map from 1933, the first of Harry Beck’s iconic designs. At Green Park there’s a 1969 map. At Stratford there’s an up-to-date 2013 map. Finally at King’s Cross St. Pancras there’s a view of how the map might look in 2020, with Crossrail up and running.

Photo Credits: picolin and vicchi on Flickr.

Written and posted from the Royal Geographical Society (51.50127, -0.17476)

Welcome To The United States; A Cold War Tourist Map For Soviet Visitors

Governments and authorities like maps. They’re a useful way of clearly saying this is mine, that is yours. They’re also useful for saying where you can and more importantly, where you can’t go. This is all too evident in a surprising map of where Russian visitors to the US were permitted to visit during the 1950s.

In the mid 1950s America and Russia were in the middle of the game of oneupmanship, with added nuclear weapons, that was the Cold War. Despite the uneasy detente between the two countries, if you were one of an elite group of Soviet citizens you were actually able to visit the United States. But not all of it. Large swathes of the US were closed to prospective Soviet tourists.

What makes this map interesting is not so much the slice of relatively recent world history that it portrays but more of the questions it poses. What were the criteria that were used to determine where a Cold War era Soviet visitor could and couldn’t go?

You can make some educated guesses. It’s not unreasonable to assume that major ports, coastlines, industrial areas and military and weapons areas were off limits. But that doesn’t cover the full scope of the open and closed areas.

Over at BoingBoing, there’s speculation that this was as much a tit-for-tat set of restrictions as it was a set of restrictions based on what the US Government didn’t want Soviets to see. As Cold War era historian Audra Wolfe, the author of the Slate article on this map, notes

The main premise is ‘strict reciprocity’. X% of Soviet coasts are off-limits, therefore X% of US coasts are off-limits, too.

Photo Credits: Rockefeller Archive Center, Item record: Rockefeller Family Archives (III) Record Group: 4 Nelson A. Rockefeller – Personal, Series: Washington D.C Files, Subseries: O.9 Special Assistant to the President Declassified Materials, 1954-1956, 1969 Box: 4 Folder 94.

Written and posted from the British Library, London (51.53004, -0.12765)

Open Data Yields Tangible Results – And Tangible Maps

In January of this year I made a hopeful prediction that 2013 would be the year of the tangible map.

This hope was prompted by the maps I saw at one of London’s geomob meetups in November of 2012, where I saw and, importantly for a tangible map, touched Anna Butler’s London wall map and a prototype of David Overton’s SplashMap.

The hopeful prediction was made as a result of literally getting my hands on one of Anna’s London maps and it’s a treasured possession, though still sadly needing a suitable frame before it can take pride of place on a wall at home.

But what of SplashMaps? In November 2012 the project was on Kickstarter and I was one of the investors in this most tangible of maps. In December 2012 Splashmaps met their funding targets and went into production and today, through the letterbox came my own, tangible, foldable, scrunchable and almost indestructible SplashMap of my local neighbourhood.

Now all if this could be taken to be simply my crowing with delight over maps. But there’s a deeper context to all of these tangible maps. Both the London Wall Map and SplashMaps have come about due to one single thing … open data. The case has often been made, though equally as often misunderstood, that open data is an economic stimulus. As many people ask why should we give something away for free as ask for data to opened up to the public.

Both of these maps wouldn’t have been financially possible without access to open data; the pre-open data era licensing costs and restrictions alone would have put paid to any startup opportunities an aspiring entrepreneur came up with. But in these maps, the proof of what open data can do has become very real, indeed very tangible.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

How A Map Can Go Viral (In 8 Simple Steps)

Back in February of this year, at the height of the madness that was the Vaguely Rude Places Map, Ed Freyfogle from London’s #geomob meetup got in touch and asked me to come and tell the story behind the map. This is that story.

And so last night, in the Chadwick Lecture Theatre in the basement of London’s UCL, after listening to some amazing presentations on building a map of mobile cell tower coverage, of building a seismically powered alternative to GPS and a whole host of other great talks, I took my place on the podium and started where any good story needs to start … at the beginning.

Read On…

Re-imagining Berlin’s U-Bahn And S-Bahn System

This is another mass transit map, but this time it’s not of the London Underground system, but the U-Bahn and S-Bahn system in Berlin. The name U-Bahn derives from Untergrundbahn, or underground railway whilst S-Bahn comes from Stadtschnellbahn, or fast city train.

As a general rule of thumb, the London Underground is, as the name suggests, underground in the centre of the city and surfaces as you move into the suburbs. The same can’t be said of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn, which is underground and overground in pretty much equal measures over a lot of the network.

But this post is not about the official map of Berlin’s transport, it’s about this, unofficial, map of Berlin’s underground and not so underground trains.

Not content with reworking London’s Underground network maps, Maxwell Roberts has turned his sights on Berlin’s, producing not only a rework map which looks very similar to the official London map, but also one which is all curves, with not a straight line to be seen.

I hope that both Berlin’s BVG and S-Bahn Berlin are aware of Maxwell’s work. As a fairly regular traveller to Berlin, I use the U and S-Bahn a lot and whilst the official map is accurate, it’s not the easiest of thing to use at times.

Photo Credits: Maxwell Roberts via The Local.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

There’s More Underneath London Than Just Trains

Oh yes, look. Gary’s written yet another post about a map of the London Tube system that he likes. Yawn. Time to move on. But wait … this may look like a map of the London Underground but it’s not.

Now I may have been guilty of wearing my heart on my sleeve slightly too much where variations on a theme of the London Underground map have been concerned; there’s at least seven posts on this topic already posted.

Granted, there’s the Northern Line on the map; but this is more for a sense of geographical perspective than anything else.

The blue lines aren’t branches of the Piccadilly Line. They’re the rivers that have been long lost and yet still run under the streets of London; the Fleet, the Effra, the Westbourne and Stamford Brook. Historical point of note; the Jubilee Line was originally going to be called the Fleet Line, although the path of the line followed the course of the (also buried) Tyburn rather than the Fleet, but was renamed the Jubilee to coincide with the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II.

Likewise, the orange lines aren’t the Overground, they’re sewers, nor is the red line the Central Line, it’s the Post Office railway or Mail Rail.

So it may look like a map of the Tube, but it’s anything but. It’s all the work of Richard Fairhurst, who’s made a few maps in his time; they’re well worth a look.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

Lodged Donor Nun Run; The Anagram Map Of The London Underground

If you think you know the map of the London Underground network think again. You probably think the Metropolitan Line runs between Amersham and Aldgate; but on this map it doesnt. Instead, it runs between Ram Shame and Data Gel. The southwest termini for the District Line are Richmond and Wimbledon. Maybe not. According to this map, Inch Dorm and Bowel Mind are the end of the line. It’s good to know I used to live near Foldaway Rhumba rather than Fulham Broadway, that Nokia’s central London office is just by Apt Nodding and I feel sorry for someone who lives near Lancaster Gate, sorry, I mean Castrate Angel.

It’s amazing what you get when you make anagrams out of each and every station on the Tube network.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

Re-imagining The London Tube Map With Curves And Circles

Another day, another map and another #mapgasm post. Actually another 2 maps, both of which are by Max Roberts and both of which have appeared on Annie Mole’s Going Underground blog.

Continuing my fascination with the map of the London Underground, which I may have posted about before, Max has been wondering what the Tube Map would look like if it was all curved.

Or maybe, just maybe what it would be like if the Tube Map was circular, in the most literal of fashions.

I wonder what Harry Beck would think of these re-imaginings of his iconic map; I think he’d probably approve.

Photo Credits: Max Roberts and Annie Mole on Flickr.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

Not Your Average User Contributed Map

Today I contributed to a map. I did this yesterday as well. I even did this last week. In fact I’ve been doing this since the end of July 2009. As of right now I’ve done this 11,880 times. I’ll probably end up contributing to this map again later on today and will almost definitely do it again tomorrow.

But this isn’t your average user contributed or crowd sourced map. It’s not one of the usual suspects; it’s not OpenStreetMap, or Google MapMaker or Nokia MapCreator. It’s none of these, but it’s a map nonetheless and it looks like this.

Most of my contributions are in the centre of the map and towards the South West corner. I’ve also contributed to this map in other places and it looks like this.

Here most of my contributions are in the centre with a few towards the North West corner. Maybe the maps will make a little more sense if I turn on an underlying labelled layer.

This is the map of the last three months on Foursquare in London.

And this is the map of the last three months on Foursquare in Berlin.

Each dot is a check in and every time I’ve checked in, which is almost every day, I’ve contributed to this map. Now it’s not a strictly geographic map in the normal sense of the word, but each check in is a geographically accurate (subject to the GPS lock that someone’s smartphone has) affirmation that a place exists and that it’s important to someone.

It’s fascinating to see how the world looks when viewed by check ins alone, with the UK, Europe and North America’s coastlines standing out like a night-time satellite image when there’s no cloud cover.

It’s definitely not your average user contributed map but it’s a map I helped make in a small way and will continue to do so; though I know of one person who probably disagrees with me.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

2013 – The Year Of The Tangible Map And Return Of The Map As Art

Looking back at the conference talks I gave and the posts I wrote in 2012, two themes are evident.

The first theme is that while there’s some utterly gorgeous digital maps being produced these days, such as Stamen’s Watercolor, the vast majority of digital maps can’t really be classified as art. Despite the ability to style our own maps with relative ease, such as with Carto and MapBox’s TileMill, today’s maps tend towards the data rich, factual end of the map spectrum. Compare and contrast a regular digital map, on your phone, on your tablet or on a web site in your laptop’s browser with a map such as Hemispheriu[m] ab aequinoctiali linea, ad circulu[m] Poli Arctici and you’ll see what I mean (and if you don’t browse the Norman. B. Leventhal Map Center’s Flickr stream you really should).

The second theme is that despite the abundance of maps that surround us these days, a digital map is almost by definition an intangible thing. It’s a view port, hand crafted by a digital cartographer, on a mass of hidden, underlying spatial data. It’s ephemeral. Switch off your phone, your tablet, your sat nav or your computer and the map … vanishes. Until the next time you hit the “on” button, the electrons flow again and the map re-appears. But it’s still intangible, despite the irony that a lot of maps these days are interacted with via a touch interface; we tap, poke, prod and swipe our maps, but they’re not really there.

But maybe 2013 will be both the year of the tangible map and the year of the map as art. It might be if the closing days of 2012 are anything to go by.

On December 8th, 2012, David Overton’s SplashMaps made their funding total on Kickstarter. A SplashMap is a real outdoor map, derived from (digital) open data, but rendered on a light and weatherproof fabric. It’s a tangible map in the truest sense of the word; one you can fold up or even crumple up and stick in your pocket, safe in the knowledge that it won’t fade away. There’s no “off” switch for this map. As one of the SplashMap funders, I’ll have a chance to get my hands on one in the literal sense of the word in a couple of months, once they hit production. So more about this map in a future post.

The other map that is both 100% tangible and 100% art is the awesomely talented Anna Butler’s Grand Map Of London. A modern day map of the UK’s capital city, digital in origin, lovingly hand drawn in the style of the 1800s and printed, yes, printed on canvas. It’s a map worthy of the phrase “the map as art” and when I first saw one and handled one in late November of 2012 I wanted one, right there and then.

And then, on Saturday, December 29th 2012, Mark Iliffe and I met Anna for a coffee in the Espresso Bar of the British Library on London’s Euston Road and out of the blue, Anna handed over a long cardboard tube containing my own, my very own, Grand Map Of London. People nearby looked on, slightly non-plussed as I crowed like a happy baby, promptly unrolled the map over the table and just looked and touched. The next half an hour or so pretty much vanished as I pored over and luxuriated in the map, lost in the details and revelling in the map under my hands. Truly this is a tangible map which is itself art.

I’ve often said, half in truth, half in jest, that I’d love a big, as big as I can get, map of London on my wall, probably one of Stamen’s Watercolor maps. But Anna’s Grand Map Of London will be getting a suitable frame and sitting on my wall, just as soon as my local framing shop opens after the New Year break.

Two maps to wrap up 2012. Both tangible, both digital in origin, both made for looking, touching and feeling. One clever, innovative and utterly practical and one a map you can keep coming back to and which reveals more artistic cleverness each time you look at it.

2013 is shaping up to be a “year of the map” in ways I’d never had hoped for at the start of 2012.

Written and posted from home (51.427051, -0.333344)

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