An expansion of The Atlantic magazine, CityLab is a news site that focuses on urban planning and metro areas around the world. Designed for people who are “creating the cities of the future,” CityLab includes a section dedicated to displaying maps of worldly conflicts and interesting developments.
Clink of the “Maps” tab at the top of the site, peruse the map thumbnails, and explore dozens of stories covering a wide assortment of subjects, including politics, health, history, industry, environmental sciences, and more.
Maps are extremely important visual aids when paired with a news story. Often, maps can more quickly and efficiently present material than an article, so creating a good map is critical for CityLab. This website is really great at looking at different sets of data and seeing the very different ways to display them.
Depending on the topic, a mapmaker can choose to use a choropleth map, dot map, heat map, etc to show information as accurately as possible. I challenge you to closely examine a map when you click on it to analyze the cartographer’s choices and think how or why they made them – what do the colors symbolize? Where are the trends in the map? What are the “silences” or the map, or where was something left out?
Have fun browsing the great maps of CityLab!
http://www.citylab.com/posts/maps/
This is neat and interesting. I liked your review of it and details that you provided in the blog itself. I went to the direct link that you provided and the main map that appeared was “Mapping Where to Find Elves in Iceland’s Proposed New National Park”. I reviewed this map and article and found it to be entertaining. Great post and find!
I have never been more excited to see a map than I was when I saw the title, “Mapping Where to Find Elves in Iceland’s Proposed New National Park”. Along with the premise of elves as hidden people in the landscape, the article was intriguing because of the way the author discussed higher powers. For example, the “g” in the word god was never capitalized, even when referring to the specific Christian/Judaic/Islamic God. Also for Women’s History Month, City Lab is shedding light on women throughout history who have changed and interacted with the field of cartography. It is always satisfying to reclaim history and provide more complete pictures of women in the past.