maps
Old and new maps
11/11/2011 10:22
Maps and Time
01/08/2010 22:07
Comparing maps is fun. Visual information sometimes beats the hell out of numerical, doesn’t it? So I’ve been thinking about cities and the countryside, as they’ve been changing over time. In America, that means as people settled the frontier (that is, as whites displaced the natives), and populations increased. Farms, villages, towns, cities. When did they arise? What did people go there expecting? How did those expectations change over time (as technology like telegraphs and railroads changed the space/time arrangements...and as new people came, who maybe hadn’t been party to the original reasons for moving. Who maybe were fed a story that didn’t completely match up with the reason the original people moved...)
Anyway, there was a certain pattern of settlement in, say, 1900. (this map is a piece of one available here)You could look at the numbers and compile a population density map that would tell you something about where lots of people lived, and where only a few lived (it was still up to you to figure out why).
Then, in 2008, using a completely different set of criteria, a different group of people (in government agencies) made a new map (available here). It too says something about where people live. This time, by way of metropolitan and “micropolitian” areas, measured on a county-by-county basis, more-or-less from population density. Or, from total population, which amounts to the same thing.
When you look at the two maps, you notice that they’re similar, but not identical. When you put them one on top of the other (It's cooler when you can use Photoshop's sliders to mess with the opacity of the layers, but hopefully you get the idea), you see some places where there are lots of people now, that weren’t there a hundred years ago. More interesting, you see some places where there used to be lots of people, but now there are not. What does that mean?
In the case of the four little dots in southern Iowa marked “V” (for 45 to 90 people per square mile), there seem to be stories behind these places. The one immediately southwest of Ottumwa is Centerville. Once upon a time it was a booming coal-mining town. The one near Des Moines is Creston. It was a “shop town” for the Burlington Northern Railroad.
The one in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is where the big copper mines at Houghton, Hancock, and Calumet were located. Nothing there anymore but trees. So, you get the idea. It’s change over time. The question is, are there interesting stories underneath?
In the case of the four little dots in southern Iowa marked “V” (for 45 to 90 people per square mile), there seem to be stories behind these places. The one immediately southwest of Ottumwa is Centerville. Once upon a time it was a booming coal-mining town. The one near Des Moines is Creston. It was a “shop town” for the Burlington Northern Railroad.
The one in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is where the big copper mines at Houghton, Hancock, and Calumet were located. Nothing there anymore but trees. So, you get the idea. It’s change over time. The question is, are there interesting stories underneath?
