“A raucous pageant of popular culture” (Guardian) was the last act of the 30th Olympic Games in London, and discussion about the legacy of the Games started. From a global perspective, that legacy is often measured in sporting success – however great the ‘spirit’ of the Olympics is emphasized. So it comes as little surprise that the medal tables are revisited over and over again, with alternative ways of looking at the sporting success having proven quite popular this year. But despite an extraordinary performance of the host nation and some disappointments in other parts of the world, the overall picture of Olympic success stories is of little surprises.
Olympic inequalities already started with an imbalance of participating athletes from around the world (as shown in the map here) which hardly reflects the global population distribution. That pattern is carried forward to the winner’s podium, where in large the wealthier parts of the world are represented (even if some great exceptions have made quite some headlines). The following map shows the final medal tables in Worldmapper-style cartograms, with the main map representing the total medal count, and the smaller inset map splitting these numbers into separate maps of gold, silver and bronze medals, each resizing a country according to the number of medals that it has received (compare these maps to the map of participants and the map of the world’s population):
Tag Archives: cartogram
An inspired generation: London 2012 athletes
In a “Five-Ring Opening Circus, Weirdly and Unabashedly British” (New York Times) host city London welcomed the world to the 2012 Olympics. The games are meant to inspire a generation, which is the motto of the event.
And there was plenty of time to be inspired at the opening ceremony, especially while thousands of the more than 10,000 competitors took part in the athletes’ parade. But the size of a country’s team hardly reflects its population size, rather than the efforts and capabilities that are put into sending athletes to the Olympics. It is perhaps not surprising that Team GB of the host nation brings on the largest team with 541 athletes this time (or 557 according to the Guardian). The wealthier parts of the world tend to have the lager teams, with Europe dominating the stage by far. At the other end of the scale are countries such as Bhutan (and others) with only two athletes.
Beyond all the ancient spirit, the Olympics are an unequal game. Not only in the number of participants at the event, but eventually also in the results that will see a lot of the wealthy world dominate the medal rankings (which I mapped for the Vancouver Olympics). Nevertheless, part of the original idea is a peaceful competition of the nations, which many still see persist over all commercialisation and other points of criticism. In this light, this year’s athletes are the generation that has been inspired to be part of that and who shall inspire future generations, regardless of their success in bare medal terms. The following map shows where all the over 10,000 sportsmen and women have traveled to London from this year (the two inset maps show the world’s population distribution in comparison and a conventional land area map as a reference):
High Speed 2
The British government announced a £9.4bn package of investment in the railways in England and Wales today, which – if it is realised as proposed – adds to the recent efforts to bring the motherland of rail transport up to the standards of many other countries around the world. The announcement comes in a year in which another major railway infrastructure project is widely discussed in the United Kingdom: “High Speed 2 (HS2) is a planned high-speed railway between London and the English Midlands, Northern England, and potentially the central belt of Scotland” (see Wikipedia).
Phase 1 of HS2 has been discussed widely earlier this year, after the latest route plans from London Euston to Birmingham/Lichfield were proposed as part of the HS2 public consultation.
The detailed route proposal shows the geographical location of some of the most critical parts of the line that has some considerable opposition amongst various interest groups. While a high speed rail network requires space for the fastest legs of the journey – usually to be found in the countryside – the shorter parts of the line are not without problems either: As the line connects the most populous areas of the countries, it has to go through some densely populated areas as well, which are less visible on the overview maps of the project (another map is featured on the BBC website). The following map therefore takes advantage of the fisheye perspective of a gridded cartogram that shows the proposed HS2 (phase 1) route plotted on an equal population projection map. The map also includes the average speeds in an area, demonstrating the (obvious) slowdown effect of densely populated areas, mainly London and Birmingham as the main destinations that this line connects in the initial stage. The map also shows nicely how the fastest part of the journey squeezes through the least populated corridor between these areas, and it also gives an impression of ‘travel time’, i.e. where one spends much of the time in a high speed train. Its not the landscapes that fly past the window while travelling at highest speed, but the urban landscapes that one creeps along quite slowly when leaving and approaching the major cities:
A Tale of Two Cities: London’s Health Inequalities
“London is a special city, London is incredibly diverse and London has its own unique health problems. In 2012 the London Deanery, in partnership with the British Medical Association, is hosting a series of seminars that look to provide […] an opportunity to debate some of the key healthcare issues that face the capital in 2012.” This extract from the announcement of the Metropolitan Medicine 2012 seminar series highlights the need to take a closer look at London’s position within the United Kingdom, as the challenges that the city faces are probably not different, but certainly unique to the problems that currently exist in the health sector of the country.
A tale of two cities: London’s health inequalities was the title of my contribution to the seminar series. In my presentation I highlighted some of the problems that are part of that issue, explaining how social and health inequalities are inevitably intertwined. London is unique in the social landscape, but also part of the processes that shape the UK, which I demonstrated in a series of maps in my slides that accompanied my talk: Continue reading
Biodiversity hotspots – a world at risk
With Lonesome George an international icon for conservation has died (although there are still chances that his subspecies of the Pinta Island tortoise (Chelonoidis abingdoni) will continue to exist). The extinction rate of endangered species however remains high and some say may even be the Earth’s sixth mass extinction. Less controversially it can be stated that the current extinction rates are higher than one would expect without humankind’s influence, and that more action to preserve the environment is needed. Continue reading
A year of crises: Global refugee trends
“A report released by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees shows 2011 to have been a record year for forced displacement across borders, with more people becoming refugees than at any time since 2000. UNHCR’s ‘Global Trends 2011’ report details for the first time the extent of forced displacement from a string of major humanitarian crises that began in late 2010 in Côte d’Ivoire, and was quickly followed by others in Libya, Somalia, Sudan and elsewhere. In all, 4.3 million people were newly displaced, with a full 800,000 of these fleeing their countries and becoming refugees.” (Quoted from the UNHCR Press Release)
In the Worldmapper project we have mapped refugees before (see the maps of refugee origins and destinations) but these maps are far more outdated than most material that we have on Worldmapper. Not only provides the new report a comprehensive updated series of data, but also are refugee numbers of an extremely changing nature as they do not follow general mid- or long-term trends (such as changes in population or carbon emissions). As the introductory statement indicates, humanitarian crises and other hardly predictable events can result in changing refugee patterns.
The following two maps show the updated picture of refugee trends in 2011 as published in the UNHCR report this week (which also saw the commemoration of World Refugee Day “dedicated to raising awareness of the situation of refugees throughout the world“. The two maps use the total numbers for ‘refugees and people in refugee-like situations’ according to their country of origin and destination. Excluded in these maps are those refugees whose origin is unknown or who are stateless:
