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World

Cartography

North Arrows?

As usual, a great post and video from John Nelson, about the necessity of north arrows on your map, or not.

Armenia

I am very attracted to exploring historic and pre-historic geography. Recently I’ve come across a megalithic feature called the Hartashen Megalithic Avenue in Armenia. It comes from a creator and cartographer who I’ve been following because I’m interested in similar landscapes and stories as he is. His site is “Into Far Lands” and his whole family is sharing in his adventures. Nice stories and good maps. In any event the Hartashen Megalithic Avenue caught my attention. Clearly it’s a ritual landscape but what were the rituals and beliefs? We’ll likely never know but humans have been creating expansive outdoor ritualistic landscapes for thousands of years. Dig into the “Carnac Stones” in France for something similar. Clearly Stonehenge and other megalithic henges are similar. I love to visit these places and walk around them. This is now on the list. Fascinating stuff.

Antarctica

Thwaites Glacier

I’ve discussed Thwaites Glacier before and it’s threat of quickly rising ocean levels. But this article brings up the concept of “managed retreat” which I thought was interesting. Unfortunately it would require foresight and action and

US

Mapping Police Violencer

Finally there’s a site that’s mapping the police violence in the U.S. It’s a sad statement that it’s an independent organization and not the government. If you’re going to fix something, you have to measure it. And map it of course. Instead of “defunding” the police we should disarm most of them. Shock the system and maybe it will change.

Electoral College Geography

This data is from 2020 but it shows how disproportional and distortive the Electoral College system is to U.S. presidential politics. It’s very depressing and disheartening.

Economic Geography

Changes to the landscape of the CBD?

The One Vanderbilt observation deck. Businesses are flocking to more modern buildings such as One Vanderbilt, a state of the art 73-storey tower near Grand Central, in Manhattan © Bloomberg.


With the shifts in work locations, work culture, and worker expectations from the pandemic and post-pandemic it was clear commercial real estate was going to take a big hit. Combined with high interest rates that hit is definitely happening as The Financial Times makes clear. Beyond the macro-economics, what about the macro-geography? The rise of “Zoomtowns” is clearly one of the near term impacts. But how does this worker shift impact the medium and long term central business district landscape? Any predictions? I’ve long been a fan of “building up” our cities but that was for more housing, and more density, which is an incentive for mass transit and reducing the need and impact of cars. But this shift is in part of our infrastructure which would be expensive and difficult to convert to housing (just think about the plumbing remodel). So far, my imagination is not showing me a clear use for these buildings if our work culture has permanently shifted.