One of my new favorite maps is of the locations of people who loved the show Knight Rider enough to make custom replica K.I.T.T. cars and keep them around for more than 20 years. This is dedication. These are true fans. It's hard to imagine anything from today's world being nostalgically venerated like this in the year 2032.
The first time I was in Israel and the Palestinian Territories was July of 2009. (When I first met Waze).
Humanitarian mapping hero, Mikel Maron, asked me and Josh Levinger to host a cross border mapping party from Israel to the Palestinian Territories. Josh was already staying in Ramallah and I was eager to confront misguided assumptions created by Western media.
The result is a tour of Shu'fat Camp just across the border of East Jerusalem. The gps traces are on OSM, images and stories on Platial but is compiled here in Google Earth. This region is particularly interesting for those of us curious about borders; social borders, perceived borders, invisible borders, intimidating borders, physical borders. We'll be studying this simple few mile stretch and its border history for a long time to come. Its in border spaces that social mapping can be the most relevant. Geographic borders are untidy but the reality of cultural borders is a total and charming mess; dynamic, evolving, varying in size and shape based on interest, hobby or economics. So there are no distinct cultural boundary lines even where governments try to impose with walls, military and propaganda, but regions whose unifying interest has not yet have been uncovered. Social mapping can expose common ideologies, familiar places, ideas and perspectives so may be a tool for society to society diplomacy. Or more humbly, better neighborhood integration and shared resources within a single city. Each map created through border spaces becomes a bridge; an artifact to unite and identify sides.
Since it is very difficult for Palestinians and Israelis to cross borders, it seems important to put a face on what seems culturally remote. Its important to see the similarities as well as the differences; there are butchers, bakers and citizens living their lives. Our conversations and our travels can be inclusive.
I'll write more on this in other places but I wanted to share the work. Josh noted a project I had missed which was the Tourist Map of Gaza. Its a nice combination of maps for GIS Day and highlights neogeopgraphy as modest enabler of cultural diplomacy.
Happy Mapping!
Rich Cochrane explores the modern significance of psychogeography. Does modern psychogeography retain anything of the radical agenda of the 1960s? Should it? Does the term really mean much in relation to modern practice?
This conversation is taking place in London on Nov 7th 2009, more info here.
(Via @altnews_/.)
Powered in a different way than Platial's people-power,Worldmapper has added some new countries to their maps showing country shapes distorted by population. Worldmapper has a lot of cool mapped data visualization. It is well-worth checking out. They have free PDF posters designed for printing, of all their maps, plus lots of other ways of using them. I would love to have a high-quality hardcover book of their maps for my coffee table.
Wade Roush created a map of outdoor filming locations from Hitchcock's Vertigo. It's great specifically for it's revelation that narrative "place" might be different than literal "place". Specifically that Big Basin State Park was and actor playing the role of Muir Woods.
I think Roush actually "gets" this space around neogeography. His recent article encouraging people to make a Platial map actually focuses on the openness and newness of people being able to make their own maps of just about anything.
David Byrne has always been quirky. That's a given, but reading this article about what his ideal city would feel like makes me realize that he's also got a pragmatic side. Don't get me wrong, his vision for an ideal city is an impossible mashup of everything he loves about a bunch of different places, it's a dreamer's city, the vision of an artist, but it's a thoughtful and down to earth distillation of his first hand experiences. He's making a transition, at least in my mind, from quirky art rocker to thoughtful urban evangelist.
The perfect city isn't static. It's evolving and ever changing, and its laws and structure allow that to happen. Neighborhoods change, clubs close and others open, yuppies move in and move out—as long as there is a mix of some sort, then business districts and neighborhoods stay healthy even if they're not what they once were. My perfect city isn't fixed, it doesn't actually exist, and I like it that way.
(Via @BikePortland.)
8 years later, it's still a nearly unbelievable fact, and Fynn Sloyan's piece is still clear and simply touching.
It's also not too late to add your story to the "Where I Was" map.
(Via Splendid Urbanism.)
Places are multi-faceted. They can be seen, described, and remembered from many different angles. Communicating this notion was one of the original design challenges for the early platial website. At one point we were experimenting with an animated marker that would spin around, then unfold to show each of the various perspectives.
I just came upon this animation and couldn't help be a little nostalgic for the old designs.
(Via todayandtomorrow .)
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