Traditional, positivist approaches to map design usually yield a single map. These one-map solutions foster a highly selective, authored view reflecting consciously manipulative or ill-conceived design decisions about many factors, such as map scale, geographic scope, feature content, map title, classification of data, and the crispness or fuzziness of symbols representing uncertain features. As a result, the rightfully skeptical map viewer ought to question whether (a) an ulterior motive led to a biased view of reality favoring the author's philosophical or political biases or economic goals, or (b) a lazy map author failed to explore designs offering a more coherent or complete picture of reality. Technology has aggravated the problem of one-map solutions by placing powerful mapping software at the disposal of amateur cartographers who can generate convincing-looking graphics with little or no understanding of their data or the principles of mapping. And technology also allows devious map makers to perfect designs that support their points. But technology can also foster greater openness and more complete understanding of maps and their meaning, and thereby provide a more ethical approach to cartographic analysis and communication. After discussing the problem of single cartographic views, I present six strategies for a more open and overtly critical cartography in which one-map solutions are both rare and suspect.
Some maps help us find our way; others restrict where we go and what we do. These maps control behavior, regulating activities from flying to fishing, prohibiting students from one part of town from being schooled on the other, and banishing certain individuals and industries to the periphery. This restrictive cartography has boomed in recent decades as governments seek regulate activities as diverse as hiking, building a residence, opening a store, locating a chemical plant, or painting your house anything but regulation colors. It is this aspect of mapping-its power to prohibit-that celebrat
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No place is perfectly safe, but some places are more dangerous than others. Whether we live on a floodplain or in "Tornado Alley," near a nuclear facility or in a neighborhood poorly lit at night, we all co-exist uneasily with natural and man-made hazards. As Mark Monmonier shows in this entertaining and immensely informative book, maps can tell us a lot about where we can anticipate certain hazards, but they can also be dangerously misleading. California, for example, takes earthquakes seriously, with a comprehensive program of seismic mapping, whereas Washington has been comparativ
