“Geography, sir, is ruinous in its effects on the lower classes. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are comparatively safe, but geography invariably leads to revolution.”
(1879 testimony before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, London, England, regarding expenditures of the London School Board)
Drawing made with GPS tracking in Hyde Park near the Royal Geographical Society headquarters in London. It has the letters “RGS” and this year’s RGS/IBG conference logo mapped out.
“I record all my journeys with GPS to map where I have been and how I got there. It is a form of personal cartography that documents my life as visual journal....The GPS model was created as a physical reference to a history of geograms that can be traced back to the Nasca Lines made in Ancient Peru and the chalk figures carved into the English landscape. In both cases they were made by either clearing a path by the removal of stones or of topsoil over large areas. They revealed signs, not entirely visible from the ground, projected towards the skies like symbols on a map to be seen by the gods,” Jeremy Wood, artist
“Artist Jeremy Wood will be in residence at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in London this week as he turns Hyde Park into a blank canvas for almost 1,500 delegates at the Society’s annual International Conference [August 31-September 2, 2011].
Using global positioning system (GPS) satellite technology, Jeremy creates art works by turning his journeys by foot, bicycle and train into fascinating shapes, patterns and words. Tracking his every move for the last nine years, Jeremy is never without the GPS devices that inspire his art.
'The theme of this year’s conference is the ‘Geographical Imagination’ and I want geographers to show me what they can create,' Jeremy said. 'The images I’ve created over the years explore people’s perception of open space – the places they can go and places they can’t are all reflected in the images. Buildings and other restricted areas become blank spaces while roads and other routes are filled in to reveal the image.'
Using Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens opposite the Society’s headquarters in London, geographers attending conference from across the world will be able to create their own works of art. Select images will appear Jeremy’s website (www.gpsdrawing.com).
Jeremy first had the idea for his GPS art when flying back to London and tracking the places on the ground below with his GPS device. Trapped in a holding pattern above London’s Heathrow Airport, images began forming on his GPS screen and it wasn’t long before he realised the application for this down on the ground.” Text from “Walk this way for geographical art,” at
Example of a GPS drawing by Jeremy Wood from the GPS Drawing Gallery. The University of Warwick campus map was drawn on foot at 1:1 scale with 238 miles of GPS tracks walked over 17 days. From: www.gpsdrawing.com. It gives new meaning to the term "full scale map!"
"'Traverse Me' is a map drawn by walking across campus with a GPS device to invite the viewer to see a different landscape to that which surrounds them. It questions the possibilities of where they are and inspires a personal reading of their movements and explorations of the campus. I responded to the structure of each location and avoided walking along roads and paths when possible. The route was recorded with GPS technology and was walked in stages over the 300 hectare site. My shoes turned brown in the dry fields and they turned green in the long grass. The compass rose and the globe were paced out over cricket pitches, and the scale was measured along a narrow tractor rut. I collided with objects and buildings, barriers and footpaths, and traipsed over the tops of multi-story car parks. Security was called on me twice on separate occasions and I lost count of how many times I happened to trigger an automatic sliding door," Text from: http://www.gpsdrawing.com/maps/traverse-me.html
And this one is truly incredible - it was done at Uffington - the famous White Horse Hill. Check it out (there's also a video about the project) at http://www.gpsdrawing.com/gallery/maps/whh-model.htm “The model displaces our trajectories by a transferral of surfaces. It is a three-dimensional map of our systems of movement within 43 kilometres of walks made over four days. We acted as data collectors by traversing the area in order to generate the material to model the experience. Our GPS tracks were processed and reduced in scale by 1000 times and printed as templates on cardboard sheets. They included a plan view of the journey (track position), and many strips of various lengths (distance) and widths (altitude). On each strip were score-lines with colours that indicated the varying degrees of change in the direction of the track.”
OK, I am trying something new and exciting! A contest! With a nice prize, even! The way to win the contest and the prize is to correctly identify the map projection used in the map shown above. You have to tell me what it is, details about it, and what possible purpose it is particularly good for. Whoever sends me the most correct, complete response the fastest will win the prize, and the winner and correct answer will be announced in my September 19th blog posting on Map of the Week!
This does not necessarily mean that the oblique case map projection post is very beloved and popular with readers, of course. Or even that it is very excellent. Or that there is inordinate interest, all of a sudden, in the obscure topic of oblique case projections. It could just mean that some crazy (err, I mean uber-discerning) professor or two has assigned the post as reading for a class on mapping science, cartography, or GISc. That’s the only reasonable explanation I can come up with, anyway, to explain the mad number of views! Totally unexpected! So I figured if there is so much interest in strange map projections, perhaps I better have a contest on map projection identification. Fun, right?
Please send your responses to me via e-mail by no later than 6:00 PM EDT on September 16th (GMT -5) at YahMonForReal@aol.com. Subject line: Map projection contest. Please! No copying from Wikipedia (or anywhere else, for that matter!) I will know! Instant disqualification!
Here is one more post about the World Trade Center in time for the 10th Anniversary of 9-11.This is about an exhibit that is opening tomorrow featuring work by the Hunter College CARSI Lab, (the Center for the Advanced Research of Spatial Information) under the direction of Prof. Sean Ahearn.Using ground-based LiDAR and other technologies, the site is shown before 9-11, after 9-11, and at intervals to the present, including LiDAR depictions of what the site and the memorial monuments look like today.
“The City of New York and the Center for the Advanced Research of Spatial Information (CARSI) of Hunter College-CUNY, in collaboration with Woodward Gallery, proudly presents ‘Charting Ground Zero Ten Years After.’ This exhibition provides an extensive aerial and ground overview of the World Trade Center site before, just after September 11th and the site’s evolution over the last decade. It uses the latest scientific advances in mapping technology and cartographic representation, to show the transformation of the site. The mapping and spatial analysis technologies played a crucial role in helping the city assess damage, monitor the progress of recovery, and safely deploy personnel and equipment in the disaster zone. Those same technologies are used to show how the site has evolved over the last decade.
Remote-sensing technology used to create the maps included aerial photography, laser-based instruments called LIDAR (light detection and ranging), and thermal sensors. Mounted on planes, LIDAR penetrated the heavy smoke rising from the devastated area and captured the first clear images of the scene. Thermal imaging was used to determine where fires were still smoldering and, over time, the movement of these "hot spots" throughout the area. New LIDAR images taken in 2010 will reveal extremely fine detail of the 9/11 development site.
As part of a broader effort involving the City's Office of Emergency Management's Mapping and Data Center and Hunter College's CARSI lab, directed by Professor Sean Ahearn, a team of Geo-spatial scientists analyzed the data, then created the many maps used by the city to monitor the changes at ground zero and to speed in recovery. The ‘before’ images of the World Trade Center site, which will be included in the exhibition, were generated from the NYCMap (pronounced "nice map"), a database of highly detailed geographic information on the entire city, accurate to within 18 inches. Created over a period of five years, the map was a joint project of DoITT, the Department of Environmental Protection, and Hunter's CARSI lab. The later images were produced with very high resolution LIDAR taken in the spring of 2010 by Sanborn Map Company with funding from NYC DCAS. Ground-based LIDAR images were collected on August 24, 2011 by the Computer Vision Laboratory of Hunter College - CUNY, Director Professor Ioannis Stamos.
This exhibition organized by Woodward Gallery has traveled the country. It was broadcast on Channel 11, MSNBC, and the History Channel originally. Now including the advances made ten years after, Woodward welcomes “Charting Ground Zero” back to New York for a final public view then will donate it to the Memorial Museum at Ground Zero for their permanent installation. Esri Inc. of Redlands, CA is a generous sponsor for this exhibition.
I have decided to start a new feature on my blog, called Map of the Week, which will come out at the beginning of each week, hopefully by each Monday evening, schedule permitting, and will highlight a map, data visualization, or geographic image that I find interesting and noteworthy. These maps might be something I discover on the Internet, in the journals or newspapers, or even created by students enrolled in our GISc Program. If warranted, I will offer a brief discussion of the map or further information about it, when available. If any of you have any outstanding, humorous, unusual, thought-provoking, or otherwise share-worthy maps, please send them to me (with or without your comments, but including the source of the map), at YahMonForReal@aol.com.
So: here is the first map image for this inaugural week of September 5th, 2011.
The Growth of Newspapers Across the U.S.: 1690-2011
“Introduction:
With American newspapers under stress from changing economics, technology, and consumer behavior, it’s easy to forget how ubiquitous and important they are in society. For this data visualization, we have taken the directory of US newspaper titles compiled by the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America project – nearly 140,000 publications in all – and plotted them over time and space.
Some Important Considerations:
It would be fairer to call this a ‘database’ visualization than an omniscient creator’s-eye-view of the growth of American newspapers. There are known (and surely unknown) omissions from this list, as well as duplicate entries, and entries that are similar and can appear duplicative.
Process:
The data originates from many state-level libraries and scholarly institutions that are actively collecting, scanning, and cataloguing American newspapers. These records are sent to the Library of Congress for aggregation in the newspaper directory. In many cases, publication start and end dates are uncertain. Where possible, we have calculated minimum run dates of publications, based on dates within which copies have been catalogued.
First listing, 1690’s:
Appearing in Boston on September 25, 1690, ‘Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick’ was intended as a monthly by the former London bookseller Benjamin Harris. But it was shut down after only four days by the colonial governor, who denounced it as ‘Without the least Privity or Countenance of Authority.’ It would be 14 years before the Boston postmaster John Campbell would found the ‘Boston News-Letter,’ the first continuously published American newspaper in 1704.
1774 - 61 listings:
At the eve of the American Revolution, newspapers were published up and down the colonies. Toiling under the 1765 Stamp Act, newspapers were required to pay heavy taxes on paper and advertisements; some folded entirely, while others printed a skull and crossbones on their masthead, declaring themselves ‘dead.’ Called a ‘hotbed of sedition,’ Boston was home to both Patriot newspapers like the pro-independence Boston Gazette and loyalist Tory sheets.” Text from: http://www.stanford.edu/group/ruralwest/cgi-bin/drupal/visualizations/us_newspapers
You can read details about all the rest of the time periods at the Stanford University website above. The website has some really interesting information on it, and looking back and also viewing the present situation certainly gives us pause today in thinking about new concerns dealing with Freedom of the Press and the role of the media, including social media, in our lives.
Here is a really nice montage of movies over the past 30+ years in which the Twin Towers have had a cameo role. Video by Dan Meth http://vimeo.com/28171399
Here is a CNN report on Dan’s video, which features snips of the clips from his video, which apparently took
him 7 months of working on and off to create. See the Vimeo link above for the actual montage by Dan.
Before the onslaught of horrifying images of past destruction start inundating us in the media as the 10th anniversary of 9-11 approaches next week, I thought it might be nice to take a fond look back at New York City’s World Trade Center as it stood for 30+ years before the attacks. This posting was instigated by seeing a video on Dan Meth’s blog, my favorite video cartoonist. He spent 7 months working on and off to create a montage of movies that feature the Twin Towers in a cameo role. It is really cool, and it started me thinking about my personal love-hate relationship (or rather, hate-tolerate relationship!) with the Twin Towers, during the time they were being built and afterward, when I lived (and also worked, for many years) in eyesight of them.
Yes, the Twin Towers featured prominently in many seminal movies about NYC. They were the symbol of “modern” New York of the fin de siècle 20th century, the way the Empire State Building was the iconic architecture in the first half of the 20th century. In a strange way, I totally understood how the terrorists, in their misguided misunderstanding of American culture, could have confused the Twin Towers with something that truly emblemized America, represented America, something that was truly important. After all, if they had been paying attention to the Hollywood movies for the past 40 years, they might be forgiven for thinking that the Twin Towers personified the American Dream and typified the average American's ambitions. The Twin Towers had a cameo role in hundreds of movies. A shot of the Twin Towers set the scene, was worth a thousand words.
In the interests of full disclosure, when the Twin Towers first went up, I hated them and everything they stood for. I disliked their phallic imperiousness, the way they destroyed a gritty “authentic” part of the city - the low-rise and somewhat shabby Lower West Side, an area known for its electrical wholesale district, some remnants of the old wholesale produce and meat markets, and seedy strip clubs and topless bars. It was the old NYC waterfront the way I remember it growing up, and I loved that area of dilapidated old warehouses and ancient tenement buildings, some of which stood alone and slightly off-kilter, like the sole remaining tooth in a smile where all the other buildings on the block had already been extracted, and were surrounded usually by the black gums of asphalt parking lots. This was all changed forever once the World Trade Center (WTC) was built.
In my opinion, the architecture of the WTC was nothing to write home about, either - the aesthetic was unlovable and impersonal and very corporate-boring, and its plaza on a windy day was not only unusable by humans, it was downright hazardous to one’s health. And I had even less love for the building infrastructure and all its out-of-the-ordinary building codes. It didn’t have to adhere to typical NYC building and fire codes because technically it was not part of NYC, it was a project of the bi-state entity called the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (or what, when I was a kid, we always referred to as the “Port of Authority,” a meaningless corruption of its original name, “The Port of New York Authority”). The World Trade Center was built on land (landfill, actually) that was under the jurisdiction of the bi-state entity, and therefore was exempt from all NYC zoning laws and other such ordinances. As an adult, I designed several multi-floor interior projects in the WTC, and so came to know first-hand about its singular set of building codes and land use regulations that applied to the complex of buildings. In a word, it was a pain in the butt to do any construction work within the WTC. It certainly wasn't because the rules were more stringent, (they were NOT!) but that they were significantly different from NYC's code and therefore confusing and occasionally conflicting.
I watched the WTC being built, the same way that 15 years or so later I watched the construction of the whole Battery Park City development. It was fascinating. I lived about ½ mile from the site, and for a number of years, could look out my windows and watch the construction progress of much of the Lower West Side of Manhattan. I also walked and biked along the Hudson River to watch the construction of BPC and the park, and almost always ended up down by the WTC. I still didn’t love the Twin Towers, but they grew on me over time, and after BPC started taking shape, the Twin Towers seemed to have more of a contextual relationship with the downtown landscape. I reluctantly accepted them as a part of the “new” New York. Out with the gritty city, in with the slick, sleek, and glossy. Even as they were being built, they already seemed like an anachronism to me, from some other time in the past where we looked forward to a “space-age” future which would include a life of individual flying machines with everyone whirling about in the air like the Jetsons.
I was hardly alone in my negative views of the WTC. Even Lewis Mumford, the renowned architecture and urban planning critic, thought they were an abomination. He denounced the WTC as an “example of the purposeless giantism and technological exhibitionism that are now eviscerating the living tissue of every great city,” (The Pentagon of Power, 1970). Aside from concerns about the design of the complex, there were practical problems as well. The “superblock” concept interrupted the NYC street grid and disrupted both pedestrian and vehicular traffic flow, and the heavily subsidized office space created a glut in the market that was already over-saturated with office space in a financially-troubled city where many corporate headquarters had started moving away to the less expensive, lower tax rates, less crime-ridden and “safer” suburbs, and the southern states.
In any event, they were there, and I and most other New Yorkers ended up tolerating them. I saw them every day, worked near them for a time, had clients whose office space was in the buildings, worked on projects in them, took the “E” train which terminated in their vast subterranean depths, went on a few job interviews in them, and rode my bike in their shadow almost every day at certain points in my life. They were part of my life, my every day mundane existence. And the thought that one day they would not be there anymore would not have occurred to me any more than the idea that the Hudson River would one day be gone, that is how permanent they seemed to me. Despite my fear of super-high-rise elevators, I routinely took clients (and visitors from out of town) to “Windows on the World” the slightly dizzy-making restaurant on the top floor, which on many days was enveloped in clouds and swayed about 6 feet or so from one side to the other.
I do miss the Twin Towers. It is a great loss. They were definitely considered by many to be an eyesore, but they were OUR eyesore. The Twin Towers were how you could orient yourself when you were downtown in the mediaeval maze of streets in the Financial District, formerly known as Nieuwe Amsterdam. They were part of the compass rose pointing west. I remember how you could be way out in the far reaches of Queens or Brooklyn, miles from downtown, for instance in the pristine and remote wetlands of Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, the Gateway National Park out there, flat as a pancake, with geese, mallards, gulls, and diamondback terrapins everywhere, and then look up and see the Twin Towers framing the view. They were omnipresent. They were quintessential. No wonder they figured in so many movies.
I also remember the time in 1974 that Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist, walked the 140 feet between the roofs of the North and the South Towers on a steel cable and then was promptly arrested. NYC held its collective breath for the 45 minutes that it took for him to make the journey. This act was featured as an iconic 1970’s NYC event in the fabulous book “Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann, and was also made into a documentary movie “Man on Wire,” http://www.manonwire.com/
Of course, the loss of any building, even two of 110 stories each, and six more smaller towers thrown in for good measure, pales in comparison to the loss of human life that occurred on September 11th, 10 years ago. Two former work colleagues of mine who had taken "good" jobs in the WTC perished in that awful day, and every 9/11 anniversary during the reading of the names, I wait to hear their names read off the list of thousands. Ezra Aviles and Peter Guylavary. I still wonder about the wisdom of replacing the WTC with the Freedom Tower.
Ten years ago, I remember looking out my windows on Washington Street, and watching hundreds of zombie-like office workers, some toting attaché cases and briefcases, covered head to toe in grey ash, trudging uptown, since there was no other transportation option that day. I remember being frightened and not knowing what to do, whether or not to evacuate, and if so, where to go, and how to get there? How to transport my three cats and all my turtles on the handles of my mountain bike? I remember obsessively cleaning my coffee machine like a maniac, just to do something mindless so I didn’t have to think about what was going on. I remember breathing the awful fumes for weeks and weeks, and recalling from my work on the building years before how it was filled with asbestos. I remember passing St. Vincent’s Hospital and seeing hundreds of missing persons flyers posted with people’s photos and descriptions, and how it took us many days to realize that there weren’t any missing persons, just dead persons. The flyers became more and more tattered as time went by, but no one removed them. How all the First Responders had flooded into NYC from surrounding areas and far away, how we all stood along the West Side Highway every evening and cheered the firefighters and others from around the country as they rode uptown after working crazy-long and dangerous shifts at Ground Zero, the newly-minted name for what had been, until just a few days before, the WTC. I remember the gut-wrenching feeling I got the first time I passed by my corner on the way home and looked to my left downtown and didn’t see the Twin Towers standing there anymore, obstructing my view of the sky, just a smoldering pit, and it smoldered for months. The strange feeling I got the first time I saw an “E” train enter the station, with the sign in the first car pronouncing it was heading to “WTC,” which existed no more. How we didn’t know if there would be another attack, or how soon. When life would ever return to normal (it never really did).
Models by NOAA’s National Weather Service show Hurricane Irene pointed right in the direction of New York City this weekend.First we have an earthquake earlier this week, now an impending hurricane.Good grief, what’s next, a Plague of Locusts? It is believed that Irene will also be making a tour of much of the eastern seaboard, and after visiting the New York Metro area, will be continuing on up to Boston and points north. Depending upon which model prediction ends up being most accurate, it seems as though eastern Long Island will be hit the hardest in this area.
Model Predictions of Hurricane Irene's Center Tracks for the NYC and Boston areas.
Predictions of Hurricane "cone" as of 1 hour ago.
Going back to 1851, there have been only 5 hurricanes whose centers of circulation have passed within 75 miles of New York City. The last hurricane within that distance from New York City was Hurricane Gloria 26 years ago.
With Irene, there is a threat of high winds, heavy rains and flooding, possible tornadoes, and storm surge/coastal flooding.Hurricane Irene could be one of those very rare times that New York City experiences a Category 2 or even a Category 3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale.
The NYC Mayor is now saying that certain areas in the New York metro area may require evacuations.Advice from the NYC Office of Emergency Management, at: http://www.nyc.gov/html/oem/html/hazards/storms_evaczones.shtml
“New York City's hurricane contingency plans are based on three evacuation zones.* These zones represent varying threat levels of coastal flooding resulting from storm surge.
New Yorkers should find out if their homes, offices or schools fall within the boundaries of a City evacuation zone. The best way to be prepared for the possibility of a hurricane evacuation is to know your evacuation zone and plan your destination and travel routes ahead of time.
To find out if you live in a hurricane evacuation zone, use the Hurricane Evacuation Zone Finder, or call 311. Zones are color-coded and labeled A, B and C when represented on a map.
·Residents in Zone A face the highest risk of flooding from a hurricane's storm surge. Zone A includes all low-lying coastal areas and other areas that could experience storm surge in ANY hurricane that makes landfall close to New York City.
·Residents in Zone B may experience storm surge flooding from a MODERATE (Category 2 or higher) hurricane.
·Residents in Zone C may experience storm surge flooding from a MAJOR hurricane (Category 3 & 4) making landfall just south of New York City. A major hurricane is unlikely in New York City, but not impossible.
* Hurricane evacuation zones should not be confused with flood insurance risk zones, which are designated by FEMA and available in the form of Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs). You can determine whether you live in a flood insurance risk zone by calling the Department of City Planning at 311.
Let's all hope that this one just passes us by without too much trauma. But in case it does not, be prepared for the storm. Be safe. No Hurricane Parties, everybody.
Continuing in the vein of cool videos, I am posting here a short one on the making of the Indiana Jones World Map. I jest not. And the video is quite interesting, especially among those of us who had the pleasure of seeing the first Indiana Jones movie some 30 years ago during our formative years. The movie made a big impression on me at the time, because, unlike the artist of the World Map, I actually loved history, geography, and archaeology! And those movies (nevermind that they were complete fantasies!) fed those habits, and added in a healthy dose of action and adventure and exotic goings-on. What’s not to love about Indiana Jones?
In the video, Matt Busch, the map artist, discusses the genesis of the map from a sketch, and how he symbolized the map, created the detailed legends, and added the basemap context to the map. It's pretty nicely organized. And he was fairly fanatical about the research that went into it, as evidenced by his copious notes and charts. I nominate Matt to the Legion of Honorary Cartographers for this effort.
Example of a GPS drawing by Jeremy Wood from the GPS Drawing Gallery. The University of Warwick campus map was drawn on foot at 1:1 scale with 238 miles of GPS tracks walked over 17 days. From: www.gpsdrawing.com. It gives new meaning to the term "full scale map!" 
And this one is truly incredible - it was done at Uffington - the famous White Horse Hill. Check it out (there's also a video about the project) at http://www.gpsdrawing.com/gallery/maps/whh-model.htm “The model displaces our trajectories by a transferral of surfaces. It is a three-dimensional map of our systems of movement within 43 kilometres of walks made over four days. We acted as data collectors by traversing the area in order to generate the material to model the experience. Our GPS tracks were processed and reduced in scale by 1000 times and printed as templates on cardboard sheets. They included a plan view of the journey (track position), and many strips of various lengths (distance) and widths (altitude). On each strip were score-lines with colours that indicated the varying degrees of change in the direction of the track.”
