Hello Interactors,

I’ve been out of town this week so I wrote a short summary of this year’s cartography season. I realized my posts formed a sort of narrative over the last few months, so I’ve written a short piece that strings together each post into a narrative. I’ve provided jump-off links should you have missed an episode (it happens), are new to Interplace (welcome to a lot of new Interactors!), or just want a refresher (I know I did).

I’ll be back next week after summer solstice with fresh content. That will kick off the summer season on the environment and our interactions with it and through it.

As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.

Please leave your comments below or email me directly.

Now let’s go…

The war continues to draw attention to Russia and maps play a staring role. Russia has cartographic ties to the United States - including a shared and contested border.

Yes, Alaska – aka Russian America – really is that close to Russia

Speaking of borders. Did you know the Ukrainian border Russia invaded was drawn by Americans?

Mapping the powerful and the ponderous at the Paris Peace Conference

With the drawing of European boundaries after WWI the United States realized what rhetorical tools maps could be. They then became forms of Cold War propaganda.

Cartohypnosis leads to widespread neurosis

The United States, and other Western powers, found maps to also be convenient legal binding documents in international law as colonization continued. But legal weapons can be deployed both ways.

Maps and documents bordering continents trapping occupants with legal arguments

However, borders are just frozen lines on a map. Humans haven’t stopped moving since a branch of our species left Africa. Perhaps it’s time maps reflect our fluidity.

Most maps are frozen in time and space, yet our lives are anything but. Do they really represent our dynamic reality?

It could be that we’re stuck in a Cartesian trap. Perhaps we need maps inspired by naturally occurring growth and spawning patterns found in fractals.

We've been ruled by the ruler, but even a line is a curve. It's time we study broccoli

Attempts were made in the 1950s and 60s in America to have roads blend into fractal-like nature instead of aligning to strict grids. But these plans assumed car ownership leading to new patterns of human isolation and exclusion.

Suburbs envisioned and planned from above, have led to divisions in search of love

Humans have long exhibited certain mathematical patterns of behavior in their growth, spawning, and sprawling of civilizations. We may be better served to plan our future with knowledge of these scaling patterns.

As urban populations boom, do we sprawl to make room, crawl away from the doom, or find ways to subsume?

Until then, we need to re-plan our cities and streets to be safe public spaces for all and not just the privileged and powerful few.

Roads are public spaces planned as a dangerous places to preserve powerful bases

Power doesn’t just exist in urban regions. There are powerful farmers too. For example, in Iowa, large farms are consolidating wealth and power. Farmers are selling to other wealthy farmers and developers who are then selling to suburbanites – which only contributes to further urban sprawl.

Urban sprawl is encroaching on the aging farmer's drawl, y'all

What is it about American’s desire to live in suburbia? Is it rooted in fear? Freedom of choice? The car indeed provides safety and freedom. But, ironically, automobile dependence has turned autocratic. And lonely.

Where we live and how we move are planned to exclude...out of a need to seclude

While freedom is being fought with blood and sacrifice in Ukraine, freedom to work high paying jobs anywhere is being fought with employers in America. Many around the world are in the midst of a great transformation. But the fight for freedom is a fight for existence.

As work gets redefined and populations climb, complexities of freedom hit humankind

See you next week!

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