Colorful Language: Decoding Utility Markings Spray-Painted on City Streets
99 percent invisible
In 1976, construction workers accidentally cut into a petroleum pipeline running under the streets of Culver City, California, resulting in a fatal explosion that essentially leveled half of a city block. It wasn’t the first or last accident of its kind, but it helped catalyze the systemization of critical color-coded utility markings — mysterious-looking tags that look like nonsense or a secret code until you start to decipher them.
Maps Mania
Webcomic XKCD’s midterm elections map, and a wonderful retrospective of all of the seminal web comic’s forays into cartography.
Canada’s Declining Caribou Population
Map of the week
“We are a natural resource-driven economy, and limits to our footprint is anathema to most. Our system of monetizing does not extend to species. They have no value.”
Courtney Claessens: “It’s incredibly important that we stay humble in the kind of work we do”
Geohipster
Courtney is a product manager at the Canadian Digital Service. Before joining the public service, she worked at Esri building products to connect local governments and their communities using open data. She has a BA in Urban Systems and GIS from McGill University. She lives in Ottawa and is moderately active on Twitter.
Cartonerd
So many large format coffee-table map books are written by map experts, map librarians or map historians. They carefully select the maps based on a criteria that generally relates to some cartographic measure of their worth. Betsy Mason and Greg Miller are not cartographic experts, well, at least not by training, though they are fast demonstrating a deep understanding of what makes great maps tick.
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