Today in Big Think's Month of Going Mental:
All conflict tends towards binarity, be it on the chess board, in the political arena or on the mean streets of Los Angeles. This map shows parts of south LA, and the way it is divided between the two main gangs, the Bloods and the Crips. Curiously, the colour scheme is identical to the one dividing US counties and states into ‘red’ (Republican) and ‘blue’ (Democratic) ones, providing this map with an American election night feel.
By bullets rather than ballots, this part of LA is definitely more ‘blue’ than ‘red’, with the Crips occupying a large contiguous area straddling the Harbor Freeway (110) north of the intersection with the Century Freeway (105; not marked on this map). A single Blood territory seems attached to the junction itself, possibly to allow a handy escape route when the pressure of being surrounded by Crips gets too much.
Blood ganglands increase to the northwest of the map, near the San Diego Freeway (405) and the centre of Inglewood (1). In the lower right quadrant of the map, in or near Compton, things seem to have evened out, with roughly as many Blood territories as Crip ones.
This map of south LA’s ganglands leaves quite a few questions unanswered. Firstly, what about population density? Large, empty lots are less interesting than small, densely populated ones, where commerce - legal and otherwise - is more likely to thrive. Population density may prove a more practical determinant of gangster success than territory occupied.
Secondly, what about the blank areas. Are these gang-free? Or do they change hands too often to be marked as either blue or red? Maybe they are occupied by third-party gangs, the LA underworld’s answer to the Tea Party.
And thirdly, what about the subdivisions within each colour? How do the subgangs relate to each other? The Streetgangs website, which produced this map, lists over 270 separate gangs in LA County (although many of those are listed as 'defunct'). How does one Blood or Crip outfit relate to another one of the same crime family? As the competition, in various degrees of unfriendliness, or as an affiliate, to be helped when in need?
Many thanks to Alex Burke for sending in this map.
(1) Although one wonders what, in a sprawling place like LA, constitutes a ‘centre’. A local administrative building? The statistical centrepoint?
Your average shotgun shack (1) is only as wide as the single room it spans, but as long as all the rooms it consecutively contains. If you’d be so inclined, and if your aim was straight enough, you could fire a shotgun through the entirety of the house and have the bullet exit through the back door without hitting anything. That story might say more about relaxed local attitudes towards the use of firearms in a domestic setting than about anything else.
For another theory holds that ’shotgun’ in this case is a folk-etymological derivative from to-gun, an African type of longhouse that made it to the South (and especially New Orleans) by way of Haiti. Another origin story, explaining the popularity and peculiarity of the shotgun house, at least in New Orleans, is that it derived from a local tax on lot frontage. Such a tax, payable pro rata to the street-side width of a property, would have encouraged taxpayers to creative narrow-mindedness when building their house (2).
Whatever the story, and there are one or two more (3), it’s hard not to note the similarity between the shotgun shack and the riverside strips of land on this 1858 map - long, with narrow access to the river itself. Is it a coincidence that this map details the Mississippi’s frontage from Baton Rouge south to New Orleans, in the heart of shotgun shack country? What exactly, if any, is the link between that particular type of housing and these shotgun tracts on the banks of the Big Muddy?
Quite possibly: the area’s French colonial heritage. Compare with the seigniorial system, introduced in Canada in 1627. As the St Lawrence River was the highway of the new-founded colony of New France (present-day Quebec), it made sense for the authorities to treat her busy banks as highly valuable real estate. The riverbanks were divided into narrow strips of land, each called a seigneurie (4). This frontage system survived the British takeover of Canada by at least a century; to this day, the so-called long lots determine much of riverine Quebec’s geography.
Similar considerations were at work on the banks of that other great river highway in that other French possession in North America, the Mississippi in Louisiana. Since the shape of these long lots is intimately linked to their value, and hence their taxability, it requires no great leap of the imagination to presume that such a frontage tax could be transposed from the banks of a busy river to the sides of a busy street.
All that’s just as may be. Any precise information on the origin of and the connection between shotgun tracts and shotgun shacks is most welcome. But, also, for the purpose of this blog, of secondary importance. The main attraction of this map is not the mystery of the tracts’ origins, but their combination into a thing of weird beauty.
The blithe meanderings of the Mississippi have produced more than one cartographic oddity (see also #178 on the Kentucky Bend, and #208 on ancient Mississippi courses). Her snakey contortions do the trick here too, combining as they do with the straight and narrow lots to yield a fan-like effect. This interplay between bendy river and straight lots is enhanced by the gorgeous colouring of those lots: pink and light blue for the handful of cotton plantations, far outnumbered by the orange-yellow and faded green for the sugar plantations.
The Mississippi’s curves add to the delicious degree of variation in the shape and size of the lots, some more trapezoid than rectangular, a few extremely long where many are short and stubby. Quite a number seem impossibly narrow slivers of land, no doubt the result of many subdivisions of earlier, wider lots. Many lots contain the names of their contemporary owners and of the names of the estates themselves. The multitude of French, Spanish and English names presents a potted history of Louisiana’s past.
All of which makes for a strange, fascinating map shaped, entirely coincidentally no doubt, in the long and narrow fashion of the shotgun tracts it depicts.
Many thanks to Hugo for sending in this map, found here on the website of artist, designer and urban planner Candy Chang. Original context of the map is here at the archives of genealogy resources website USGenWeb.
(1) A type of dwelling popular in the Deep South of the US, even before Elvis Presley was born in one.
(2) Similar taxes based on aspects of home-ownership (also creatively circumvented) include: a tax on windows (resulting in many windows being bricked up), a tax on bricks (causing an increase in the average size of bricks, and a return to timber), a tax on roofs (some of which were dismantled and the house left to ruin), and a tax on patterned wallpaper (which was thereafter bought plain, and hand-stencilled). A tax on curtains in the Netherlands, oft quoted to explain the relative infrequency of curtains in Dutch homes, is an urban myth. The Dutch dislike of drapery is probably better explained by a national trait with roots in the Calvinist religion: the desire to show that one’s household is not above scrutiny, and has nothing to hide - a rather showy way of being modest.
(3) The oblong interior of a shotgun shack allows for better ventilation in warm weather. The material from which they were built consisted of discarded crates of shotgun-shell. They answered the need for cheap housing at time before the automobile allowed workers to live outside of overcrowded city centres.
(4) after its seigneur, or landlord.
Eilert Sundt must have had a busy, happy week. As the president of the Norwegian Cartozoological Society, Mr Sundt probably is the world’s most prominent ambassador of the obscure discipline of cartozoology (1). This unlikely cross-breed of cartography, zoology and urban planning got a huge boost last week, when the government of South Sudan announced plans to remodel its 10 state capitals in the shapes of animals and fruit.
Under the proposal, the regional capital Juba would be laid out as a rhinoceros. Wau, capital of Bahr el-Ghazal state and South Sudan’s second city, is to be restyled as a giraffe. A third one would be transformed into a pineapple. The other state capitals would also be remodelled to look like the flora or fauna in their state emblems. “Finally, finally, the world is starting to see things my way,” Mr Sundt must have exulted.
But being the conscientious Scandinavian he doubtlessly is, his triumphant newsletter contained a caveat: “It pains us to say it, but even if the idea is beautiful, we are afraid that the [South] Sudanese authorities haven’t got their priorities straight.”
The cartozoologist obviously refers to the dire straits, financial and humanitarian, that South Sudan currently finds itself in. The zoomorphic (2) remodeling would cost just over $10 billion (and take about 20 years). South Sudan’s total annual budget is a mere $2 billion. South Sudan, christian, animist and black African, is still recovering from the 21-year civil war it fought with the Sudanese central government, which is Arab and muslim in outlook. The UN estimates that 9 out of 10 Southern Sudanese live on less than $1 a day. Hunger is common, paved roads are rare.
A referendum next January is expected to result in independence, making South Sudan (3) not only the newest, but also one of the poorest nations on Earth. The levels of corruption are such that it is called, only half-jokingly, a pre-failed state. Much of that corruption, as well as the main hope for future progress, is based on the region’s oil wealth, providing 98% of the aforementioned national budget.
So are the plans to transform Juba, the national capital in waiting, into Rhino City a crass example of money-wasting corruption (4)? Or are they a clever way to raise the profile of South Sudan enough to eventually attract visitors other than oilmen and aid workers?
Despite Mr Sundt’s misgivings, the latter is not unthinkable. While not exactly cartozoological, the artifically modelled World and Palm Islands off the coast of Dubai have attracted heaps of media exposure (and investment, probably). South Sudan’s Rhino City, Giraffe Town, Pineappleville and other beastly burgs or plantlike polities might just exude enough appeal to attract a certain brand of curio-seeking traveller.
A truer, if less well known example of cartozoology was discussed earlier on this blog: Ciudad Evita, an Argentine development shaped to look like Evita Peron’s profile (see #346). But yet another example posted earlier on Strange Maps shows one major downside of cartozoology - whether intentional or not.
The pachyderm that reveals itself when you quarter-turn the map of southern Ontario (see #340) not only sports a gloriously trumpeting trunk and an excitedly raised tail, but also - in the city of Owen Sound - an obvious elephant’s arse. By the same token, nobody would want to live at or near a place equated with a rhinoceros’s backside (just imagine the directions: ”Take a left at the hind leg, and then, erh...”). The issue is skirted around by the South Sudanese authorities - who nevertheless do demonstrate their appreciation of the finer points of cartozoographic positioning:
This image was taken here from Fast Company. Picture by Peter Muller/AP. Any additional images of the maps themselves would be greatly appreciated.
(1) The Norsk Kartozoologisk Forening (Norwegian Cartozoological Society) defines cartozoology as: “[t]he study of animals whose outline appears paradigmatically in the streetscape on the city map, especially with regard to the physical signs of animal presence in the corresponding terrain.”
(2) ‘shaped like living things.’
(3) If that will be the name of the new state. It seems a waste of energy to wage a separatist struggle, merely to prefix a wind direction to the country you’re so determined to break away from.
(4) South Sudan’s parliament still needs to approve the plans, but talks to develop the animal- and vegetal-shaped zonings are already under way with foreign construction firms.
It’s the 1930s, and while elsewhere in the world evil people are poring over maps with plans for plunder and dreams of conquest, cartography is serving a more benign purpose in Harlem, New York City. This Night-Club Map of Harlem is a chart of the fun to be had in the cultural capital of black America, circa 1932.
At that time, this vibrant community on the northern tip of Manhattan was experiencing what came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance – a flowering of African-American literature, theatre and (jazz) music. This map is focused on the area of Harlem just north of Central Park, where much of that flowering took place.
Perhaps exemplary of that renaissance, this map was drawn by Elmer Simms Campbell (1906-1971), the first African-American cartoonist to be published nationally (in Esquire, Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker and Playboy, among others). The map faces southwest, is bounded by 110th Street (in the top left corner), which runs along Central Park’s northern edge, and concentrates on Lenox Avenue and Seventh Avenue (“or heaven”).
This being the tail end of Prohibition (1920-1933), not much effort is made to conceal the fact that alcohol is readily available in Harlem nightlife. As the legend states, [t]he only important omission[on the map] is the location of the various speakeasies but since there are 500 of them, you won’t have much trouble…
Other intoxicants are equally easily obtainable. Near the corner of Lenox Avenue and 131st Street, a hunched figure proclaims Ah’m the reefer man, selling marahuana [sic] cigarettes at 2 for $.25. This section of Harlem, bounded on the other side by 133rd Street, seems to have been a particularly active, if not necessarily profitable nightlife hotspot: […] there are clubs opening and closing at all times – There’s too many to put them all on this map.
Some of the more famous night spots do get name-checked, often accompanied by some insightful information seeming to indicate that Mr Simms Campbell knew what he was talking about.
A lot of attention is lavished on the extraordinary concentration of musical talent that made Harlem hop in those days.
The map is replete with much more detail, a lot of which eludes this map-lover. Why, for example, is everybody asking What’s de numbah? The question is asked in the police station, just north of Small’s Paradise. It’s repeated not far from reefer man. It’s answered with the intriguingly non-revealing answer of “$.35” at the bottom of the map, just next to the peanut seller and the crab man.
This Night-Club Map of Harlem, apparently first published in Manhattan Magazine (1932), was also used as the endpapers of Cab Calloway’s autobiography, Of Minnie the Moocher and Me (1976). Many thanks to Christoph Höser for sending it in. Original context here, at Mike Thibault’s blog.
What would happen if the earth stood still? If the whole planet became a no-spin zone? Worst case scenario: Keanu Reeves destroys the world (1). Slightly less worse case: the oceans migrate to submerge much of the inhabited world. This global catastrophe would lead to the formation of a single supercontinent straddling the equator.
Far-fetched as such a cataclysm might be, as a thought experiment it allows us to examine the gravitational dynamics of our globe, precariously spinning on its axis like a basketball on the fingertip of a Harlem Globetrotter.
Take, for example, the evident truth that land and ocean meet at sea level. A truth so evident that for once (and only once) metres, miles, yards and kilometres all agree: elevation zero. It would seem equally evident that sea level is the same everywhere. But it isn’t.
For the earth isn’t perfectly round. Spinning distorts its shape into what is called an oblate spheroid – a bit flatter at the poles, slightly bulging at the equator. On the grander scale, this discrepancy seems laughably negligible: it amounts to a mere 0.3% difference in length between polar and equatorial axes. But in terms of man-as-measure-of-all-things, it’s a whopper. Or to be more precise, a half marathon: 21 km (13 mi.)
Now imagine the earth stopping cold in its tracks. No more centrifugal force. No more bulging. Over time, the earth’s shape would approximate a perfect ball. But most of the immediate readjusting would be done by the most fluid element on our planet’s surface: the water, which by some measurements currently bulges as much as 8 km (5 mi.) at the equator. The consequences would be far more dramatic than any current climate change scenario. The oceans would not nibble at our shores. They would rise thousands of metres and swallow continents whole.
This would happen as the equatorial aquatic surplus would rush towards both poles, submerging much of the land mass towards either extremity, eventually creating an equatorial megacontinent that would ring the earth and thus separate both polar oceans.
What a strange new world this would be. As the earth would stop rotating (but presumably still circle the sun), one night-and-day cycle would last an entire year. The new continent ringing the globe (2) would include a large part of current Mid-Atlantic, Indian and Mid-Pacific seabeds, perhaps re-emerging legendary continents like Mu, Atlantis and other lands lost beneath the waves.
Most of North America would drown, a rump US still jutting out into the Northern Ocean. Of Europe, only Andalusia would remain (plus a few scattered Alpine, Pyrenean and Balkanic islets). Russia: gone. Central Asia: gone. North Africa would actually gain some land, but Afghanistan and Tibet would no longer be landlocked.
The southern hemisphere would fare a lot better: a lot less land to be lost there in the first place. Australia has to see Tasmania go, but gets a land bridge to Papua and the wider world – and that’s been a while, as attested by the development in isolation of its unique marsupial fauna. Speaking of which. Provided any animals (and humans) survive the Great Stoppage (3), it would be interesting to see what living on a single land mass does to the diversity of the natural world.
Because the Northern and Southern Ocean are now separate from each other, and since both basins have different capacities, there will be two sea levels, with the Southern Ocean’s zero elevation 1.4 km (0.9 mi.) lower than the Northern one.
As mentioned earlier, this scenario is far-fetched, but the theory behind it is not without its relevance to the real world – which is slowing down, slightly but measurably so. About 400 million years ago, the earth rotated 40 times more around its axis for every revolution around the sun – meaning that an earth year had over 400 days, and that oceans bulged even more at the equator than today.
Many thanks to John O'Brien, Thomas McColgan, Paul Drye and Eirik B. Stavestrand for sending in this map. The science (and the computation) behind it is explained in great detail by Witold Fraczek, who devised it at the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) here on the ESRI website.
(1) As Klaatu, in the 2008 remake of the 1951 original sci-fi horror movie of the same name as the title of this post.
(2) What would it be called? Pangaea – again? Ringland? Equatoria?
(3) This sounds like a British remake of (1)
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