Week 3: Neography

Neography is when people make their own maps using an existing toolkit. The lab describes neography as having three distinct parts in its definition. The first is sharing location information with friends and visitors. The second is helping shape context, and the third is conveying understanding through knowledge of place. Even the lab acknowledges that the idea of people creating their own maps is fun. People can have personalized and creative ways to express different regions and what they offer. However the idea of Neography has potential pitfalls.

The first aspect of geography described is mostly positive. By people sharing location information with friends and visitors, people learn about other places. This could increase tourism to various parts of the world. However there are some pitfalls within this aspect. People are subjective and the way they convey a location on a personalized map may not encompass an entire location or represent it a certain way. Another potential hazard of this, is physical danger of people actually knowing where you are all the time. People could stalk individuals, or break into their homes if they know they are away.

The second aspect has more potential pitfalls. Maps are looked at as a source of safe information. People expect information on maps to be valid. Neography seems like it would be the Wikepedia of maps. If everyone has access to mapping a location, the context of a place could be very biased or misrepresented. People would use them, and enjoy them as resources, but their validity would be questionable.

The third idea which is that neography could expand individuals knowledge of place also has potential and pitfall. If people are interested in a certain subject matter, then they are more likely to look at a map. For example, someone who loves the show Survivor may not have looked at a map, but since the neography below is directly geared toward their interest they may examine the map and gain a better understanding of place. The pitfall is that I made this map. I am new to this material and there could be flaws in the map if they are looking for exact coordinates or locations. Neography expands knowledge of place, but there could be flaws or bias in these personalized maps.

Below I have used neography to create my own map of the different locations where the American show Survivor has been filmed.


View Survivor Locations in a larger map

Week 2: USGS Topographic Maps

1. The quadrangle name is Beverly Hills, CA.

2. The adjacent quadrangles are Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, and Inglewood.

3. The topography was compiled in 1966.

4. North American Datum of 1927, and North American Datum of 1983 were used to create the map.

5. The scale of the map is 1:24,000. One inch represents 24,000 inches or 2,000 feet.

6.
a. 1,219.2 meters
b. 1.8939 miles
c. 2.64 inches
d. 12.5 centimeters

7. The contour interval on our map is 20 feet.

8.
a. Public Affairs Building
Latitude 34 degrees 4'30" N or 34.075 degrees N
Longitude 118 degrees 26'25" W or 118.45 degrees W
b.Tip of Santa Monica Pier
Latitude 34 degrees 0'45"N or 34. 01 degrees N
Longitude 118 degrees 30' 50" W or 118.55 degrees W
c. Franklin Canyon Reservoir
Latitude 34 degrees 7'15" N or 34.1 degrees N
Longitude 118 degrees 24' 55"W or 118.35 degrees W

9.
a. Greystone Mansion: 480 feet or 146.304 meters
b.Woodlawn Cemetary:140 feet or 42.672 meters
c.Crestwood Hills Park: 620 feet  or 188.976 meters

 10. The Beverly Hills Quadrant is in UTM Zone 11.

11. The UTM coordinates in the lower left side of the map are 376300 N and 362000 E.

12. 1,000 meters X 1,000 meters= 100,000 square meters

13.

14.  14 degrees/249 MILS

15. The water in the stream between the 405 Freeway and Stone Canyon Reservoir flows from north to south. We can assume this because the northern end of the stream is at a higher elevation than the southern part of the stream.

16.

If Geographic Size Corresponded to GDP

URL: http://www.worldmapper.org/images/largepng/169.png

This is a map from the World Mapper website at www.worldmapper.org. This map shows the world, defining each countries not by their actual geographic size, but by their economic size or GDP. The map shows how much wealth is concentrated in certain countries, and many regions are larger in terms of Gross Domestic Product than their actual square miles. This map shows that the global market is dominated by the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. One interesting feature of this map is how the Northern Hemisphere dominates the world in Gross Domestic Product. Africa is so large in terms of actual landmass, but it is barely on this map. One thing this map does make me think how much longer these sizes will stay the same. Africa is small now on this map, but with a lack of social conflict and health issues, along with some technology and the continent would have much stronger GDP potential. Developing countries may catch up to more advanced countries and the United States could loose some of the power it has long held. Something else that is interesting about this map is trying to imagine the world if the GDP was distributed more evenly. As a citizen of one of the wealthiest countries, if the GDP of the United States were to shrink I would miss luxuries I take for granted while living in a high grossing country. This map is important because the large countries are often those that make decisions in global conferences. The map shows how much power is related to wealth.

Map of Localized Police Misconduct

URL: http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?p=1615.

This is a map of localized police misconduct incidents in the United States in 2009. I found this map at a website called Injustice Everywhere at  www.injusticeeverywhere.com. The map uses color to show the number of incidents of reported police brutality by county in the United States. Darker color represents higher numbers with dark purple expressing 30 incidents or higher. The majority of the United States has less than 3 incidents of police brutality. From the map it appears that the majority of police brutality occurs in California. One thing to think about when looking at this map, is that the counties in California are much larger than elsewhere in the country. This may cause a viewer to get the sense that almost all police brutality occurs in California when some of the other states such as Florida have a high number of incidents as well. However even though county size may distort the actual statistics somewhat, California does have very high reportings of police misconduct. Another cause of this could be a denser population in the state. However, the Eastern United States is very populated and the map shows much less dark regions in the East. This map is very interesting to me as a southern California resident.  I thought of police brutality as a national issue but maybe is really only a major topic in Southern California. Though this is just one map, the information it expresses could be used to incite social uproar. The map could be used not only as informational, but as a call for social change.

Map of Time Travel to Major Cities

URL: http://www.iisd.org/generata/wp-content/upLoads/2009/05/accessibility.png.

This is a map of time travel to major cities around the world. I found this map from the International Institute for Sustainable Development website at www.iisd.org at http://www.iisd.org/generata/wp-content/upLoads/2009/05/accessibility.png. This map uses color to show travel time to nearest cities in hours and days. Light regions express less travel time to major cities in hours, while the darker red regions mean that travel time from these regions to cities takes multiple days. A slightly different version of the map also shows the flight paths around the world over the oceans. Almost all flights take place between Europe and the Unites States, or the United States and Europe. Much like the GDP map on this blog shows, the Southern Hemisphere is much more left out of the global world. The intention of this is to show how some places have become extremely accessible in the modern world, while others have remained isolated. Europe appears to be the most accessible, however the United States and India also stand out on the map.  The very bright or light yellow places are noticeable in megalopolis's where people are often situated between multiple major cities. I thought this map was interesting because it reflects many other maps. The coloration of this map looks similar to maps of population, energy use, and even economics. The similarities in this map with others shows that there could be a potential correlation between access to cities and the health, and wealth of a country. As a resident of Southern California, I live in close proximity to several major cities, the most prominent being Los Angeles. With such highly populated cities concentrated in one area, access to food and medical attention is not difficult to attain.  Even for further cities, I have access to airports that get me to almost anywhere on the map in less than a day.

Ratio of Inhabitants to Doctors

URL: http://www.joeydevilla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/inhabitants_per_doctor.jpg

This map found at joeydevilla.com shows the inhabitant to doctor ratio around the world. Smaller writing indicates a smaller ratio, and green also represents a higher number of doctors in proportion with the inhabitants. Yellow means more people per physician, and red expresses large numbers of people to one doctor. The colors reflect the GDP map, with developed countries having more access to medical care. This is scary because most of these countries have high populations and are  are plagued by diseases like malaria, yellow fever and HIV. One thing that is surprising about this map is that the distributions are not extremely different, with the exception of Africa. Though Africa and South America are both small on the GDP map, the number of doctors per inhabitant in Africa is much less. One interesting things about this map is that  many of the countries that were very small in the GDP map are not too far behind the developed world in numbers of inhabitants per citizen.