I came across this cool map hack — it takes London’s Underground Tokyo’s subway map and uses it as a chart to show the trends of the internet/tech world. It’s a creative way of re-purposing an iconic image. Check out the large version of the map.
UPDATE: Here’s a direct link to Information Architects, the makers of the trend map, which explains their goals. They also admit it’s rather useless, but fun to look at.
Also, Los Angeles is adding new lines to their transit system, a mix of bus lanes and other LRT. here is their new map — for a little more of an explanation, check out Angelenic.com. Los Angeles had the most advanced city rail system until the the mid-20th century when collusion between automakers and the automotive industry destroyed almost all of North America’s streetcar networks.
10 comments
Hey there Matthew, its Ron from over at Brandcurve.com. Thanks for picking up the map. I happen to be an avid spacingwire reader (rss and all), and saw this just now. Thanks!
Just to comment on it, it’s amazing to see how urbanization is not only growing on urban-circles, but also in marketing, for example. Urban topics are being integrated into marketing so much, it amazes me.
Thanks and see you soon,
Ron E.
Not everybody agrees that GM/Standard Oil et al were truly responsible for the death of streetcar systems in L.A. and elsewhere. Check Cecil Adams’ take on this question:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_335.html
On the other hand, if you buy into Mike Davis’ social history of Los Angeles in the book City of Quartz, there were so many conspiracies shaping the form and fabric of that city over the year, that one more affecting the trolley cars would not have been much of a stretch.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Bus Rider’s Union continues to fight for a minimum level of bus service for all the poor Angelenos who are not well served by the LRT system–riders the MTA had to be forced by a federal civil rights ruling to serve at all.
Regards,
Andrew
The tube map is a variation on Simon Patterson’s “The Great Bear” tube map which used it as a model to show groups of people, from scientists, saints and philosophers to comedians, explorers and soccer players. You can see it in the Tate in London.
Coincidentally, it showed at the famous Saatchi “Sensations” exhibit back in 1997 along with Gillian Wearing, who recently made a Toronto appearance as mentioned here on the Spacing Wire. Though most people know Sensations because of Chris Ofili’s Virgina Mary made of elephant dung and Damien Hirst’s shark suspended in formaldehyde.
The world is small.
Am I the only one who thinks that the map is useless because of its utter unreadability?
The first map is Tokyo, not London.
Hmm they look very similar don’t they? Big spaghetti plates. But yeah, that must be Tokyo Bay bottom right — and there is no Thames. Still inspired by the Great Bear no doubt.
Cute, but useless and misleading. If I read this correctly, Technorati acquired Memeorandom, and in turn Technorait, LinkedIn and CNet were acquired by Firefox. Firefox, in turn, then was acquired by Yahoo. All news to me.
Is it by acquisition, or by use/adoption, or moment in the techie zeitgeist? I agree with the useless, though maybe that’s not the point, rather it’s art. Or art-like.
Its a trend chart. I’ve added another link to the bottom of the original post to the makeers of the map that explains more about about the map.
I love the very notion of subway maps, people have to take the science side of them less seriously ….has Spacing considered doing a political landscape of Toronto’s public space and transit with a Trend Map – who would be Bloor & Yonge?
You will probably share my disappointment that London, Paris and Tokyo’s are quite a bit more dynamic looking vs. our Toronto spider with a few legs missing.
Have a good 2007