Waldo Tobler is dead. He is most remembered for his affable manner, his very kindly smile, the remarkable longevity of this academic life, his great academic achievements and – much more importantly – for being very kind, especially to strangers. A generation of scholars who received his collected works on floppy disc (later on CD) is evidence for his commitment to engage with other scholars. He made no distinction between the hierarchies in academia and gave young scholars the same respect and attention as senior academics, acting as a mentor and source of inspiration to many of them. Understanding and discovery were his real aspirations. Continue reading
Tag Archives: cartography
The Holey Land: Abandoned Mines in Queensland / Australia
Mining may have been one contributing factors to why Australia as one of the few advanced economies did not go into recession following the global financial crisis 10 years ago. While mining is a profitable business in Australia, once the mines are no longer profitable, they are often abandoned leaving a scarred landscape and sometimes dying communities behind. A dataset by the Queensland regional government has records of almost 15,000 abandoned mines in the state. The following map gives an overview of their distribution:
Worldmapper: The Relaunch
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There is a new map in town! Earlier this month during the 125th Anniversary Conference of the Geographical Association in Sheffield (UK) we relaunched the new Worldmapper.org online platform which has been several years in the making. It is not only a fully redesigned website, but also redefines what we want Worldmapper to become over a decade after it has first been released: An atlas for the 21st century that is mapping our place in the world using cartograms.
At the very heart of it Worldmapper is still a collection of world maps where countries are resized according to a broad range of global issues. But with the new website we will increasingly use more diverse cartogram techniques, such as gridded cartograms, as well as start including maps at different scales such as country-level mappings seen on this blog in many ways. Worldmapper will therefore be the most comprehensive repository for cartogram-style mappings that are unique visualisations showing the world as you’ve never seen it before. Check it out at: Worldmapper.org
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Christmas Card-o-gram 2017: Aurora meets GDP
This year’s christmas card-o-gram blends a view of northern lights (captured near Höfn, East Iceland) with a cartogram of global GDP distribution in 2017:
The regional geography of poverty, austerity and inequality in Europe
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Europe is currently suffering a deep political and economic crisis following years of turmoil and austerity measures that have disproportionately and brutally hit the most disadvantaged regions and citizens across most of the continent. At the same time, there has been a revival of nationalisms and divisions in this part of the world that, a decade ago, seemed to be united in diversity and moving towards ever-closer union. Concentrated poverty near to riches and profound spatial inequality have long been persistent features of all European countries, with disparities often being most stark within the most affluent cities and regions, such as London. In other parts of Europe levels of inequality and poverty have been reducing and are often much lower. However, the severe economic crisis and austerity measures have led, in many cases, to an enhancement of existing disparities. The following eight maps show how the regional geography has changed in the light of these developments:
Beyond fire and ice: Mapping Iceland in the 21st Century
Iceland and maps have a long tradition in the history of cartography. From the first maps of the country in the 16th century (including works from cartographers such as Ortelius and Mercator, also featuring some nice sea monsters) to today’s advanced digital mappings of Iceland’s diverse natural environment (such as this innovative mapping of water in Iceland or this quite beautiful representation of contour lines), Iceland never really had a lack of quite good cartographic works. Much less covered than the natural environment are the social landscapes of the country, such as this just recently updated version of a gridded population cartogram of the country where each grid cell is proportional to the number of people living in that area:
