Mapping travel-time between locations is a rather undeveloped mapping technique that is used most commonly to provide commute information for city dwellers, but seems to have greater potential in a non-geographic re-mapping of the globe.
The
London Tube mapping, by Tom Carden is an example of a travel-time map focused on re-mapping the city's subway system. The technique used in this mapping requires the user to select different nodes from the geographic map. Once the node is selected the tube lines morph according to the time it takes for an individual to travel to any of the other nodes from the selected point.
Another London Tube mapping project by Chris Lightfoot and Tom Steinberg includes several mappings, one of which compares the travel-time for car versus rail transportation.
Their study also sights many potential uses for this new method of mapping:
- tool for deciding where to live/work
- tool for deciding where to travel on vacation with time parameters
- travel times could determine housing prices
- service for commuters
This type of mapping at a global-scale has been attempted by Jonathan Harris of
Flaming Toast Productions, in conjuntion with Princeton University's
International Networks Archive, whose goal is to provide resources for re-mapping the globe. Harris' mapping shows different cities around the world as nodes that as they are selected will rearrange to show the travel-time to every other location based on different transportation modes, both primitive and modern.
Another attempt of remapping of the globe based on time is the
Personal World Map, a project of Roxana Torre at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, which is an interactive online map that allows you to select a starting city from the map and then watch the map reconfigure itself according to the travel time from that point. Then you are able to type in an amount of time and money to see the distance and locations one would be able to travel to with the given resources.
I forsee this type of mapping becoming increasingly relevent and widely used as a visualization of globalization. My mapping seeks to further explore this potential.
3 comments:
Hmm... before I posted my last comment I should have checked a few posts back!
The Jonathan Harris work is really interesting, thanks for highlighting it.
PS It's just Tom, not Thomas. Thanks!
Tom, this post is actually back-dated from a draft I was working on earlier. I added the Personal World Map thanks to your tip. I appreciate your comments and sorry about the name.
Ah, that makes sense! Thanks for the edit, and keep up the ret-conning ;)
Post a Comment