If the 2016 vote for Brexit was described as a political earthquake in the United Kingdom, then the 2019 General Election is the equivalent to the tsunami that followed this seismic event and swept over some of the deepest Labour heartlands in England. Political commentators spoke of a demolishment of the Labour party’s ‘red wall’ as the results came in (although the ‘wall’ that may have once stood had already started to crumble in previous elections). Approaching the outcome of the General Election from a visual perspective puts such metaphors into a visual representation. The following map shows the outcome of this year’s general election – the fourth (and definitely final) of this decade – in three different cartographic visualisations:
Tag Archives: geography
Remembering Waldo Tobler
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
A brief geography of time
Sometimes referred to as the fourth dimension, time has a highly geographical relevance. For human geography, population sizes can have as much impact on the ‘tempo of places’ as culture or even climate. In physical geography, the concept of time is indispensable for an understanding of how the natural environment has changed and keeps changing.
In the 21st century, time has been described as being a commodity itself, affecting everything from manufacturing and trade, to financial flows and global transport links.
The general geographic distribution of time zones is based on the general concept of dividing the world into zones of equal time following a 24-hour day around the world. In theory, this means that there are 12 time zones of 15° width in which each differs by one hour’s time difference.
The necessity of time zones was closely linked to growing needs of transport and communication links during industrialisation. British railway companies began adopting Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) which helped to coordinate timetables. In 1880, GMT became standard across Britain and time differences of tens of minutes between cities in the country started vanishing. At a global level, time zones became established in the first decades of the 20th century.
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:
