̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - maps

Community Open Map Platform project supporting green transition secures major funding

ta385 — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 15:15:00 +0000

Despite changes to the HM Treasury Green Book to encourage forms of valuation other than economic, local authorities are struggling to capture social, environmental and cultural value in a way that feeds into their systems and processes. This new project aims to make this easy by spatialising data so that it can be used as a basis for targeted hyperlocal action for a green transition.

Professor Flora Samuel said: “Climate change cannot be addressed without revealing and tackling the inequalities within society and where they are happening. Only when we know what is happening where, and how people are adapting to climate change can we make well informed decisions.”

“ ̽��ֱ��aim of this pragmatic project is to create a Community Open Map Platform that will bring together multiple layers of spatial information to give a social, environmental, cultural and economic picture of what is happening in a neighbourhood, area, local authority, region or nation.”

Green Transition Ecosystems (GTEs) are large-scale projects that focus on translating the best design-led research into real-world benefits. Capitalising on clusters of design excellence, GTEs will address distinct challenges posed by the climate crisis including, but not limited to, realising net zero goals.

GTEs are the flagship funding strand of the £25m Future Observatory: Design the Green Transition programme, funded by the AHRC and delivered in partnership with the Design Museum.

̽��ֱ��COMP will address the following overarching aims of the Green Transitions Ecosystem call: measurable, green transition-supportive behavioural change across sectors and publics; design that fosters positive behavioural change in support of green transition goals, including strategy and policy; region-focused solutions for example the infrastructure supporting rural communities and, lastly, designing for diversity.

To meet these aims the COMP will deliver a baseline model mapping platform for decision making with communities for use by Local Authorities (LoAs) across the UK and beyond. To do this a pilot COMP will be made for the Isle of Anglesey to help the LoA measure its progress towards a green transition and fulfilment of the Future Generations Wales Act in a transparent and inclusive way.

̽��ֱ��Isle of Anglesey/Ynys Môn in North Wales was chosen as the case study for this project largely because it is a discrete geographical place that is rural, disconnected and in decline, with a local authority that has high ambitions to reinvent itself as a centre of sustainable innovation, to be an 'Energy Island’ at the centre of low-carbon energy research and development. ̽��ֱ��bilingual context of Anglesey provides a particular opportunity to explore issues around multilingual engagement, inclusion and culture – a UK-wide challenge.

̽��ֱ��project, a collaboration with the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (Wiserd) at Cardiff ̽��ֱ�� and Wrexham Glyndwr ̽��ֱ�� as well as several other partners is supported by the Welsh Government and the Future Generations Commission in Wales who are investigating ways to measure, and spatialise, attainment against the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act (2015), a world-leading piece of sustainability legislation.

̽��ֱ��Community Open Map Platform (COMP) will offer a range of well designed and accessible information to communities, local authorities and policy makers alike, as well as opportunities to contribute to the maps. ̽��ֱ��map layers will constantly grow with information and sophistication, reconfigured according to local policy and boundaries. And crucially, they will be developed and monitored with and by a representative cross section of the local community.

An accessible website will be designed as a data repository tailored to a range of audiences, scalable for use across the UK. Social, cultural and environmental map layers will be co-created with children and young people to show, for instance, where people connect, engage with cultural activities and do small things to adapt to climate change.

̽��ֱ��community-made data will be overlaid onto existing census and administrative data sets to build a baseline Future Generations map of the Isle of Anglesey. ̽��ֱ��layers can be clustered together to measure the island’s progress against the Act but can also be reconfigured to other kinds of measurement schema. In this way the project will offer a model for inclusive, transparent and evidence based planning, offering lessons for the rest of the UK and beyond.

This award is part of the Future Observatory: Design the Green Transition programme, the largest publicly funded design research and innovation programme in the UK. Funded by AHRC in partnership with Future Observatory at the Design Museum, this £25m multimodal investment aims to bring design researchers, universities, and businesses together to catalyse the transition to net zero and a green economy.

Christopher Smith, Executive Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council said:

“Design is a critical bridge between research and innovation. Placing the individual act of production or consumption within the context of a wider system of social and economic behaviour is critical to productivity, development and sustainability.

"That’s why design is the essential tool for us to confront and chart a path through our current global and local predicaments, and that’s why AHRC has placed design at the heart of its strategy for collaboration within UKRI.

"From health systems to energy efficiency to sustainability, these four Green Transition Ecosystem projects the UK are at the cutting edge of design, offering models for problem solving, and will touch on lives right across the UK.”

A team led by Professor Flora Samuel from Cambridge’s Department of Architecture has been awarded one of four new £4.625 million Green Transition Ecosystem grants by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to create a Community Open Map Platform (COMP) for Future Generations to chart the green transition on the Isle of Anglesey/Ynys Môn.

Climate change cannot be addressed without revealing and tackling the inequalities within society and where they are happening

Flora Samuel

Ellena McGuinness on Unsplash

Anglesey beach crowded with people

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Mapping the world - one digitisation at a time

zs332 — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 09:01:40 +0000

They transport us, educate us, and inspire us but when was the last time you used a map? Explore the world of maps on the Cambridge Digital Library.

Mapping the Moon through the ages

cjb250 — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 08:35:37 +0000

On the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing, the ̽��ֱ�� Library shares some of its incredible moon-related maps and archive.

Going underground: Cambridge digs into the history of geology with landmark exhibition

sjr81 — Fri, 24 Nov 2017 00:01:00 +0000

Uncovering how the ground beneath our feet was mapped for the first time – and revealing some of the controversies and tragedies geology brought to the surface of intellectual debate, Landscapes Below opens to the public on Friday, November 24, at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library.

Featuring the biggest-ever object (1.9mx1.6m) to go on display at the Library: George Bellas Greenough’s 1819 A Geological Map of England and Wales (the first map produced by the Geological Society of London), as well as a visually stunning collection of maps from the earliest days of geology – the exhibition explores how these new subterranean visions of the British landscape influenced our understanding of the Earth. All the maps belonging to the library are going on display for the first time.

“I think the maps are beautiful objects, tell fascinating stories and frame geology in a new light,” said exhibition curator Allison Ksiazkiewicz. “This was a new take on nature and a new way of thinking about the landscape for those interested in nature.

“We show how the early pioneers of this new science wrestled with the ideas of a visual vocabulary – and how for the first time people were encouraged to think about the secretive world beneath their feet.”

As well as maps, Landscapes Below also brings together an extraordinary collection of fossils, artworks and a collection of 154 diamonds, on loan from the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. Displayed together for the first time, the diamonds were collected, arranged, and produced by Jacques Louis, Comte de Bournon who later became the Keeper of the Royal Mineral Collection for King Louis XVIII.

Another important exhibit on display for the first time is the first edition of George Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart’s Researches on the Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds (1811), on loan from Trinity College. It examined the geology of the Paris Basin and revolutionised what was considered ‘young’ in geological terms.

Artists were also keen to accurately depict the geological landscape. After surviving Captain Cook’s ill-fated third voyage of discovery, artist, John Webber returned to England and travelled around the country painting landscapes and geological formations, as seen in Landscape of Rocks in Derbyshire. Christopher Packe’s A New Philosophico-Chorographical Chart of East-Kent (1743), on loan from the Geological Society of London, is a remarkable, engraved map that draws on early modern medicine in the interpretation of the surrounding landscape.

“ ̽��ֱ��objects we’re putting on display show the many different applications of geological knowledge,” added Ksiazkiewicz. “Whether it’s a map showing the coal fields of Lancashire in the 1830s – or revealing how this new science was used for economic and military reasons.”

In many ways, the landscapes the earliest geologists worked among became battlegrounds as a scientific old guard – loyal to the established pursuits of mineralogy and chemistry – opposed a new generation of scientists intent on using the fossil record in the study of the Earth’s age and formation.

Exhibitions Officer Chris Burgess said: “Maps were central to the development of geology but disagreement between its leading figures was common. Maps of the period did not just show new knowledge but represented visible arguments about how that knowledge should be recorded.”

̽��ֱ��exhibition also includes objects from those with rather tragic histories, including William Smith – whose famous 1815 Geological Map of England has been described as the ‘Magna Carta of geology’. Despite publishing the world’s first geological map (which is still used as the basis of such maps today), Smith was shunned by the scientific community for many years, became a bankrupt, and ended up in debtors’ prison.

John MacCulloch, who produced the Geological Map of Scotland, did not live to see his work published after his honeymoon carriage overturned and killed him at the age of 61. He spent 15 summers surveying Scotland, after convincing the Board of Ordnance to sponsor the project. There was some dispute about how MacCulloch calculated his mileage and spent the funds, and the Ordnance only paid for six summers’ worth of work. Five summers were paid for by the Treasury and four from his own pocket.

Added Ksiazkiewicz: “Not only do these maps and objects represent years of work by individuals looking to develop a new science of the Earth, they stir the imagination. You can imagine yourself walking across the landscape and absorbing all that comes with it – views, antiquities, fossils, and vegetation. And weather, there’s always weather.”

Landscapes Below runs from November 25, 2017 to March 29, 2018 at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library’s Milstein Exhibition Centre. Admission is free. Opening times are Mon-Fri 9am-6pm and Saturday 9am-16.30pm. Closed Sundays.

A box full of diamonds, volcanic rock from Mount Vesuvius, and the geology guide that Darwin packed for his epic voyage on the Beagle will go on display in Cambridge this week as part of the first major exhibition to celebrate geological map-making.

We show how for the first time people were encouraged to think about the secretive world beneath their feet.

Allison Ksiazkiewicz

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

A Treatise on Diamonds and Precious Stones, 1813, by John Mawe

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̽��ֱ��Magna Carta of scientific maps

sjr81 — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 23:01:40 +0000

William Smith’s 1815 Geological Map of England and Wales, which measures 8.5ft x 6ft, demonstrated for the first time the geology of the UK and was the culmination of years of work by Smith, who was shunned by the scientific community for many years and ended up in debtors’ prison.

Today, exactly 200 years since its first publication, a copy of Smith’s map – rediscovered after more than a century in a museum box – will go on public display at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. Aside from a copy held at ̽��ֱ��Geological Society in London, the Cambridge map is believed to be the only such map on public display anywhere in the world.

̽��ֱ��iconic map, which is still used as the basis of geological maps to this day, had the greatest influence on the science of geology, inspiring a generation of naturalists and fledgling geologists to establish geology as a coherent, robust and important science. ̽��ֱ��map was so large, that, for practicality's sake, it was often sold in 15 separate sheets, either loose, or in a leather travelling case.

Museum Director Ken McNamara said: “This is the world’s earliest geological map. Smith was working from a position of no knowledge when he began. Nobody had ever attempted this before and it’s really quite staggering what this one man achieved over ten or fifteen years, travelling up and down the country as a canal surveyor.

“It’s incredibly accurate, even now in 2015. If you compare the current geological map of Great Britain today there are amazing similarities. ̽��ֱ��British Geological Survey still uses the same colour scheme that Smith devised. Chalk is green. Limestone is yellow and it’s still done like that to this day.”

“This started geology as a modern science. It’s like the Magna Carta of geology, the beginnings of geology as a modern science and that’s why it’s so important.”

Smith’s map proudly announced itself to the world as: "A DELINEATION of the STRATA of ENGLAND and WALES with part of SCOTLAND; exhibiting the COLLIERIES and MINES; the MARSHES and FEN LANDS ORIGINALLY OVERFLOWED BY THE SEA; and the VARIETIES of Soil according to the Variations in the Substrata; ILLUSTRATED by the MOST DESCRIPTIVE NAMES".

How many of Smith's great maps still exist is unclear. Around 70 are thought to remain worldwide. ̽��ֱ��Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the oldest geological museum in the world, is lucky enough to have three copies.

For many years the museum knew that it possessed two of Smith's great maps: one a set of 15 sheets bound together as a book; the other, beautifully preserved, nestles in its leather travelling case. Two years ago, in May 2013, a third copy was rediscovered in the collection. Found folded in a box with some other early geological maps, staff believe it had not seen the light of day since Queen Victoria was on the throne.

Despite its decades hidden from view, the hand-coloured map had been exposed to harsh light for many years before being packed away. ̽��ֱ��colours were faded, the paper stained and it carried the stains of faecal deposits from long dead spiders and flies.

̽��ֱ��map was then conserved by experts at Duxford, near Cambridge. Nineteenth century dirt and grime was carefully removed, then the original, faded water-colour paint was given a protective coating and subtly restored to enhance the colour of the rock formations. Only 400 were ever produced over at least a four-year period. During that time, Smith continued his geological research and continually made new discoveries, adapting and amending each new edition as he went along. Each individual map took seven or eight days to be coloured.

McNamara said: “Smith suffered many deprivations in his life. He became a bankrupt and ended up in debtor's prison for a while. Perhaps, almost as galling, he was largely ignored by the geological establishment. However, he gained his due recognition from the Geological Society of London later in life when, in 1831, he was the first person to receive the society's most prestigious medal, the Wollaston Medal.

“Appropriately, given the hanging of his map in the Sedgwick Museum, it was Adam Sedgwick who presented Smith with his medal. We are, we think, the only museum, library or art gallery in the world to have one of Smith’s legendary maps on public display – and we want as many people as possible to come and see this enormous, iconic and beautiful map for themselves.”

One of the most important maps of the UK ever made – described as the ‘Magna Carta of geology’ – is to go on permanent public display in Cambridge after being restored to its former glory.

This is the world’s earliest geological map.

Ken McNamara

big mapv1

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On the trail of King John before (and after) the signing of Magna Carta

amb206 — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 08:00:00 +0000

John was the most peripatetic of all English monarchs. His 17 years on the throne are often described as a reign of crisis. In 1214 John lost his lands in France, earning him the name John Lackland. Beset by financial problems, and with his authority threatened by rebellious barons, John was seldom in residence at Windsor and Westminster – but spent much of his time on the move, raising taxes and holding courts, as he toured the country.

̽��ֱ��first ever digital maps of John’s progress around his territories provide clues in visual format – and in certain sections show, almost yard by yard, the routes that King John is likely to have taken. Using Geographical Imaging Systems (GIS), researchers at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� have built on data from colleagues at the ̽��ֱ�� of East Anglia (UEA) and ̽��ֱ�� College London (UCL) to produce a compelling picture of the progresses of John and his successors, Henry III and Edward I.

̽��ֱ��maps reveal that John easily out-travelled those who came after him. In the six months leading up to Magna Carta, for example, he is recorded to have visited some 200 places and travelled well over 1,800 miles as he and his entourage zigzagged their way up and down England, navigating roads that were quagmires in winter.

Historical geographer Dr Max Satchell and PhD candidate Ellen Potter have applied mapping techniques that revolutionise the analytical capacity of data gathered by historians at UEA and UCL.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge researchers have restructured thousands of dates and places in lists compiled from royal documents (for example, the signing of charters). By linking the restructured data to places digitally mapped using GIS, the progresses of the monarchs can be followed day-by-day, week-by-week, and year-by-year.

̽��ֱ��GIS resource created by Satchell and Potter provides a valuable new tool. Unlike paper maps, the digital mapping enables comparisons to be made between the journeying of John, Henry III and Edward I, whose reigns together span the years 1199 to 1305. ̽��ֱ��digitised data reveals, for example, that John spent just 4% of his time at Windsor and Westminster while his successor Henry III spent 40% of his rule at these two palaces. Plotted on maps, the progresses of all three rulers can be seen at a glance.

To plot in considerable detail the routes between places visited by the king, Satchell and Potter have drawn on a range of sources, notably Britannia, a volume published by John Ogilby in 1675. Often described as the ‘first road atlas’ of England and Wales, it consists of 100 plates of ‘strip maps’ compiled from information gathered by surveyors who travelled throughout England to measure and record some 7,000 miles of roads connecting major towns. Each strip map is a visualisation of the road taken between two points, complete with exquisitely drawn hills, rivers and landmarks.

Satchell has, for the first time, used GIS to recover the alignments of the main roads of 1675 from these strips and show with remarkable precision where they ran in the landscape. These main roads did not change much before the 18th century. This means that, where royal routes and Ogilby roads coincide, it is possible to see, almost yard by yard, where John and other kings travelled as they ascended and descended hills, crossed rivers, and stopped to obtain food, supplies and fresh horses.

“We can be pretty certain that the roads Ogilby and his team recorded were little changed from those that King John and other monarchs would have used. Even today the routes taken by sections of many roads have not changed for more than 800 years,” says Satchell.

“For example, when travelling from York to Durham, we know that John sometimes took a coastal route via Scarborough, Guisborough and Stockton-on-Tees. So too did Ogilby's surveyors, much of whose route is very similar to that of the modern A171 through the North York Moors National Park. So this summer, if you’re stuck in a traffic jam on the A171, think what it was like for John and his train of wagons.”

Although we know where John was in the week leading up to Magna Carta, clues to the roads he took have proved elusive. Between 5 and 8 June 1215, he was in residence at Winchester, formerly capital of England. By 9 June, John was in the market town of Odiham, some 20 miles north east of Winchester. Here, the king and his courtiers are likely to have stayed at Odiham Castle. From Odiham, John made his way to Windsor (some 24 miles north east) where the king was present from 10 June to 15 June.

“Undoubtedly, there was a direct road via Odiham which linked Winchester with Windsor and the navigable river Thames. Its existence is hinted by the itineraries of John and Henry III and also in later records, such as the shipment of lead carried by boat up the Thames, offloaded at Windsor and carted overland to repair the roof of Odiham castle in 1371, and wine carried from Southampton to Odiham in 1264. But, by the time the first large-scale maps of Hampshire were made in the 18th century, the road had virtually disappeared,” says Satchell.

” ̽��ֱ��final leg of John’s passage to Runnymede is solid enough. On 15 June, the king and his retinue journeyed the short distance from Windsor Castle to the fateful field. ̽��ֱ��barons for their part travelled from London on the main road to the south-west, a route clearly marked by Ogilby on plate 21 of his atlas. They crossed the Thames at Staines Bridge, marked as ‘wooden bridge’ by Ogilby, and turned off its causeway into Runnymede meadow from where they could see the towers of Windsor Castle.”

When on the move, royal baggage trains are thought to have travelled an average of 20 miles a day, moving at walking pace. Satchell and Potter’s mapping work confirms this picture. Distance was limited not just by the state of the roads and the weather but also by the weight of the wagons and carts. “ ̽��ֱ��volume of stuff moved from point to point was quite literally staggering,” says Satchell.

“ ̽��ֱ��royal baggage would have included a portable chapel for worship and a portable treasury which could carry as many as 500,000 silver pennies packed into barrels. In an era when John's misrule meant currency was in short supply, John’s retinue may have carried a significant proportion of the available coinage, a huge burden for horses to haul over unpaved roads.

Astride his own horse and accompanied by intimate companions, John would, of course, have been able to make greater speeds, travelling as much as 60 miles a day on a succession of the best animals. GIS analysis shows that John could make good speed even in winter across challenging terrain. In 1204 he journeyed from Malmesbury up and down the steep slopes of the Cotswolds to celebrate Christmas at Tewkesbury, riding more than 30 miles on a single winter’s day. ̽��ֱ��day after Christmas he made the return trip.

Travelling light was seldom an option. Wherever he went, John would have relied on a train of wooden wagons and carts, drawn by heavy horses, to convey the goods that he and his household required when at rest. In addition there would be packhorses, innumerable servants and an armed escort - a veritable cavalcade which must have provided a real spectacle as it crisscrossed the country. If travelling with his army, as he did in times of conflict, John’s baggage train could be over two miles in length.

John is remembered in school history books as the king “who lost his treasure in the wash”. Some 450 years before the draining of the fens in East Anglia, the wide estuary known as the Wash was marshy and treacherous. On 12 October 1216, the royal baggage train attempted to cross the waterway at low tide but got ensnared in the soft sand. Lives, vehicles, and much treasure were lost. John was safe: he took a different route from that taken by his train. But a week later he was dead.

̽��ֱ��king’s body was carried in great ceremony some 140 miles from Newark to Worcester where he was buried in the city’s cathedral sometime in late October. Of this final journey, so much slower that many he made in life, nothing else is known. ̽��ֱ��flow of letters and charters from which John’s itinerary can be recovered ends with one last document – his will. Thereafter John becomes like his subjects whose innumerable toings and froings are lost forever.

Max Satchell is contributing to a major Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� project to document the history of occupations. His specialism is in GIS and transport flows and infrastructure. Ellen Potter is a research assistant within the same group and will shortly start a PhD.

Inset images: ̽��ֱ��itineraries of John and Henry as king (Max Satchell); ̽��ֱ��route through Egham, from Ogilby's Britannia; Miniature of King John hunting, in a manuscript of the Liber legume antiquorum regum, C14, on display in Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy (British Library).

King John, that most restless of monarchs, is back in the spotlight as the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta approaches. For the first time, historical geographers have plotted John’s route for all 17 years of his reign to produce digital maps of his progress as he struggled to maintain his grip.

This summer, if you’re stuck in a traffic jam on the A171, think what it was like for John and his train of wagons

Max Satchell

Wikimedia Commons

19th-century recreation of King John signing the Magna Carta

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Look familiar?

bjb42 — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:25:04 +0000

An online game which tests Londoners’ ability to recognise parts of the capital has been devised by researchers as the first step in a project to create a “memory map” of the city.

“Urbanopticon”, which can be found at https://www.urbanopticon.org/ is free to use and takes just minutes to play. Players are shown randomly-selected photographs of different London streets and asked to name the nearest tube station, or to identify the borough in which the photo was taken. They can also share their score with friends on Facebook and Twitter.

̽��ֱ��game is also part of a serious experiment, however. Building on long-standing studies which show that we each create our own mental map of a city, the researchers will use the results to map recognisability across London. Theorists have suggested that the recognisability of the urban environment is closely linked to people’s well-being. ̽��ֱ��project will also investigate how far it is linked to social deprivation.

In the long-term, the data from Urbanopticon could be used to help town planners focus on where the urban environment needs most improvement, so that people feel more at home.

Daniele Quercia, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory and one of four researchers who designed the project, said: “When we build communities, we try to give ourselves pointers and signs that enable us to recognise where we are. This improves our ability to find our way around and, as a result, it improves our lives.”

“ ̽��ֱ��question is, where has this been done to best effect, and why? What we are trying to create through the game is a memory map using information provided by Londoners themselves. That map will then become a tool which helps us to determine where London needs to be improved for the sake of its residents.”

̽��ֱ��images used in the game are selected at random from Google Street View. At the end, players are also asked to complete a survey which asks where they are from, where they work, and how well they know different parts of the city.

Using this information, the site essentially extracts Londoners’ mental images of the city, testing which places are remarkable and unmistakable, and which are forgettable and anonymous.

̽��ֱ��reasoning for the project comes from the work of the eminent 20^th century sociologist, Kevin Lynch, whose ground-breaking research made a significant contribution to city planning and design. Lynch showed that everyone living in an urban environment creates their own personal “mental map” of the city, based on features such as routes they use, buildings and familiar locations, and the boundaries which define the areas they frequent.

As a result, Lynch argued that the more recognisable the features of a city are, the more navigable it is. This is closely linked to well-being, as well as other crucial determinants of a city’s success, such as crime levels and economics. According to the theory, cities with more character and recognisability tend to be used more by their population, creating a stronger sense of community.

“Imagine two extremes,” Quercia explained. “In one case, you have a very navigable city, where people can find their way around easily. In the other, you have a city in which it is much harder to navigate and people get lost all the time. In the second case, people stick to what they know, movement is more restricted to certain thoroughfares and more parts of the environment feel unfamiliar and threatening. ̽��ֱ��layout of the urban space plugs directly into our sense of well-being.”

In the long term, the researchers hope to link the data they gather from Urbanopticon to indeces of deprivation based on levels of unemployment and health services. ̽��ֱ��aim of this will be to see if recognisability is linked not just to community well-being, but deprivation as well.

They also hope to track visibility over time, to see if new buildings change the recognisability of an area and, in the process, whether indices of deprivation change as well.

“ ̽��ֱ��study of community well-being is really only just beginning, and very little research has been done to investigate how much of a sense of belonging people have in different neighbourhoods and why,” Quercia added. “In the long-term, if this research in London is successful, we hope to be able to apply similar techniques to build memory maps for cities all over the world."

Introducing the online game for Londoners which researchers hope will one day influence the shape of the nation’s capital.

̽��ֱ��layout of the urban space plugs directly into our sense of well-being.

Daniele Quercia

Carlos RM from Flickr

London street photo.

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Mapping the origins of a masterpiece

sjr81 — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:01:24 +0000

John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine is one of the world’s great cartographic treasures. Published in 1611/12, it marked the first time that comprehensive plans of English and Welsh counties and towns were made available in print.

To celebrate its 400^th anniversary, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library has digitised each of the proof maps and put them online at www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/maps/speed.html. ̽��ֱ��Library is also selling copies of the 60 plus images that make up Speed’s masterpiece.

Inset into the corner of each county map is a plan of its county town and each spare inch of space is used to illustrate famous battles, local coats of arms, as well as Roman and pre-historic sites.

̽��ֱ��atlas, bought by the ̽��ֱ�� Library in 1968, is now considered priceless. It contains a single sheet for each county of England and Wales, plus a map of Scotland and each of the four Irish provinces, and paints a rich picture of the countryside at the turn of the 17^th century.

A slice of Tudor and Jacobean life in miniature, its influence was so great that it was used by armies on both sides of the English Civil War.

Rivers wriggle through the landscape, towns are shown as huddles of miniature buildings, woods and parks marked by tiny trees and – with contour lines yet to be invented – small scatterings of molehills denote higher ground.

̽��ֱ��countryside bursts with human life: a ploughman and his two-horse team are at work in fields outside Worcester, a group of bathers enjoy the Roman spa at Bath, ducks paddle in the River Ouse at York, and the seas around Britain teem with fabulous sea monsters and ships in full sail.

Anne Taylor, Head of the Map Department at the ̽��ֱ�� Library, said: “Although the Library holds several copies of the published atlas – including a first edition – it is the hand-coloured set of proofs produced between 1603 and 1611 that is one of its greatest treasures.”

“It was bought by the ̽��ֱ�� Library in 1968 after the government refused an export licence for the proofs to be sold abroad. We know it as the Gardner copy after its previous owner (Eric Gardner). It really is a rare and delightful item.”

̽��ֱ��Cambridgeshire sheet includes portraits of robed academics, a pair of them holding the map’s scale bar as well as 24 coats of arms of the ̽��ֱ��, colleges and local nobility.

Accompanying each map in the published edition (but not the proofs) is a description of the county. Derived largely from William Camden’s Britannia, a topographical and historical survey of Great Britain and Ireland, the text offers an affectionate portrait of the city and its university, but a rather less appealing description of the Cambridgeshire countryside.

“This province is not large, nor the air greatly to be liked, having the Fenns so spread upon her North, that they infect the air far into the rest. ̽��ֱ��soil doth differ both in air and commodities; the Fenny surcharged with waters: the South is Champion, and yieldeth Corn in abundance, with Meadow-pastures upon both sides of the River Came,” he notes.

Born in Farndon, Cheshire in 1551 or 1552, John Speed was a historian as well as a cartographer, who paid tribute to earlier map-makers whose work he drew on, especially the county maps of the great Elizabethan surveyor Christopher Saxton. “I have put my sickle into other mens corne,” Speed wrote.

̽��ֱ��county maps were the first consistent attempt to show territorial divisions, but it was Speed’s town plans that were a major innovation and probably his greatest contribution to British cartography. Together, they formed the first printed collection of town plans of the British Isles and, for at least 50 of the 73 included in the Theatre, it was the first time these towns had been mapped.

̽��ֱ��Theatre was an immediate success: the first print run of around 500 copies must have sold quickly because many editions followed and, by the time of the 1627 edition, the atlas cost 40 shillings. It was a supreme achievement in British cartography. It made John Speed into one of the most famous of all our map-makers and became the blueprint for folio atlases until the mid-18^th century.

Published 400 years ago, the first comprehensive atlas of Great Britain is being celebrated by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library, home to one of only five surviving proof sets, all of which differ in their composition.

Although the Library holds several copies of the published atlas – including a first edition – it is the hand-coloured set of proofs produced between 1603 and 1611 that is one of its greatest treasures.

Anne Taylor, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

John Speed's proof map of Cambridgeshire

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