London

London Cycle Map Wins GeoVation Award
Cycle Lifestyle’s London Cycle Map a bicycle map of London designed by Simon Parker in the style of Beck’s tube map, is one of six winners of the 2011 GeoVation challenge. The award came with £6,000 in funding. Here’s…
Morphing Tube Map
A Flash animation that morphs between the Beck tube map, the modern variant thereof, and a geographical map of the London Underground, previously on the Transport for London website, has resurfaced on its designer’s home page. No idea when it…
Hand-Drawn Map Exhibit Opens Thursday in London
A small exhibition of 11 hand-drawn maps of London (really, only 11?) at the Museum of London opens this Thursday. Done in partnership with Londonist, which has been soliciting such maps for some time, the free exhibition runs until…
London Mass Transit Visualizations
Via Mapping London, a couple of neat visualizations of trips on London’s public transit systems. This animation (above) shows a five-percent sample of Oyster card users on the Tube throughout the day, with trips inferred from start and end…
New Blog: Mapping London
Mapping London is a new blog by James Cheshire and Oliver O’Brien, whose work we’ve seen before. Here’s how James announced it on his own blog: “Oliver O’Brien and I have decided to team up to launch the mappinglondon.co.uk blog…
London Tube Map Exhibition
An exhibition called Harry Beck and the London Tube Map, which is “based on a local private collection and traces the development of the London Underground map from the 19th Century to the present day,” is running at the Church…
Stephen Walter
I mentioned Stephen Walter’s detailed hand-drawn typographic maps of Liverpool (and London — which made the Magnificent Maps exhibit) all too briefly in this entry. Fortunately, the Guardian had a profile of him this week: apparently Berlin is his…
Typographic Map of London Surnames
Following hot on the heels of the typographic map of U.S. surnames that he worked on for National Geographic, James Cheshire has announced an interactive typographic map of London surnames. A slider allows you to select between the most,…
The London Underground, Under Water
To illustrate the impact of a four-degree rise in global temperatures and a four-metre rise in sea levels, Practical Action has released a London tube map showing which stations would be underwater. Via io9 and Londonist; thanks also to…
Londonist Still Wants Hand-Drawn Maps
Londonist continues to look for hand-drawn maps; there will be an exhibition of them next April at the Museum of London. They’ve been steadily publishing submissions over the past year, and want more. Previously: Londonist Wants Hand-Drawn Maps….
The Urban Legend of Phyllis Pearsall
Peter Watts (the British journalist, not the Canadian science fiction writer) pours cold water on the urban myth that Phyllis Pearsall walked 3,000 miles of London streets — repeated by yours truly as well as many others — to create…
Londonist’s Directory of London Maps
Londonist has put together a directory of online maps of London. Via geoparadigm….
Real-Time London Tube Map
Via many sources (for example, Ed Parsons and Google Maps Mania), this live train map of the London Underground, showing the real-time position of each train. It’s a mashup of Transport for London data with the Google Maps API, but…
Edward Weller’s 1868 Map of London
MAPCO, which makes high-resolution scans of antique maps available online, has added a lot of material since I first blogged about them in 2007; one of their more recent additions has been showing up a lot in my Twitter…
The Grub Street Project
The Grub Street Project: Topographies of 18th-Century London “aims to map the city and its texts to create both a historically accurate visualization of the city’s commerce and communications, and a record of how its authors and artists portrayed…
Simplicity, Complexity, and Subway Maps
Joe B. has this to say about the differences between the diagrammatic, iconic London Underground map and the hash that has been the maps of the New York subway system: “The simplicity of the London diagram comes in part from…
Londonist Wants Hand-Drawn Maps
Londonist is putting out a call for hand-drawn maps of London: “Draw a map of your local area, be it home or work, indicating all the corners, bars, parks, features and characters that are important to you. You can…
London Bus Route Map
Google Maps Mania and Mapperz are enthusiastic about Transport for London’s new Google Maps-based bus route map; the area bus maps, in PDF format, are some of the most confusing system maps I’ve ever seen….
A Zoomable Folding Paper Map
So, how do you implement zoom on a paper map? Here’s how: each square of the “map2” folds out to reveal a smaller-scale map of the same area. Beyond neat; Anne Stauche’s £8 map of London is the only…
Museums Misplaced on London Bicycle Map
Another one of Transport for London’s maps is in trouble: this time, a bicycle-rental map switches the locations of two well-known London museums. TfL says they’ll be fixing the error. Via Londonist….
Fare Zones, Thames to Return to Tube Map
London mayor Boris Johnson to Transport for London: put the Thames and the fare zones back on the Tube map (see previous entry). They’ll return to the map’s next version, due in September….
New Tube Map Omits Fare Zones and the Thames
Uh-oh. The latest version of the Tube map omits fare zones and the Thames. That controversy has ensued should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the mapping of the London Underground. (I expect that a parody based on…
It’s Hot Underground
Here’s a new Tube map for you. Transport for London has released a map showing how hot it gets on London Underground station platforms (PDF). Which is to say, very. (And I thought Paris Metro stations were bad.) The…
Cross-Stitch Tube Map
Via Boing Boing, a cross-stitch version of the London Underground map….
A to Z Map of London, 1936
Phyllis Pearsall’s famous 1936 map of London is available again. The company she founded, A to Z Maps, has published a fascimile reproduction of her map, coloured to simulate aging (the original was black ink on white paper, but…
MacDonald Gill’s Wonderground Map
In an article posted on the ABAA’s Web site, Elisabeth Burdon of oldimprints.com argues that MacDonald Gill, the artist responsible for the 1913 Wonderground Map of London Town, had a “profound” influence on later pictorial mapmaking. “Not only did…
Accessible Transit Maps
Randy Plemel has been making stroller- and wheelchair-accessible maps of transit systems — in other words, maps where only the accessible stations are shown; non-accessible stations are erased. After earlier takes on the London Underground and New York Subway,…
London Tube Map Documentary
A 1987 BBC documentary on Beck’s diagrammatic map of the London Underground; it’s nearly 26 minutes long: Via Kottke and MapHist….
MapTube
I should have mentioned MapTube long ago; Andrew Hudson-Smith wrote to me about it in May: MapTube, the new mapping site from the guys at Digital Urban and CASA at University College London to view, overlay, mix and match…
Sony’s Subway Earphones Ads
A Sony ad campaign for its Walkman digital audio players shows subway network maps made from black Sony earphones. (Because they can’t be white earphones, silly.) In addition to the New York subway map poster making the rounds, there…
Thermal London
This is interesting: thermal images of London from space, from the air, and from a high vantage point. Part of a site dedicated to thermal imagery of London, but this page is what’s of interest to us. At right,…
Your Wallet Is Your Map
The Tubemap Wallet is one of those ideas that sounds really neat — even practical — in theory: a special wallet that folds out to reveal a map of either the London Underground or the New York subway. The…
London’s Kerning
London’s Kerning is a map of London done in type — you have to step back from the large (153 cm × 101.5 cm), limited-edition poster to recognize the city. Interesting. Via Kottke; more at Moon River….
London Pedestrian Map
The London Pedestrian Routemap is a work in progress the aim of which “is to encourage walking in London. It does this by providing a simple, memorable picture of key walking routes in the Capital. At present there is…
A Blog for ‘London: A Life in Maps’
There are hardly any posts up yet, but the London: A Life in Maps exhibition now has an accompanying blog. Via MapHist. Previously: London: A Life in Maps — Now Open and Online; Peter Barber on “London: A Life in…
London: A Life in Maps — Now Open and Online
The British Library exhibition, “London: A Life in Maps,” is now open, both in real life and online. The virtual exhibition that Peter Barber referred to is now online as part of the overall London: A Life in Maps web…
Ackroyd on Mapping London
For an exhibition that doesn’t even open until next week, “London: A Life in Maps” is generating all sorts of attention — it’s the launching-off point for this essay on mapping London by Peter Ackroyd in next week’s New Statesman,…
Peter Barber on ‘London: A Life in Maps’
Peter Barber — Peter Barber! — writes: London: A Life in Maps will be accompanied by a virtual exhibition, available on the BL website, for people who can’t visit. Though the emphasis of the exhibition will be on the great…
More About ‘London: A Life in Maps’
The Telegraph has more about “London: A Life in Maps,” the upcoming exhibit at the British Library (see previous entry). It opens on the 24th. Via MapHist….
Wikimedia London Underground Maps
In response to Transport for London’s crackdown on London tube map remixes (previous entry), the Wikimedia Commons is putting together a series of freely available maps of the London Underground. The maps are generated using PHP to process GPS…
London: A Life in Maps
Coming up at the British Library and running from November 24 to March 4, an exhibition called “London: A Life in Maps”: “Maps, views, letters, and ephemera from the British Library collections, show the city’s transformation from a Roman…
Credit-Card-Sized Stainless-Steel Subway Maps
Sure, laminated paper versions are cheaper, but a credit-card-sized, stainless steel map of the New York subway or London Underground is, well … it’s something, isn’t it? It’s fifteen bucks, anyway. Via Gizmodo, where they seem to think it’s…
The Map of Early Modern London
The Map of Early Modern London is an interactive annotated map of London based on the 16th-century “Agas” woodcut map, with clickable points (akin to Google Maps pushpins) that take you to more detailed information about a given location….
Phyllis Pearsall
The 100th anniversary of Phyllis Pearsall’s birth was celebrated in the UK on Monday. She founded the A-Z Map Company in 1936 to publish a (now-legendary) map of London — which she compiled by walking 3,000 miles’ worth of…
Simon Elvins’s “Silent London”
Simon Elvins’s “Silent London”: “Using information the government has collected on noise levels within London, a map has been plotted of the capital’s most silent spaces. The map intends to reveal a hidden landscape of quiet spaces and shows…
17th-Century London in Google Earth
Old meets new: Google Earth layers for London in 1666 and 1690. Suddenly the purpose behind e_Perimetron becomes clear. Via Things Magazine….
Old London Maps
Old London Maps is a gem of a collection of antique maps and engravings depicting London from medieval times to the nineteenth century. Greenwood’s map of London (pictured at right; see previous entry) is there, as are many others. Thanks…
London Poverty in 1898 and 2001
Charles Booth’s late-nineteenth-century map of London poverty (see previous entry) is getting some additional attention lately: Boing Boing and Cartography link to this page, which compares Booth’s map with a 2001 map of London, and this Economist article, which discusses…
iPod Subway Maps
If you’ve got an iPod with a colour screen, you can put subway maps on it. It’s a simple matter to put digital images on an iPod; where maps are concerned, though, it’s a challenge to make sure they’re legible…
London Underground Line Closures
Feòrag’s London Underground map (343 KB JPEG) edits out the lines that were closed due to yesterday’s bombing incidents. Via Boing Boing….
London WWII Bomb Damage Maps
During World War Two, London County Council kept maps showing the damage caused to the city by German bombs. They did it by hand-colouring Ordnance Survey maps, each colour representing a certain amount of damage. Now, the BBC reports, the…
Tube Disruptions Movie
Fed up with delays on the London Underground, Stef took Transport for London’s tube disruption maps and spliced them together into a three-minute time-lapse movie that shows delays over a 15-day period. The result? “London Underground is disruption free, a…
Question: Wall-sized London Tube Map?
Don Sattler writes, “I’m in London on vacation and would love to purchase a large map of the tube system to hang on my office wall. I can’t seem to find one. Do you know of any shops that might…
London Underground on MetaFilter
Tube map fanatics should not miss the ultimate MetaFilter post on the London Underground. Some stuff you may have seen before, even here, but it’s all in one spot, see?…
Transport for London Maps and Directions
Transport for London (London’s transit agency) has a journey planner that I would try if I knew anything about the city; alas, I’ve never been. (Many of my readers have, though, so let me know if it’s any good.) Their…
London’s Ethnic Diversity
From a Grauniad special report on London’s ethnic diversity, a couple of maps showing concentrations of ethnic and religious minorities in that city. The maps use only four gradations of shading, which can be misleading: in one, the darkest shade…
North Londoners’ Map of London
After all that election nonsense, now for a bit of fun. Naturally, as a benighted colonist, I don’t get the joke, but here, via The (always nifty) Cartoonist, is London (and the rest of the known universe) as seen by…
New URL for Tube Map Archive
The London Tube Map Archive has a new URL, now that sitehouse.net is no longer operative. I don’t know when it happened: I linked to the old address in April 2003; The Cartoonist linked to the new address on Sunday….
Flipping Between Satellite Images and Maps
MultiMap uses JavaScript to toggle between maps and satellite images of a given locale. One of a part of London has been making the rounds of the blogosphere this week (see Boing Boing and MetaFilter)….
Profile of Tube Map’s Creator
Last Thursday’s Guardian — they do seem do have a lot of map-related content, don’t they? — had an article about Henry Beck, the creator of the iconic London Underground map that ditched scale and proportionality in favour of clarity….
London Noise Map
Last year I blogged about a noise map of Paris. Now the concept has jumped the Channel: there’s a noise map of London available, and it looks like there will be more such maps across England. There are two official-looking…
London Tube Map Satellite Image
For you Tube map freaks: R. Gardiner has taken a geographically accurate map of the London Underground and superimposed it on a satellite image of the city. Very effective. Via Here Be Dragons….