Mental Maps and Mapping the Mind

Mental Maps and Mapping the Mind — page 1 — MENTAL SPACES Making any map depends on choices The choices a cartographer makes often depend on their personal view of their homes communities and the world Most of the choices a cartographer makes depend on what he or she intends a map to be used for But some choices also reflect the personality of the mapmaker Everyone sees the world around them in a different way depending on their experiences They know some neighborhoods better than others and are more interested in some locations and landmarks than others For young people places such as their homes their school or the football stadium might play a much larger role in their lives than locations such as office buildings or landfill sites Car drivers might not be aware of or interested in walking routes This map of a Shaker village in New Hampshire was drawn in 1849 It shows the buildings in the simple style familiar to the Shakers a small Christian group that chose to live separate from the outside world 4

Mental Maps and Mapping the Mind — page 2 — A Child’s-eye View When schoolchildren mapped their neighborhood of Karachi the capital of Sindh province in Pakistan they included playgrounds that most adults would not notice They showed the places where they play soccer and cricket sometimes in spaces between buildings as well as cafes and places to fly kites They included the most brightly colored buildings The result is a map that shows how children see Karachi which is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world The map seems quite playful It gives a glimpse into how children can find public spaces to use and repurpose for play and recreation A map of Lyari a neigborhood of Karachi in Pakistan drawn by schoolchildren in the town It looks very different than an official map of the same neighborhood would look 5

Mental Maps and Mapping the Mind — page 3 — A New Yorker's Idea of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA What do you think Daniel Wallingford was trying to say about the people who lived in New York based on this map A Slanted View Nearly all maps reflect the preferences and priorities of their creators to some degree Some cartographers choose to highlight these ideas in their maps In the 1930s a mapmaker named Daniel K Wallingford drew what he called A New Yorker’s Idea of the United States of America He created a map of the United States that deliberately showed Brooklyn Manhattan and New York State as being huge New York was drawn as the largest state and the other states were far smaller than they really are Wallingford also included deliberate errors to poke fun at what he saw as New Yorkers lack of geographical knowledge For example he places New Orleans and Nashville in Florida rather than in Louisiana and Tennessee respectively He divides California into three states named California Hollywood and San Francisco 6

Mental Maps and Mapping the Mind — page 4 — MENTAL SPACES The map was Wallingford’s comment on the idea that people know more about the place they are from than about other places and that they tend to see places closer to home as being more important than distant locations Looking at the World A more famous map that depicted New Yorkers views of the world was called View of the World from 9th Avenue drawn by Saul Steinberg in 1976 At the bottom of the page was a detailed view of 9th and 10th Avenue in New York City Beyond the Hudson River the rest of the United States was a green strip with only a few places marked Beyond the strip was the Pacific Ocean with bumps on the horizon to show China Japan and Russia Similar maps have been drawn for many of the world’s cities They all treat nearby areas as important and those farther away as unimportant Saul Steinberg’s magazine cover is one of the most famous modern maps It has been widely imitated In the Real World A Novelty View Saul Steinberg drew A View of the World from 9th Avenue for the cover of The New Yorker magazine The map shows how people see nearby places as being important but more distant places as being empty and unimportant Steinberg’s map reminds us that we put ourselves at the heart of our own world and therefore of our own maps The map has inspired many other drawings of biased views from cities and countries around the world THE NEW YORKER 7

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