Some people get sucked in to reality television. Me, I see a map and will zone out on it for hours. I love maps!
Mark Ovenden assembled a book that contains maps of every urban train system in the world. Subway geeks will love it. And plain old map geeks like me as well. Older systems with more history get more pages and a series of maps that show the changing styles of the maps as well as the expansion of the systems. Newer ones get fewer pages. The newest, including ones that are only in the planning stages, get thumbnails. But it’s pretty complete.
It’s not just a collection of maps. The author is a graphic designer (a.k.a. commercial artist) as well as a subway geek. His text gives a history of metro systems (of which I am still not sure what the exact definition is), as well as a history of the design concepts that go in to the diagrams. Because some of them, the majority of them, are maps only in the loosest sense. Surface areas, topographic features, and most of what resembles the landscape are removed entirely. The train lines themselves only generally indicate physical features. If done to scale, these diagrams would waste space in suburbs and mush everything together in urban cores, making them unreadable. The London Tube map is a classic example.
Nevertheless, I prefer the more map-like representations. If I lived in the metro area, I would know where most of the locations really are. Most important to me would be the connections to get from one place to another. As a non-resident, I might have more concern with whether I end up close to important destinations. I’ll admit though that my own personal interest lies in the features and how they are geographically related. The diagrams strip out most of what I care about. I like the New York City subway map better. The author makes clear his preference for the former though.
Title: Transit maps of the world
Previous title: Metro maps of the world
Author: Mark Ovenden
Editor: Mike Ashworth
Imprint / publisher: Penguin
Format: Paperback
Length: 144 p. (includes index)
Publication date: October 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0-14-311265-5
Subject: Subways — History — Maps
Subject: Local transit — History — Maps
Subject: Railroads — History — Maps
LC classification: G1046.P33 O9 2007
