Tag: cities

Historical Maps of London

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Tudor London: The City and Southwark in 1520. Historic Towns Trust.

Londonist does a good job introducing us to two maps of old London published by the Historic Towns Trust a few years ago—a map of medieval London (1270-1300) published in 2019, and a map of Tudor London (1520) published in 2018 (and updated in 2022). The Historic Towns Trust publishes many maps of British towns and cities—historical maps, not reproductions of old maps (in fact, Londonist points out that no maps of London prior to about 1550 currently exist). The Trust’s London maps are also available as overlays on the Layers of London online map: Tudor, medieval. Some maps from the Trust’s British Historic Towns Atlas, which began publishing in 1969 and the earliest volumes of which are out of print, are also available as PDF downloads; here’s the page for London.

Montreal’s Interactive Construction Site Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Montreal has launched an interactive map of its many, many construction sites. Per CBC News: “Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough Mayor Émilie Thuillier says the map will help Montrealers see in real time where a construction site is, what the reason for it is and what company is responsible for it. The map also tells users when the work began and when it’s scheduled to end.” Apparently there are problems with illegal construction barriers and abandoned traffic cones: if they’re not on the map, that will be a tell.

The Lost Subways of North America

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Book cover: The Lost Subways of North AmericaThe Lost Subways of North America, in which Jake Berman looks at the successes and failures of 23 North American transit systems, is out now from the University of Chicago Press. The book’s text is accompanied by a hundred or so of Berman’s own maps, and is based on his series of maps of discontinued and proposed subway systems: see the online index for what made it into the book. On his blog, Berman is posting “deleted scenes”: city chapters that were cut from the book for length, like Denver and Portland.

See the Guardian’s interview with Berman (thanks, Michael); the Strong Towns interview focuses specifically on Los Angeles.

Amazon (Canada, UK) | Bookshop

A Map of New York City Neighbourhoods

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Back in December 2022, the New York Times asked readers to map their neighbourhoods. They got 37,000 responses; combined with feedback from council members, community boards and another survey, the result is a detailed interactive map of New York City neighbourhoods as seen by New Yorkers that the Times is keeping behind its paywall. The accompanying article talking about how the map came to be and what it reveals, is a bit more accessible (see also archive link). [LanguageHat]

Upcoming Leventhal Exhibition Will Explore Boston Transit Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

An upcoming exhibition at the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center, Getting Around Town: Four Centuries of Mapping Boston in Transit, “brings together an extraordinary collection of maps, plans, ephemera, and other materials to investigate how Bostonians have moved around the city in the past, present, and future.” Opens September 9 and runs until April 27, 2024. Free admission.

Apple Maps Roundup for July 2023

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Downloadable maps are coming to Apple Maps in iOS 17 this fall. Ars Technica looks at how they’ll work, and how they’ll compare to Google Maps’ offline maps (at the moment—which to be sure is with the iOS 17 public beta—Apple’s offline maps take up much more space but also offer more detail).

James Killick considers Apple’s forthcoming Vision Pro headset and wonders whether something might not be afoot in the mapping space. “The real kicker for geospatial is its ability to immerse you in a truly 3D experience. […] So given a truly immersive 3D experience is possible, think of the wonders it will do for maps and mapping in general.”

After expanding its new maps to central Europe—Austria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia—in April, Apple brought detailed city maps to Paris, cycling directions to the whole of France, and its new maps to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Slovakia in June. As usual, Justin O’Beirne has all the details at the above links.

Geographical on the NYC Subway Map Debate

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Geographical magazine has a short history of the New York City subway map and its controversies. This has been a fraught and hotly contested topic for most of the last 50 years, and Jules Stewart’s article can’t go into nearly enough depth to capture it all, but it could serve as a decent entry point for those not in the know. Drawing rather heavily on the expertise of Peter Lloyd (previously), Stewart covers the subject from the first subway maps to where the MTA goes from here.

Previously: A Naïve Look at New York’s Subway Map.

Leventhal’s Urban Atlas Explorer Atlascope Is Expanding, Seeking Sponsors

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A screenshot of the Leventhal Map Center's Atlascope platform, which presents late 19th- and early 20th-century urban atlases in a web interface overlaid on a modern street map.
Atlascope (screenshot)

Speaking of georeferencing old maps, the Leventhal Map Center at Boston Public Library has a collection of late 19th- and early 20th-century urban atlases. Their Atlascope platform presents 101 of them in a web interface overlaid on a modern street map. The Leventhal is now looking to expand Atlascope’s coverage beyond the Boston area to towns and counties across Massachusetts, and is raising funds to do so (it can apparently take 60 hours to process one atlas). Details on sponsoring an atlas here. See their Instagram post.

New Boston-Focused Map Exhibitions at the Leventhal Center

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Atlas of the city of Boston, Roxbury: plate 14 (1931)
From Atlas of the City of Boston (1931). Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library.

Opening today at the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center, Building Blocks: Boston Stories from Urban Atlases is an exhibition that explores street-level changes to Boston in the period between the Civil War and World War II. Media release.

Building Blocks: Boston Stories from Urban Atlases features rare materials from the BPL’s historic collection of maps and atlases alongside lithographs, photographs, and sketches of familiar local landscapes. Visitors will discover how the atlas collections opens up a world of fascinating stories, with vignettes including the city’s first African Meeting House in the heart of Beacon Hill, landmarks of leisure like the “Derby Racer” and “Giant Safety Thriller” amusement rides in Revere, public health infrastructure on Gallops Island in Boston Harbor, and many more.

The in-person exhibition at the BPL’s Central Library opens today; a digital version will follow online. Runs until 19 August 2023. A curatorial introduction will take place next Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a permanent exhibition, Becoming Boston: Eight Moments in the Geography of a Changing City, also opens today at the Leventhal: “In the eight cases of this exhibition, we follow the changing spatial forms of the place we now call Boston—from before the landscape carried that name all the way through the struggles, clashes, and dreams that continue to reshape the city today.”

See the Leventhal’s exhibitions page and their preview of 2023 events for more details.

NYC Tree Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Screenshot of the NYC Tree Map
Screenshot

The impressive and/or insane thing about the New York City Tree Map is that it maps individual trees: now about 860,000 of them, all managed by the city’s parks department on city streets and in parks, down to the species and trunk diameter, which also means you can filter for those parameters, plus get most recent inspection and tree care data on specific trees. You can even favourite individual trees. If trees had social media accounts, they’d be here. [Bloomberg CityLab]

Previously: Mapping Central Park’s 19,630 Trees.

Topsy-Turvy: The London Underground in the Style of the New York Subway Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

London Underground map in the style of the New York subway map

Plenty of cities’ subway maps have been reimagined in the style of the London Underground map. Cameron Booth, for example, has redone New York’s subway map in that style. But a map posted by a graphic designer named Sean to Reddit does the exact opposite: it reimagines the London Underground map in the style of New York’s subway map. Bringing the design language of Michael Hertz to Harry Beck’s sovereign territory is probably blasphemous in some quarters, but as a pastiche of the New York style? Cameron says: “Sean has absolutely nailed the New York Subway map style, and perhaps even improved upon it in places—I note with pleasure that all of his station labels are set horizontally, instead of the many varied angles used on the official NYC map.” His bottom line? “One of the best style mash-ups I’ve seen: technically excellent, well-researched and actually really informative. Wonderful!”

It’s available as a print on Etsy, because of course it is.

Pictorial St. Louis

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Pictorial St. Louis (Plate 2)
Richard J. Compton and Camille N. Dry, Pictorial St. Louis (1876), plate 2. Library of Congress.

On the Library of Congress’s map blog, World’s Revealed, Julie Stoner takes a look at a rather unusual example of a bird’s-eye (or panoramic) city map. “The Geography and Map Division has over 1,700 of these beautiful panoramic maps in the collection, but one item stands out above all the others as one of the crowning achievements of the art, Camille N. Dry’s 1875 atlas, Pictorial St. Louis; The Great Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley. A visually stunning atlas, instead of only one sheet, it was produced on 110 plates, which if trimmed and assembled creates a panorama of the city measuring about 9 by 24 feet.”