201 - The Reeves (Equinational) Projection
Unfortunately, ‘Globehead! Journal of Extreme Cartography’ was a rather short-lived grad school magazine at Penn State (only 2 issues), otherwise we might have seen some more strange maps like this one.
This ‘equinational projection’ goes where no Mercator or Peters projection ever went, and shows a world in which every country is the same size. A world which is a little different from ours:
* The American continent, especially its northern half, is covered by relatively few states, resulting in an atrophied New World – except for the Carribean, where all those tiny island nations now occupy the same space as giants like the US and Canada.
* Europe, its territory littered with lots of states, medium or small (compared to America), holds a dominating position. Russia (Nr 138) is a mere appendage of Europe.
* Africa, long squeezed and thereafter painfully stretched by the aforementioned Mercator and Peters projections, now holds what at first glance seems the largest block of nations.
* Asia consists of a few very large countries (Russia, China, India, Kazakhstan, Pakistan) which accounts for its relatively small size. This constrasts to almost any other projection, be it size, population or economic growth.
* Australia and New Zealand are the most visible constituents of Oceania, except on this map, where all the Pacific island nations figure more prominently than usual.
“The equinational projection was invented by my friend Catherine Reeves for Globehead! in 1994,” writes Jeremy W. Crampton, editor of Cartographica and associate professor of Geography at Georgia State, who sent this map in. He kindly explains the cryptic acronym IASBS: International Association for the Study of Big Science.
Please click on the map to see it without the annoying sidebar!
Chinese nationalists won’t want to see this map. Look how far away Taiwan is from China.
Comment by Macca — November 6, 2007 @
Interesing. I think inhabitants of many of the world’s microstates (San Marino, Andorra, Nauru, etc.) might like this map.
It’s a little outdated, though. Zaire has since changed its name back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (The Congo is this map is the enighboring Congolese Republic. Nice and confusing.) And tiny Timor Leste (aka East Timor) has since won its independence.
Comment by Darrel Jones — November 6, 2007 @
Not to be used for navigation, obviously.
Comment by the stapler — November 7, 2007 @
http://www.worldmapper.org/ is a website that does a lot of maps where countries a rescaled according to a certain criteria (population, wealth, growth….).
They have a map where each country is roughly the same size:
http://www.worldmapper.org/appendixa.html
Comment by Xavier — November 7, 2007 @
what a great site. i have to return with time.
Comment by josé louro — November 7, 2007 @
Its useful when you’re trying to figure out how the UN might vote in regional blocks.
Comment by cyclepromo — November 7, 2007 @
And how the UN ought to work assuming the nation state as the basic voting unit. (But then stick the security council in the way)
Comment by lordhutton — November 7, 2007 @
It would look nice if recent countries like Timor-Leste were also included…
Comment by Alexandre Gonçalves — November 8, 2007 @
Interesting. If brought up to date, Europe would grow substantially, with Yugoslavia having become 6 (soon, likely 7) different countries.
Comment by Wonko — November 8, 2007 @
Actually, not so much, Wonko.
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia are all depicted on the map already. When the map was made (1994), “Yugoslavia” was just the republics of Serbia and Montenegro. It actually changed its name to “Serbia & Montenegro” in 2002, after Milosevic’s reign of terror ended, and has since split into two separate countries.
I assume you think Kosovo will separate soon. Possibly, though it could also join Albania.
Comment by Darrel Jones — November 8, 2007 @
I was searching for this kind of a blog for months now. Actually lost the hope of finding one, but here i am :) Thanks for the great articles! Looking forward for a little read after dinner :)
Comment by funfacts — November 11, 2007 @
Many folks have pointed out that it would be interesting to see this updated. Speed of update was a design objective as the USSR was closing shop during the weeks this was built. As one of the authors of the IASBS project I am proud to recall that the frequent editions of this map were likely the first accurate political map published for each of the breakaway republics since it did not have to be concerned with disputed borders.
Comment by Scott Fares — November 14, 2007 @
[...] The Equinational Projection map. [...]
Pingback by Exasperated Calculator » Blog Archive » Worst projection ever — November 15, 2007 @
[...] Um blogue interessante, a propósito de mapas curiosos, como este, simulando uma dimensão idêntica de todos os países do mundo. [...]
Pingback by Memória Virtual | “Strange Maps” — November 16, 2007 @
since when has “united kingdom” been a country? That should be split into england, wales, scotland and northern ireland. Still, a very interesting map
Comment by m0le — February 3, 2008 @
In response to comment 15… There are always disputes and debates about what is a country The country list used for this map was the recognized countries in the UN. This is the same list National Geographic uses for their maps. http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/places/countries/country_unitedkingdom.html
Comment by Catherine Reeves — February 20, 2008 @
I would also like to mention that this projection was commissioned by Mr. Scott Fares, Scientist #1 of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Big Science (IASBS). I merely executed his concept.
Comment by Catherine Reeves — February 20, 2008 @