Changing technologies have always had a considerable impact on cartography and continue to do so. Several technological revolutions marked important steps in the practice and process of creating maps. Mechanical, optical and photo-chemical technologies changed the way maps were produced. Then, the discovery of electronic capabilities made a new dimension in map production accessible: Not only most of the design techniques were transferred to digital platforms, used at some step in the production of almost all maps created today, but also the possibility to deal with huge amounts of data that can hardly be analysed by a single person enables cartographers to find ways to automate data processing for cartographic visualisation. This is where the term neocartography comes into play, which gives credit to the most recent trends in the field of map-making. Continue reading
Tag Archives: conference
Visualisations of a World in Crisis
Gridded Cartograms and the World Population Atlas
For this year’s 46th Annual Summer School of the Society of Cartographers I recalled the making of the World Population Atlas and wrapped all material up for some contributions for the meeting. The outcome are two new posters and a presentation for the delegate’s session:
 Poster: The World Population Atlas |
 Poster: Creating Gridded Cartograms |
A population-centric map projection
Here is some material from a presentation at this year’s AAG Annual Conference in Washington DC. The presentation People powered maps: A population-centric map projection was given in the session on Topics in GIS, Remote Sensing, and Spatial Analysis and showed some new works on our grid-based cartograms (as presented at GISRUK 2009 and ESRI UC 2009).
The following animation shows the transformation of a topographic map of the United States, ending in a grid-based population cartogram (and then reversing). Please notice that loading the animation takes a while on slower internet connections:
This is the full presentation given at the AAG Meeting. Please note that the animated parts such as the above animation are not shown in this Slideshare version:
Re-Mapping the World’s Population
My contribution to the ESRI UC 2009 found its way into the Winter 2010 edition of ArcUser:
Article as PDF ; Article onlineThe slideshow from last year’s talk at the ESRI UC Is now also available online to watch on Slideshare:
Architecture and the city in the financial crisis
Update: The presentation for this talk can now be accessed online
Invited talk on “Cartography of the Financial Market” at the International conference to mark the 90th anniversary of the Bauhaus, Dessau/Germany, November 13-14, 2009
The real estate and financial crisis is confronting the disciplines architecture and urbanism with the consequences of the close interdependence of financial markets and the building sector. In the 1990s these spatial design disciplines as well as many others were enticed by the triumph of neo-liberalism to step back from their responsibility for a sustainable spatial development in favor of the short-term profit of private investment firms. Still in the turn of the century the international URBAN 21 report had proclaimed in the mainstream of both disciplines the common goal to privatize municipal services, to offensively attract global financial capital and to predominantly follow global locational competitiveness.
The eruption of the financial capital now results in long-term distortions in socio-economic conditions, spatial patterns of regions and urban structures of utilization. After the mortgage crisis in the US vacant houses have started to announce the decline of entire residential streets and neighborhoods. In many cities camping sites have popped up, to which previous owners of housing property are taking refuge after thousands of foreclosures: They are no longer able to amortize the mortgage, that exceeds the value of their property. The living concept of suburbia is in question.
The financial crisis leads to far-reaching changes in the architectural practice and its urban fields of activity. Architectural firms around the world respond to the decreased demand with job cuts and closings of branches. Prestigious construction projects in previously booming cities like Dubai or Las Vegas are cancelled or scaled down. In the burst of the real estate bubble the building industry is suffering from drastic personnel and financial cuts. In addition massive geographic dislocations take place: Do architects and urbanists share the responsibility for the building boom in several world regions prior to the crisis?
Form Follows Finance: How far do instruments of the financial market influence the direction of architecture and urban development? What is the impact of the financial crises on urban settlements and infrastructures worldwide? What are the long-term implications for the future of architecture and urban design?
The slides are now available online: Visualisations of a World in Crisis