The 'rant' I co-wrote with Chris Perkins on the status of the map in British geography is now published as a commentary in the journal Environment and Planning A.

"Reclaiming the map: British geography and ambivalent cartographic practice" Environment and Planning A 40(6) 1271-1276 (local copy).

RGS-IBG Annual International Conference

In collaboration with Chris Perkins I have organised sessions and a plenary at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference in London in late August. They have a triple session on ‘maps as method’ and are chairing a high profile lunchtime plenary discussion on the ‘future of the map’ with Denis Wood, Mary Spence and Ed Parsons.

Papers in the three sessions are as follows:

Session One:

Mashup Cartography for data exploration
Jason Dykes (City University), Jo Wood (City University) & Aidan Slingsby (City University)

Tranquillity matters too - mapping tranquillity
Helen Dunsford (Northumbria University), Duncan Fuller (Northumbria University) & Claire Haggett (University of Newcastle)

Geography made by outsiders? Maps and the Google generation
Pablo Mateos & Paul. A Longley (University College London)

Teaching and learning the city through participatory mapping
Kimberly Libman (City University of New York)

Mental mapping as a methodology: Its evolution, its usefulness, and the ways in which we may analyze them
Jen Gieseking (City University of New York)

Session Two:

Noise to signal ratio - Mapping the boundaries of science as art and art as science
Muki Haklay (University College London) & Christian Nold (University College London)

Getting the words onto the map: walking interviews, rescue geography and the joys of KML
Phil Jones (University of Birmingham), James Evans (University of Manchester) & Jane Ricketts (University of Birmingham)

Using maps creatively to more critically understand the creative city
Chris Brennan-Horley & Chris Gibson (University of Wollongong, Australia)

Interactive community mapping in London
Coleen Whitaker & Louise Francis (London 21 Sustainability Network)

Session Three:

Cartography - a discipline of two halves
Mike Wood (Aberdeen University) & Mike Smith (Kingston University)

Comics and table saws: Experimental cartography methods for recovering ontology
Jeremy Crampton (Georgia State University) & John Krygier (Ohio Wesleyan University)

A Vision of Britain through time: Publishing an on-line historical atlas for everyone
Humphrey Southall (Portsmouth University)

Mapping narratives
Mei-Po Kwan (Ohio State University)

Alport Castles

Top of the dam at the end of the Howden reservoir.

'Its All In The Database'

The BBC are running a consciously sinister advert for TV licensing that stresses the all-knowing power of database surveillance. One aspect that particularly interests me is the use of a combination of visual and aural metaphors of urbanity shown through computer hardware to represent the nature of a 'database'. (The style of the advert stressing the power of surveillance is part of a longer trend used to scare people into paying the TV license, see my post of a print advert from last summer that states overtly 'There's nowhere to hide'.) See further comment on this by 'error gorilla'.

Walking exploration of Broadbottom / Mottram area. Eventually made it to the top of the hill and the impressive St Michael and All Angels Church, which can be seen from many directions.

Bluebells in Keg Wood in the Etherow country park.