Of Maps and Manhole Covers

One of my first posts featured this map on a Seattle Manhole cover. 

Since then I have been exposed to a world of manhole enthusiasts and found various other cool map examples. An entire blog post on this subject, complete with video can be found on Geography Realm.

Here is Oklahoma City, via Kontraband. The dot shows you where you are. There is a bonus state map at the top!

Chandigarh, India, a manhole possibly designed by Le Corbusier - via The Indian Express

Duluth, Minnesota with a dot pattern for Lake Superior- via flickr

Galicia - not a whole lot of detail here.

Over in Japan, colorful manhole covers are popular,

in fact so popular that there are sets of collectible cards. These cards have pictures as well as their gepographic coordinates so you can find them.

Here is a nice map, via guidable showing the locations of some of these cards. I'd like to be able to say more about this map but I don't know the language.

(Reference: Gesuido Koho Platform)

Mapping the Locust Swarms

Locusts have been deviating crops in Africa and South Asia in the worst attack in decades. This map, via Business Insider India shows where the swarms are and where they are heading.

The article is full of disturbing photos (if you don't like locusts) and details some interesting efforts to drive them away such as beating thalis (small hand drums) or playing loud music. A silver lining is offered in that these locusts are a healthy food option for birds and fish (people not mentioned) and can be profitable to those who catch them.

The Seven Hills of Everywhere

Rome was built on seven hills. Here they are (the ones inside the city walls):

Many other cities decided that they wanted a piece of Rome's glory and created their own seven hills legends. Here is Wikipedia's extensive list of cities claiming to have seven hills. Of course the nature of hills make it easy to cherry pick various topographical features to come up with seven hills, and also to dispute those claims. Cincinnati seems like a good example of a city that's trying too hard to arrive at exactly seven hills.

Also cities tend to expand to include more hills and many of the original ones have been leveled. Here is a collection of various seven hills maps for your reading pleasure.

Jerusalem - they had seven hills long before Rome. Here is a sketch showing seven hills within the old (third) city wall 

One of the first cities to jump on the seven hills bandwagon was Constantinople (Istanbul) - here is a map from the Hebrew wikipedia. The hills are numbered but not named.

Rome, Georgia - if you're going to name your city Rome, it might as well have seven hills.

Richmond, Virginia took the extra step of listing their seven hills in a 1937 ordinance. The goofy colored triangles represent "official" hills. Several other gray triangles shown are "unofficial" hills. The far west hill is called "Oregon" because that's how far west it seemed to the rest of the city at the time. The complete list is here. You can explore them interactively here.

St. Paul, Minnesota - they can only agree on five of them, and some of them are really just bluffs rising up from the river. A full accounting of them can be found here.

Here is a nice map and description of Seattle's seven hills...

... except maybe there are really twelve?

In Africa, Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon is known as La Ville aux Sept Collines (city of seven hills)  - all of them are on the west side of the city.

Thiruvananthapuram-capital of Kerala Province India

Maybe not. The Hindu (souurce for this graphic) says "if we start counting the hills in the city, it becomes confusing. Hills there are, but to decide on the seven that the city rests on, is near impossible. The really high hills are outside the city."

Near me Somerville, Massachusetts claims seven hills and has a park devoted to them with cute towers marked for each hill.

I was unable to find a good map of the seven hills so I made my own hand drawn one. Enjoy!

India Wants to Punish Cartographic Aggressors

This map via geocurrents shows India's disputed lands. 

A draft law in India aims to punish cartographers who do not include the claimed territories as part of the country. From the Washington Post:

Let's start with a basic fact: India claims much more land than it controls.

Thus, any map of India and its neighbors makes an inherently political statement based on how it depicts their borders. The issue is particularly thorny because the border disputes are with India's great rivals: Pakistan and China.

The law would punish offenders with up to seven years of jail time and fines running from $150,000 to $15 million. That's a high price to pay for trying to represent reality.

A few years ago Al Jazeera was banned for five days after showing a map that depicted Jammu and Kashmir as being divided between India, Pakistan and China. The media company was denounced for "cartographic aggression."

So how do the online map providers deal with these situations? A GIS Lounge article shows three different Google representations of the disputed state of Arunachal Pradesh, depending whether you are in India, China or the rest of the world (the last image.) While the rest of the world sees two parallel dashed lines, users in China and India see the border the way their governments want them to see it.

 

 

Apple maps (here in the United States) represents this border with two thin, unshaded lines. Note that there is another set of these along the Bhutan-China border. Last summer those two countries held their 23rd round of talks on this border.

Maps can be weapons.Be careful how you use them! I'll finish this with this nicely done map of Chinese "Intrusions" into India. I'm sure China has a different word for this. Click here for source.

A Compendium of Hand Drawn Goodness

Frome County, Nevada (fake county) - from the Wild West, war game by Wassail Beagles

 The Town of Steaming Rock (fake town) in Frome County, Nevada

Map to the StrikeKing Bowling Alley in Mishor Adumim, an Israeli settlement east of Jerusalem.

Nancy Chandler's Bangkok Map 

Traditional Regions of Tibet - via Tibet Insider

Essaouira, Morocco

101 Dalmatians Map

Maycomb, Alabama Harper Lee's fictional town from To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman

 Sobha City - a Mediterranean themed community outside of Bangalore, India - located about here

Garrison Keillor's "Memory Map" of the Twin Cities - via National Geographic