Mapping renaissance

The art of mapping the urban form is having a renaissance. They "depict and interpret urban change" from Snow's cholera map to strictly digital maps that explore heights and property values, maps demonstrate changes and new ideas in cities.

Cholera cases in London

The arguably most famous or first map was Dr. John Snow's map of the cases of cholera in a London neighbourhood. It helped solve a problem and "was a catalyst for the development of infrastructure," according to The Guardian. Dr. Snow demonstrated that the disease was spread by contaminated water and the pumps the residents were drinking from.

The Setback Principle, image from CityLabs

Map making is an integral part of planning. Some have detailed the evolution of the practice with the top 10 influential diagrams, saying that every image is "an act of persuasion."

DPZ's Transects, image from CityLabs

When planners are exploring ideas to shape cities, the overwhelming amounts of data available now require new ideas and ways to interpret the information. One example, shown below, shows how Anthony Smith used the datasets from the City of Vancouver's open data portal to "conduct spatial analysis and visualization," subsequently produced a community garden and food trees map, overlaid on Google maps, using their interactive features like zoom control.

Image from Healthy City Maps

Building height maps are taking the Twitter universe by storm with examples from Vancouver "with most bldgs under 10m, the built form of #Vancouver is surprisingly suburban" and San Francisco.

Image from http://maps.nicholsonroad.com/

"This kind of open mapping has a way of inspiring change," helping solve pressing urban problems. "When you have a map, it’s something concrete to show (...) it makes it more difficult for local agencies to ignore what’s going on."