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Maps and the Changing Landscape
May. 22nd, 2015 03:22 pmA stalled construction project left a big hole in the ground in the middle of Nashville. It has now been there long enough, full of rainwater, that it appears as a water body on Google Maps.
That's fascinating to me, especially after comparing so many plat maps of southeastern Wisconsin across a century. Water bodies change a lot, due to both natural causes and human intervention. As the scale on which our construction operates becomes larger, and the time scales of change grow shorter, and the line between natural and artificial feature blurs, how long should a feature be around before it gets added to maps? Or is it a matter of how long it's expected to be around? Does the current digital paradigm of mapmaking, allowing swift and easy editing of features, affect what we choose to include or exclude from maps? How does this apply to maps featuring socially constructed place-definitions?
http://www.citylab.com/weather/2015/05/stalled-development-created-an-accidental-lake-in-nashville/393941/?utm_source=SFFB
That's fascinating to me, especially after comparing so many plat maps of southeastern Wisconsin across a century. Water bodies change a lot, due to both natural causes and human intervention. As the scale on which our construction operates becomes larger, and the time scales of change grow shorter, and the line between natural and artificial feature blurs, how long should a feature be around before it gets added to maps? Or is it a matter of how long it's expected to be around? Does the current digital paradigm of mapmaking, allowing swift and easy editing of features, affect what we choose to include or exclude from maps? How does this apply to maps featuring socially constructed place-definitions?
http://www.citylab.com/weather/2015/05/stalled-development-created-an-accidental-lake-in-nashville/393941/?utm_source=SFFB
