Air pollution has long been a problem in London, and the current mayor has identified pollution as one of his major goals to highlight and tackle polluion, and improve the capital’s air quality during his time in charge. This map, of the modelled 2020 annual pollution levels of NO2, has been produced by Parallel, using the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory 2013 (LAEI) dataset that was published by the Greater London Authority in 2016 (they have since published a slightly updated version). The calculated data is presented as a raster (a grid of estimated pollution values) and Parallel have taken this and made it into an 3D webmap, so that you can “fly around” the map and see towers of pollution – and troughs of fresh, clean air: There’s something quite compelling this kind of presentation – it works well because this kind of pollution is dominated by, and generally restricted to, major roads. The 3D spikes therefore don’t obscure the rest of the map, as they are generally constrained to quite linear features. They act to both emphasise the significant and scary nature of pollution in some areas, and illustrate that, by walking or cycling through back streets rather than on main roads, your pollution intake can be significantly lowered. One striking element, on examining the map, is where elevated sections of road, such as the Hammersmith Flyover, the Westway and the bridges across the Thames, are pollution hotspots – the height meaning that the surrounding environment is further away and so can less effectively absorb the pollution: It’s not just cars, of course – some pollution shows along railway lines frequented diesel trains, while Heathrow Airport (see bottom image) also stands out – particularly the two runways, and specifically the points where aeroplanes...

Urban Rambles is a new book by Nicholas Rudd-Jones, featuring walks through many of England’s cities. The book comes with a 22 route maps, drawn by illustrator Sara Mulvanny (see her portfolio page for the book), including a couple in London, which we feature here. Above is the “London Inner Circle” which stretches from Hyde Park to the Olympic Park, and makes good use of the Regent’s Canal, Thames Path and the Royal Parks, to avoid road-walking in the centre of the capital whereever possible and form a complete loop. Having walked, cycled and even boated recently along the Regent’s Canal, I can confirm that it is a lovely route. Below is another London map in the book, Olympic Park to Tower Hill, which focuses on the eastern end of the above walk, the enlarged scale meaning that more cartouches and other cartographic niceties appear. The colour palette used for the maps is very pleasant – it reminds me a little of the Stamen Watercolour map, but, being hand-drawn, the textures are used discerningly, and don’t distract from the waypoint or route detail. Key landmarks are sketched, with dotted lines connecting them to their actual locations on the map. A number of other cartographic details, such as stars showing particularly scenic locations, trees showing the key green areas, and an attractive compass rose, finish off the map. Urban Rambles is available on Amazon or in all good...

Layers of London, which has just launched, aims to be a platform for geolocating and documenting the local history of the capital. It works by allowing historical facts, comments and memories to be attached to pins on a map. The pins are grouped together as projects, or collections. The map itself can be adjusted, from a standard basemap, to various historical maps of London, including the high-resolution Victorian Ordnance Survey maps of the capital that were scanned by the National Library of Scotland. An ongoing project is also stitching together and orthorectifying (georeferencing) aerial photographs taken by the RAF after the Second World War. This effort, being carried out by school pupils in a number of London schools, is gradually working across London from the east. It’s a great idea, and the project, financed by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a number of other match funders, has a big team on board to manage the project’s utilisation and evolution. The focus so far has been on building out a modern platform and it has only just started acquiring content, so the map is a little sparse in places. We hope that it is able to link up with a number of other projects that georeference old maps and images of London and allow user-generated historical content – such as Wikimapia, the LSE’s Booth Poverty map and accompanying historical notebooks, Mapping for Change,...

You’ve done the Circle Line Pub Crawl. Now try the Circle Line Food Crawl. Or use this special “Food Tube Map”, produced by Wren Kitchens (they write about it here), to visit unusual gastronomic experiences anywhere inside the Zone 1 area marked out by the Circle Line. The 25 restaurants and eateries included in this graphic are all known for doing something a little bit unusual with their food – from vegan burgers to ice cream nachos. The map is based on the well-known tube map, focusing on central London. Note that it doesn’t quite include the whole Zone 1 network – the (yellow) Circle Line is substituted by the (pink) Hammersmith & City line, along the northern side of the network. As Wren Kitchens say: Over the last year, we’ve seen eateries pushing the boundaries and adding innovative new twists to classic dishes and drinks – particularly in London. From Fried Horlicks Ice Cream to Matcha Freakshakes; the capital currently boasts an extensive array of eccentric food/drink trends and experiences – that are proving to be a BIG hit with foodie’s, avid Instagrammers, and those that are simply just curious (and want to understand what all the fuss is about!). It’s clear that there’s an appetite for such products, with many travelling far and wide to give these exciting delicacies a try – therefore, Wren Kitchens have created a fun new visual that maps out exactly where you can find the latest food crazes across Central London, in order to help you plan your route. Anyway, plenty to try if you want something a bit different from your meat and two vegetables this evening. Thanks to Wren Kitchens for the map and...

TfL is keen to get people travelling on the tube when it’s not so busy, and also beyond Zone 1. With this in mind, they’ve commissioned these line maps, in conjunction with Time Out magazine. Each line (except the Waterloo and City) gets one, with the most interesting sections of each line converted into a “wiggle” map, surrounded by various tube-accessible tourist attractions. There’s one for the London Overground too, although it doesn’t help unravel what connects to what on the line – mind you, the official London Overground map is a bit of a headache too. You can see all the maps on this TfL Flickr page. Each poster is coloured by its line, and generally includes the type of tube train that runs on that line, drawn somewhere on the map amongst the tourist attractions – a nice touch. There’s a lot of artistic licence applied to the drawings – for example, the dinosaurs above are serious sexed up compared to their concrete versions that do however indeed appear in Crystal Palace park. You should still go and see them though, if you never have! The line maps tend to not show stations that don’t have anything particularly interesting near them, and the outer ends of the longer lines are also generally missed out. However, the Victoria line (see below) has its full length shown, with things to do at every tube stop. I always knew the Victoria line was the best. The campaign launches officially on Friday so expect to see these posters appearing at various tube stations and in Time Out. Thanks to Diamond Geezer for the...

Tired of London? Samuel Johnson said you are then tired of life. But sometimes, there are attractions in living outside the capital, while continuing to work in the centre. Such as a nice big garden, and being away from the “urban heat island” that makes London hotter than the surrounding regions. To do that, you need to pick a good commuter town, and this tool, from TotallyMoney (who also produced a London house price/sqft map we featured a while back), aims to help you find that. It’s been freshly updated with 2018 data. Basically, there are four attributes – min/max travel time to a London terminus, season ticket cost, life satisfaction score (between 7 and 8 – ask people how happy they are with life, out of 10, they will generally say 7 or 8 on average) and house prices. The tool adds these values together, and ranks each of 115 towns. You can set min/max filters on each of the attributes, and the tool will then reorder the rank of towns that have values falling within your filters. A green/blue colour ramp is used to highlight the better places. Looking at all 115-odd places, Purfleet in Essex is No. 1. Cheap, quick commute in, happy people and good value (relatively speaking) house prices. The results are arranged on a pseudo-map of how the towns link to London via the rail network. It’s not quite right – it’s missing Cambridge to Liverpool Street, and Bedford to Luton for example, and is also missing a few towns, e.g. Marlow. Hertford and Ware are not connected to London correctly, and Cheshunt is also wrong. So don’t use it for journey planning, but it might give you some ideas on places, for sure. To see the actual...

London’s been sweltering under a heatwave for the last couple of weeks. Mapping London co-creator Dr James Cheshire has created this map from the latest (29 JUne) Landsat 8 thermal imagery of the capital. ExCeL is a particular hotspot – its large, flat, metallic roof was showing a temperature of 38°C, having been baked by the sun. The map uses a striking thermal colour ramp – ranging from hot to super-hot. Dr Cheshire’s advice – head to the parks to stay cool. Copyright Spatial Analysis/James...

This is a map of Hackney Borough, from the perspective of its old, wealthy houses, and the discovered and undiscovered treasures buried under them, from the days when Hackney was full of country estates, before the ready sources of water led to a boom in industry. It was drawn by Adam Dant, and is one of the maps featured in his book “Maps of London & Beyond” which was published last month and we reviewed. The map is also available as a fine art print from TAG Fine Arts. We really like the green and yellow colour palette – Hackney is a bustling, inner city borough, but this is a reminder of its more rural times, and its many parks that remain. The use of Kingsland Road as the defining geographical feature, showing it as the widest road, and a straight line (both which are true in real life too), is striking, particularly as it’s shown with a slant, rather than just being part of a grid. The little building sketches, complete with signpost style captions, also act to enhance the map, as do the individual house details. Other inscriptions reveal the heritage behind modern features of the borough. For example, London Fields was once known as Cat & Mutton Fields – a pub nearby retains the old name. Morning Lane was once known as Money Lane. I’m not sure of the reason behind the dinosaur on Hackney Marsh though… There is an exhibition showing large format versions of some of the maps in the book, and other works, at The Map House in Knightsbridge, running until 14 July. The Map House is just around the corner from Harrods and is open during normal working hours. The shop and gallery is worth an extended...

A lot of Londoners are currently focused on the World Cup in Russia at the moment, so Mapping London is taking a look eastwards, thanks to the latest boutique map created by productive cartographers Blue Crow Media. The map is essentially a Moscow version of their London Underground Architecture & Design Map and features the same basic concept of taking a complex metro network, mapping it geographically, and then including, on the reverse, a detailed guide to the most architecturally impressive parts of the underground system, complete with photos and descriptions. The map and guide are bilingual, in England and Russian. The central Moscow area has an inset map, where the metro is shown in the context of the street network. The map data comes from OpenStreetMap. The map is finished in a card wallet, with an “M” cut out of the front, allowing a sneak peak of the cartography within. Londoners are very proud of the London Underground’s efficiency (most of the time) and history, but are perhaps willing to accept that the Moscow Metro is even more ornate than their own, and this guide nicely encapsulates the opulence of Moscow’s mass transit. It is available from Blue Crow Media’s online store. Thanks to Blue Crow Media for the review...

Adam Dant has, for a long time, been sketching lovely maps of London history, culture and phenomena, often focusing in particular on the historic East End. Now, Batsford, an imprint of Pavilion Books, has produced this book, collating Dant’s existing wonderful maps (and debuting some new ones) in single place and adding background information. The book has been created in partnership with Spitalfields Life, a long-running local blog for the area, and is published today. The book is impressively large, each individual page being landscape A3 size. This format gives each map the space it needs on a single page, to allow the detail, often including hand-written annotations and depictions of individual people, houses, cartouches and other embellishments, to come out clearly. The paper is also uncoated, giving a slightly rough, traditional map feel. The overall production quality and presentation is excellent – always critical for a book containing so many graphic works – congratulations to Batsford for taking such care with the production, giving the maps the justice they deserve. There are nearly 50 maps in all, many of whom have only previously been available as fine art works. A lovely graphical contents page (actually run-in across several pages) provides a glimpse of each map, through a circle, for those wanting to pick and choose rather than read from cover to cover. The title hints that it’s not just London that has been drawn by Dant, and indeed near the end locations as diverse as Paris, Rome, Scotland’s Great Glen and Tunbridge Wells get the cartographic treatment too. But first and foremost this is a book capturing London. Themes stretch from slang to Shakespeare, riots to coffee houses and Hackney to Mayfair. Who knew there were so many wrecks in the Thames estuary,...

The Tube Map is a design classic – the straight lines, even spacing and lack of unnecessary above-ground detail has become a hall-mark of metro maps across the world, since it was first drawn by H.C. Beck in the 1930s. Today, the printed versions of London’s tube map include a specific acknowledgement of the creator of the concept, even as the map itself has greatly expanded with the addition of a many new services. However, there was a period of time, between the merging together of various rival networks in central London at the beginning of the 20th century, and the creation of the Beck tube map, when cartographers attempted to show the crowded and complex network in different, but geographically-focused, ways. This map, by E.G. Perman, and available in the David Rumsey Map Collection, was one of the last maps produced, of London’s tube network, before the Beck “revolution” of the 1930s. It was drawn in 1927 and issued the following year, and shows some network simplifications – the lines between stations are shown with simple, gentle curves, rather than capturing the actual wiggles of the network. Stations are shown as small filled diamonds for regular stations, and larger, hollow diamonds for larger ones – when these are overlaid, due to the different colours of the different lines, there is some indication of the connection. Interestingly, and surprisingly, the complex crossovers of the Northern Line, just south of Camden Town, are shown on the map. Connections with mainline rail are shown beside the relevant station with small curly lines, with the operator name written just below them in a smaller text. This being a 1920s map, the classic “flowery” touches are present, such as the sweeping serifs of the font, waves on the...

[Updated with additional technical detail – see below] Here’s a fascinating data map of ground deformation (subsidence, upswelling) in central London, based on data from 2011-2017 and recalibrated to show the average annual change – be it rising (blue = 2mm/year upwards) or sinking (red = 2mm/year downwards). The data was obtained from 150 remote sensing images captured by the TerraSAR-X satellite and other InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) sources. It was processed using at TRE ALTAMIRA in Milan, Italy, using a technique called Permanent Scatterer Interferometry. All sorts of interesting patterns appear from the map. The most obvious is the red line running across the middle – the Crossrail tunnels across central London. The project has likely resulted in the slight drop in levels seen, although extensive compensation grouting has aimed to minimise the changes. Other red lines show electrical ducting projects and other utilities/infrastructure projects. Conversely, a large blue area near the south edge of the map might be early premptive groundwork on the Northern line Underground extension to Battersea Power Station, and the extensive residential works at Battersea Power Station (which is right at river/sea level) and the Vauxhall area in general. The specific reason however is not known. The large red area to the east could be two projects – various residential and other construction around the O2 Arena in North Greenwich, and the various works on the north bank opposite – London City Island, Limmo Peninsula shaft for Crossrail tunnelling works, and general residential tower development at Canning Town. This area has the River Lea running through it with dramatic meanders. The dewatering of deep chalk aquifer here, necessary to stabilise the ground, has seen a significant drop. Also, crucially, there were no buildings here before, so ground level...

What do you do when you are a boutique retailer, with two showrooms that are both small and are a ten minute walk away from each other, with some interesting but confusing streets in between? If you are in a rush you just screenshot a Google Maps route and stick it on your website, so it’s refreshing to see deVOL, an upmarket kitchen retailer, has taken a different approach and has drawn and published a leaflet containing this map of their Clerkenwell neighbourhood, showing not only a route between the two showrooms, but also a selection of interesting things to visit in the local area. The map was drawn by Assistant Graphic Designer Mol Mathews, and a blog post on the deVOL website details the brief and the process. The map has a nice mix of hand-annotated places and regularly labelled streets, with four pastel shades added sparingly to give a bit of colour to the map, and the all-important route highlighted in red. The map is firmly grounded in realism, with pubs, dogs, pigeons and brollies showcasing the reality of London. 16 points are numbered, with an accompanying key detailing these “favourite spots”. In all, it’s a lovely homage to a lovely inner London neighbourhood. It’s a work of care and attention. You can pick up a free copy in either of their showrooms. Obtained from a deVOL showroom after Mapping London spotted a...

Mapping London has long enjoyed Stephen Walter’s fabulously detailed, painstakingly created pencil-sketch maps of London, and now one of his most famous works, The Island, has been made into a jigsaw puzzle. It was launched late last year by publishers Prestel UK and comes as a 400-piece work. The team at Mapping London Towers likes to think that it knows London’s geography pretty well – after all, we’ve reviewed over 300 other maps here so far. So we assumed that completing this puzzle was going to be straightforward, something to piece together in a short break. How wrong we were – it took three of us nearly six hours each (over three long lunches) to complete the puzzle. There are various challenges making it harder – the map is black and white, which means there are no colour clues, apart from the red banded pieces forming the edge of the puzzle. In addition, as a semi-autobiographical work of the creator, some of the place names are spelt in local vernacular or slang. So going by simple place names is harder than you might expect. Conversely, if you have a good knowledge of historical spots in London, some demographic statistics (such as the area with lowest life expectancy) or can recognise flags and know which London neighbourhoods the corresponding nationality has an established community in, then this can be invaluable. Subtle changes in the density of the penciled buildings can also help. Stephen was never afraid to voice his opinion on many areas, and even be downright derogatory about some of them – perhaps sometimes deserved. But you really need to know London’s rough as well as its smooth, for these to help with the task of solving. The jigsaw puzzle pieces themselves are also...

This stunning map reveals the athletic footprint of London. Strava have taken their huge volume of movement data, recorded by runners, cyclists and other data-enabled fitness peeps and created a heatmap of London (and indeed, the world). Many people use Strava to record their cycle to work, whereas running to work is much rarer, and recreational running is much more likely so, in order to see an alternative, largely non-commuting flow map of London, we have here featured the running data. A street network is still seen, but the brightest lines are no longer the big road arteries of London – instead it is the park roads, athletics tracks, canal towpaths and the Thames footpaths. It shows a London reordered towards two feet rather than four (or two) wheels. The extract at top, centred over the London’s central area, shows four parks in each corner – Regent’s Park, Victoria Park, Greenwich Park and Battersea Park, as hotspots of activity, along with both sides of the Thames, the Regent’s Canal towpath, and Hyde Park. Two blurred areas – at Canary Wharf and the eastern part of the City of London – are likely a combination of a large number of runners and the GPS multipath-interference effect of the very tall, close together buildings in these areas. Looking more closely at certain areas, you can start to see the thousands of individual traces in each area, along with local “obstacles”: This obstacle, at Barnes Bridge in west London, is due to be fixed soon with a new underbridge: We featured an earlier version of the map in 2013, back then it only include a month’s worth of data, whereas this latest map includes all the data up to September 2017 (except that marked as private, in...

Tranquil Pavement is an online map recently launched by the Tranquil City project based in London, in association with the Outlandish Cooperative and funded by Organicity. It aims to highlight tranquil places to visit, if the hustle and bustle of city life gets too much, by plotting “crowdsourced “locations – referenced in an Instagram feed – as green circles, and also shows a general overlay map shade of calmness (or otherwise) across the capital. The latter is shown by a white (higher noise/pollution) to green (lower noise/pollution) gradient based on official data from DEFRA and the GLA. A different shade of green, showing park footprints, is underlaid to further emphasise likely tranquil locations. The background map makes a point of naming, and so highlighting, only smaller roads, rather than larger noisy artery roads, and also showing some water features, including, unusually, underground rivers such as the River Fleet. The overall map – tending to green in more suburban outer London, but with green highlights for specific tranquil locations more likely to be in the inner city, results in a rather pleasing to look at – although perhaps grey black would be an even better colour for pollution/noise – representing the murk of an untranquil location. Explore the live map here, or add the #tranquilcitylondon tag to your geotagged photos of London’s peaceful places, on...

The Chiswick Timeline, a mural of maps showing the history of the pleasant west London neighbourhood, was successfully crowdfunded and launched last month. It appears alongside a road as it passes underneath a railway bridge by Turnham Green station. A commemorative book, reproducing the work, is available to buy online or at Foster’s Bookshop on Chiswick’s high street. At Mapping London, we love the idea of a community getting together to brighten up a drab wall in their area, particularly when the artwork commissioned is a map! In this case, it is many maps – even better. The mural features 16 different maps, 8 on each side of the road, from 1593 (Norden’s map of Middlesex) right up to the latest 2018 Legible London map of the area (those attractive pedestrian maps you see on totem poles throughout the inner London, and now extending further out). We feature three of these maps here – at the top is a map by William Knight from 1700 of “Towns, Villages, Gentlemen’s Houses for 20 Miles round London”, it shows that Turn(h)am Green has been around for far longer than the tube station which bears its name. Above is a land-use map drawn by Milne a hundred years later, in 1800. This is a historic “data” map, the colours depicting different land types. Showing choropleths and indeed simply using colour at all on a map was pretty ground-breaking 200+ years ago. The many market gardens around Chiswick are coloured in blue, with orchards in green. Finally, below is the 1949 Ordnance Survey “6 inch to the mile” map, with just the River Thames coloured in, which shows that Chiswick never got fully urbanised – the open lands to the south of the earlier maps have simply become...

If Lumiere London, which finished yesterday, has whet your appetite for seeing artistic displays of light after dark, then there is another festival of lights which runs until Saturday. It’s at Canary Wharf and called Winter Lights. Think Lumiere London, in a smaller area and without the huge crowds. And, like the King’s Cross, it’s produced its own special map for the event, which we feature above. Outdoor exhibits are indicated as magenta circles, and indoor ones are shown as white circles. It doesn’t quite have the glowing-lights-at-night feel of the Lumiere maps, but it’s clear and easy to read, and shows the area’s water-dominant geography well. Canary Wharf is a reasonably compact site, so you should be able to see many of the lights quickly – and Canary Wharf itself at night is quite impressive, even without the extra lighting. Winter Lights runs from 5-10pm, until 27...

King’s Cross is one of the six Lumiere London areas, where light-based artworks are on display every evening until Sunday. We looked at the general maps of the event yesterday, but we discovered also that King’s Cross has its own map, showing where the exhibits are. You don’t have to follow the marked route, although it does take you past all the key exhibits, and, with the expected large crowds, you may find it makes sense to follow this path of least resistance! Mapping London likes this attractive, clear map that is using a nice “nighttime” black, pastel pink and maroon colour scheme, bright colours for the routes and attractions, and nice labelling for the new streets. The area is rapidly evolving with different areas constantly opening up to the public. Current construction zones are shown as areas of dots. The canal is shown with watery waves, and green areas are a lighter pink shade. The overall effect is rather nice. Paper copies of this map are being handed out at the entrances to the area each evening. People who get one, and visit four places marked on the map (including a colourfully lit night market), can get their map stamped at each, and then and get free candyfloss or a glow band. Waterlicht (No. 5 on the map) is the undoubted highlight – lasers and dry ice across the huge Granary Square. See pic below for the general effect, it is one to definitely experience for yourself, it fills the whole square and has the crowds underneath it in awe. It reminds me of the Weather Project at the Tate Modern back in 2003. If you are looking for No. 7, look up high! It’s a screen suspended from a crane, which is...

The Lumiere London, a free show of more than 50 light-based artworks, scattered throughout central London, starts today and the lights are switched on for the next four evenings, until Sunday 21st. It’s the second running of the event, after the inaugural in January 2016 which led to huge crowds of onlookers on the streets (over a million in total). This year, many more central London roads are closed to traffic, which may make things easier for moving around on foot. This year’s event is based on six zones, and there is a simple map (above) showing the zones, and maps for each of these zones (two of these are below). There is also a more detailed map (excerpt at bottom) that you can buy for download, and a free app, which is also useful for navigating between the works. In fact, the website map, the pay-to-download map excerpt and the map in the app are all slightly different! Probably easiest just head to the giant ball above Oxford Circus and then follow the crowds. We like the stylized zone maps, they have an appropriately night-time/glowing theme, and should be quite useful to navigate with – or else just follow the lights and look up! London Lumiere is promoted by Visit London and organised by...

Dry January? You might want to look away. From the industry’s official promoter of the fortified Andalusian wine in the UK, comes this map of tapas bars and restaurants in central London where you can be sure of finding a good glass of sherry. The map was published in October last year but we just spotted it now, and we like it! The map was created by illustrator Andy Smith. There’s lots of nice details in it – for example, the “Sherry Ferry” that appears in the Thames, heading towards Canary Wharf, is a reference to a ferry that used to go between two of the Camino bars in London. The plate of Mojama tuna is a nod to the animal that is, like sherry, local to Cadiz. Some tube station roundels and the River Thames appear – two musts with any London map – and the venues themselves are illustrated with numbered circles. A sprinkling of London landmarks are interspersed with names and logos of the bars/restaurants concerned, and various tapas-style snacks. N.B. Be careful if using this as a map to navigate by. The designer has gone beyond the usual bounds of simplifying detail and removing non-key roads, by connecting Farringdon Road and Borough High Street together across an unnamed bridge across the Thames. The former actually goes to Blackfriars Bridge and the latter to London Bridge, which are separated by several other bridges. This will be especially confusing if using the map to navigate after having tried several sherries. Use the London Sherry Trail map to find your venues, then your smartphone mapping platform of choice to work out how to actually get there! You may be able to pick up a paper copy of the map from the venues themeselves...

The Children’s Map of London (sometimes called the Children’s Pictorial Map of London) was drawn by Leslie Bullock and first published by Bartholomew in 1938, the edition here is I believe the original version. All royalties from the sale of the map went to the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street (aka GOSH) which appropriately does itself appear on the map. The decorative style brings to mind an older time – perhaps the 1920s, when decorative maps were popular and the Beck tube map had not yet appeared – or perhaps even a map from the 1800s. Despite this, it was likely a good map to navigate by, as it includes most of the street network, and doesn’t distort the geography. A lot has changed of course, since the 1930s – Euston station, for instance, looks a lot grander on the map, as this was before it was pulled down and replaced with a giant shed in the 1960s. It looks more grand than St Pancras even, on this map! University College also gets a nice drawing in, above. We liked also the appearance of the “Cheshire Cheese” on Fleet Street. A pub these days, and back then too, so a slightly curious choice for a map aimed at children, even if it is very historic: It’s a shame also the Zoo doesn’t make it in – the map stops just south of it, but does at least include a note “To the Zoo”. Hamleys doesn’t appear either – another institution that was certainly going strong at the time of this map. The cartography is clear and crisp, with a good balance of style and function. A yellow/red/blue colour scheme is adopted for all buildings and stations, so that the map is...

This hand-sketched map has been produced by Adam Dant and Herb Lester, for the East End Trades Guild, to promote over 200 small businesses based in east and north-east London. Over a hundred of these are independent shops, cafes and restaurants to visit. The map is presented with an unusual projection, focusing on Columbia Road near the bottom of the map (with the greatest concentration of featured businesses) with the rest of the area curving away as you look towards the top. Some places beyond the bounds of the map are included as little adornments attached to the map, which is in the style of a pinboard. Cardboard cutout-style illustrations show some businesses at work, while parks, tube stations and water features also show. The built up fabric between the road network is nicely illustrated with a striped hatching effect: The cartography is really rather lovely, and a million miles away from the ubiquitous Google Maps map with icon pins – it has its place, is accessible and is certainly an “easy” option, but putting points on a standard Google Maps map does not make a “map”. Designing a custom map like this, specifically focused on the structure of the area, gives the subject matter the framing it deserves. Kudos to the guild for commissioning a proper map like this. Here’s the full map in all its glory, click on it to view a larger version (you may need to click again if your browser initially resizes the image): Find out more about the map and the small businesses on it, at Spitalfields Life. Discovered on the Spitalfields Life...

It’s December! So Christmas is not far away, and so here’s a nice map which takes that always popular London map – the tube map – focuses on the inner city section, coverts the lines to coloured tissue paper, and hangs baubles on many of the stations, detailing a nearby Christmas-related attraction, be it a Christmas market, and ice rink, panto or other seasonal event. There’s 100 altogether. It’s more useful for ideas than navigation, although it will at least get you to the nearest tube station. Watch out – a couple of stations are on the wrong side of the River Thames though! To its credit, the London Overground gets a look in (all the interesting new stuff in London is happening near the Orange Line isn’t it?) The poor tube map gets reused for all sorts of different kinds of things (including a similar 2016 Christmas map) but the colours and lines are such an important identity for how London works, that it’s a natural way to present geographic information like this. And while an official Christmas-edition tube map would be amazing, this is certainly the next best thing. Here’s the full version, with captions and station/distance information in the section below, click for a larger image (if your browser then resizes the full image back down, click it once more): The map was commissioned by Clarendon and created by...

The Mayor of London released a draft version of his New London Plan this week. The plan is full of interesting maps, but one of the nicest looking ones is on the front cover. It’s an illustrative map created by, we believe, artist Jan Kallwejt (portfolio) which combines geographical landmarks, in their approximately correct relative locations, with illustrative features of the London experience – tube station roundels, parks with trees, and building terraces. As this is a plan for the future of London, there are also some future references – tunnel portals for the proposed Crossrail 2, for example. We really like the colour palette – yellow, cream, brown and green predominate. It’s nice also to see a comprehensive map like this, covering the whole of the Greater London Authority area, produced as a pure vector artwork, you can zoom right in for all the lovely detail. Direct link, or download a large version of the map. Discovered through online...

This rather nice diagrammatic map, created by by Premium Tours, looks at the top ranking on TripAdvisor for each cuisine type, for London, and then plots the restaurant concerned, in its approximate geographic location. Each restaurant is represented by a category icon, which varies according to the continent that the cuisine is based in. A few adornments are added – key parks, the River Thames and major London icons. A theoretical road network is also included, although you may want to consult Google Maps or OpenStreetMap to actually navigate to the restaurant concerned. Accompanying the map is an A-Z (well, W) list of the restaurants, with their street addresses. From Piebury Corner (TripAdvisor #1 Scottish restaurant in London) in Islington, to Peckham Bazaar (#1 Albanian), this map crosses culinary as well as geographical boundaries, and, perhaps most interestingly, shows that many of the top “theme” restaurants are not in Zone 1 touristville, but require a bit of urban exploration. We really like the colour palette used, the attractive adornments, and the fact that the map strips superfluous detail right down, making it a lot more interesting and engaging to read by focusing on the restaurants themselves. It really highlights the breadth of London restaurant choices, and that each major cuisine type is well represented right across the inner city. See a large version of the map here. Spotted via...

I have to confess, there was a sharp intake of breathe when this map was unwrapped here at Mapping London towers. We are a big fan of tube maps (we even have a special page just for them) and we know you are too, so discovering a new one is always a bit of a thrill. This is a beautifully designed package, with a roundel-shaped hole cut in the textured card, revealing the glimpse of a tube map with the familiar Transport for London line colours but the lines looking distinctively different – this is a paper geographical tube map of London: Using the famous “Johnston” font for the text throughout (note those diamond-shaped dots on the ‘i’s), and including a detailed description of some of the most architecturally interesting stations on the network, on the reverse, the map folds out to approximately A2 size, covering almost the entire network (Heathrow Terminal 5, Amersham and a couple of other outliers get cheekily omitted). An inset version shows the central London detail and includes a skeletal road network to put this section in context. The main map is presented on a simple white background with just the lines and stations, as well as the River Thames. The map has been curated by Mark Ovenden, well-known transport historian and tube geek, who’s detailed notes about some of the stations make this much more than just a map: Our favourite thing about this map is the paper it is printed on – lovely, grainy paper, and presented in that enticing roundel-adorned card envelope. The map inside arranges familiar colours and names into a different perspective and the notes on the reverse are full of interesting detail. You can get your own piece of tube map design from...

Songs of London Town replaces street names with song names. The pastel coloured, hand-drawn basemap is overlaid with hundreds of song titles, each arranged over the street that it references. It’s rather a clever idea and allows for the creation of your own song-narrated self-guided tour of each central London neighborhood you happen to be in. The map covers the centre of the capital as well as decent part of the inner city – see the full map pic at the bottom of this post. The reverse, or “B Side” of the map, contains further details on each song reference: You can find the map at Present Indicative. (If you like the style, also see Fictional London, which is also produced by Present Indicative, we we reviewed it recently.) Thanks to Present Indicative for a review...

Citee has been producing technical T-shirts featuring maps of various cities around the world, including London, for the last year. They are currently crowdfunding for a new black version of the T-shirts, with the map detail overlaid in greys and whites. Citee were kind enough to send a sample of their existing London design, which is a white technical T-shirt with minor roads, railways and housing in light grey, and major roads, rivers and lakes in dark grey. Alex Szabo-Haslam of Citee designs the T-shirts in Sheffield. The map design appears on the front of the shirt, spreading to the edges of both sleeves, and, for London, covers an area stretching from Tooting Common in the south to Archway in the north, and from Brent Cross in the west to Walthamstow in the east. The Thames makes for a striking wavy black line in the middle of the shirt. The map detail, based on a custom OpenStreetMap render, is printed directly onto the 100% polyester technical fabric. The transfer quality is excellent, considering the material it is printed on, with individual detail clear and generally sharp. The combination of the street topography and the noticeable vertical grain of the material is rather pleasing (see my Victoria Park closeup below), and, by restricting the design to white, greys and black, it creates a design that is quite sophisticated and not too in-your-face. The T-shirts themselves are made by American Apparel in the USA, and come in sizes XS-XL (note that US sizes are a little bigger than UK sizes – my XS sample would fit an S and possibly an M here). You can get a London (or other city) technical T directly from Citee or join the Kickstarter to get your design in the...

Jones & Sawers’ Map of Fictional London is an a hand-drawn typographic map of central London, where the street and park names are replaced with the names of the novels, plays and other works that mention them. Over 600 such pieces are named on the map. The cartography is rather attractive, with pastel shades and the literary placenames written on in an attractive font. The work is produced by The Literary Gift Company and is available through them or Present Indicative, in both folded and poster forms. We love the clear and attractive cartography and the detail in the map – a key on the reverse of the map links each story to the real street name and quotes the specific line in the work that references the street (or park), allowing you to create your own literary tour, taking your own route through the centre of the capital. Buy a copy of this lovely map here – currently at £5.99 for the folded version, it’s a nice stocking filler for that London literary map geek you know! Thank you to the Literary Gift Company for sending a review...

Urban Good, a new community interest company created by Charlie Peel, have this month published the first edition of their London National Park City Map. This huge (over 1 metre wide when unfolded) paper map covering the whole of London, was created through a crowdfunding campaign, and is available from Urban Good’s web store for just a payment of a postage and handling fee. (N.B. temporarily out of stock, but you can pre-order for delivery expected soon). It’s part of a campaign, led by Dan Raven-Ellison, to designate London as the UK’s first National Park city – along the way, increasing the awareness and use of the capital’s many and varied green spaces, to further the fitness and health of Londoners and visitors. The campaign has caught the eye of the London Mayor, and this map has the support of the Greater London Agency. The map was produced using Ordnance Survey and GiGL (Greenspace Information for Greater London) data and aims to map all of London’s green space and water. When you include private gardens, it’s is estimated that almost 50% of London is green or blue. Urban Good have created a detailed map which has many functions – as well as mapping the green and blue space, it highlights public parks, allotments, marked walking trails, city farms, allotments, cemeteries and nature reserves. It also shows the city’s highest peaks and is indeed overlaid with a hillshade texture to show the slopes and hills. This has the effect of blurring and pixelating the garden/water detail below it – a printing quirk when combining raster field data like this with the vectors of the park outlines and captions means that the whole image is typically rasterised when sending to a lithographer or digital printer –...

Not all maps of London need to cover the whole, 33 borough, 8 million-population metropolis. Here’s three maps that focus more on a local area: 1. Tottenham This attractive little map promotes a number of the new start-up businesses in the area – including a climbing wall, a brewery/bar, and arts centre and a concept “healthy” fried chicken restaurant. It was created by Pencil Bandit. 2. Southall This map of Southall in west London was created by James Merry. It illustrates the key buildings on Southall’s key streets, and helpfully includes an inset map of London, showing Southall’s location relative to the rest of the capital sprawl. The noise of Heathrow airport is never far away from Southall and the map shows where the planes are landing – just to the west! 3. South-East London Finally, this sketch map of inner SE London was created by the excellently named Running for Crayons. It’s a colourful, energetic map, showing that there’s a lot of interesting things going on in an area tradionally off the tourist trails. The maps are the copyright of their respective...

Map on Table is a project, currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter by Hasan Agar, to machine-cut a bespoke, ornate metallic map of central London, apply a colour finish and mount it on four legs to create a small table. The table corners have markers showing the cardinal directions on them. A rendering of Agar’s map, with additional waymark names added – not on the physical product, can be seen below. We really like the way the road network is carefully reproduced, the wave detailing for the the River Thames, and little tree shapes representing the extents of central London parks. If you look more carefully, more and more careful detail appears. The cuts in the metal form the roads, allowing the network to “shine through” the table surface. Certain key buildings are shown symbolically. The British Museum’s famous front portico is drawn, as is the market building in Covent Garden. Horses and guards are shown beside Whitehall, and Leicester Square has a film director’s clapperboard. Overall, it’s a lovely map, beautifully designed, and looks fantastic when machined in metal. It’s almost too nice to place anything on the table itself. You can see the prototype tables in all their cartographical glory in this promotional video, and you can join the Kickstarter here. There is also a New York City version. All photos courtesy of Hasan...

We featured Bridges of London earlier this week. However, the public realm relating to the Thames is more than the river itself and the bridges crossing it. One of London’s defining features, in recent times, as the Thames has cleaned and the spaces beside it have become less-traffic choked, is its riverside frontage. This lovely new illustrated map by Martin Thompson focuses both on the bridges and on the public realm beside the river. Running from Canary Wharf and Greenwich in the east, to Battersea Park in the west, it includes beautiful sketches of the 12 foot-accessible bridges in this section, the iconic buildings alongside, and other little details, such as the lost (that is, now underground) smaller rivers that meet the Thames in this central part of the capital. Martin redraws the river as a straight line of fixed width, with the buildings on either side flaring out and away from it. Most of London’s main tourist attractions, are in fact, not far from the River Thames, so the sketch encapsulates many of London’s most notable landmarks. The bridge detail is lovely: Intriguingly, Martin uses brown to show the river, rather than the usual blue. You would think this would result in muddy, murky illustration, however it turns out it works really well, contrasting with the colour and detail of the riverbanks, and the blue of the skies beyond, on either side. Martin has plans to print to order giclee prints of the work, contact him via his website for further details. Images courtesy of the...

The River Thames is London’s defining geographical feature and its inclusion is almost mandatory on any map attempting to cover the whole of the capital. Bridges are most Londoners’ visible contact with the river, with over 30 spanning the river in London, including elevated crossing by the so-called “Underground”. As such, illustrated maps of the Thames are a popular produced work that Londoners can relate to. This hand-drawn artwork by illustrator Lis Watkins show the bridges in their approximately correct geographical position, and correct distances apart, although the width of the Thames itself is greatly exaggerated, as a fish jumping out of the river announces in a little speech bubble! Sketches of all 35 bridges that are within the Greater London boundary are included, as close as possible to the bridge itself concerned on the map. The map includes the outlines of major parks beside the river, and a lovely bridge-themed title panel, adorned with architectural elements of the bridges themselves. The map was commissioned by the AA and Londonist. See a full-size version here. Spotted via...

This map created by illustrator Mike Hall (who we’ve featured before) for Penguin Books, shows the locations in London that featured in John le Carré’s George Smiley spy novels. This is a lovely map, drawn from scratch and using a distinctive yellow/green and pastel blue pastel colour palette that evokes classic literary works and hand-printed maps. Illustrated vignettes, positioned near their actual location, show the houses and scenes. Tube stations, parks and railways are also woven into the map, with careful cartography and labelling by Mike ensuring the map does not clutter and is attractive to look at. Some subtle digital paper “grain” in the map background, when you zoom in close, adds to the vintage feel: The map was commissioned by Penguin to mark the forthcoming release of A Legacy of Spies, after more than 25 years since the previous George Smiley novel. The new book is published on 7 September. You can see the full map as a PDF here. Copyright Mike Hall and reproduced with kind...

The Corporate Archives division of Transport for London recently held a short internal exhibition at their headquarters at Palestra, called “Mapping London” and showcasing new and old maps of London’s transport from the archive. Amongst the highlights included this Lego historic tube map. The Lego is modern but the map was one of the last pre-Beck (pre-straight lines) map of the tube network, from the early 1930s. It contrasts with the light-up Lego map of the modern network that was recently installed in the new Lego shop on Leicester Square. I also liked this experimental Braille map of the tube network, from the 1990s. As well as the big station areas with their names written in Braille, the lines themselves have different patterns, a little like physical version of the current black & white map of the network, an adaptation of which was used in this colour-blind tube map. Finally there was a glimpse of a modern geographical map of the tube network I hadn’t seen before. Dating from the early 1970s, it shows the network and its actual relation with the rest of London, and can be compared with the more modern London Connections map. Unfortunately the print was very small and I wasn’t able to capture a good image of it. The two yellow boxes near the bottom indicate the opening of the final section of the Victoria Line, between Victoria and Brixton, which happened in 1971. Thank you to TfL’s Press Office for inviting Mapping London to the...

This artistic map of central London attractions was drawn by illustrator Andy Smith for Chiltern Railway, as part of a promotion to attract families into London during the summer holidays. We like the bold and unusual colour scheme for the map, of maroons, pinks and oranges. It’s fairly unusual to see the Thames in pink but it works with the theme! We also like the predominance of bicycles appearing, and especially the “Boris Bike” unofficial nickname for the bikeshare, appearing prominently. It may never have been a term that the authorities have used, but, with the official names always being long-winded, it is something that has stuck! The map is an artwork but is approximately topologically correct, revealing just how much there is to do on a central London day-trip. Copyright Andy...

It’s a typical August day in London today, with the rain falling pretty heavily and at least one tube station closed due to flooding. London’s greatest long-term flooding threat, though, is from isothermal expansion of the world’s water (i.e. it needs slightly more space as it heats) due to climate change. The above map was produced by Jeffrey Linn, showing what London would look like if submerged by 40 metres of seawater, which would happen due to the isothermal expansion happening by a temperature change that would cause 2/3rds of the world’s ice sheets to melt. Blues show the underwater regions, while greens and yellows show land that is dry – for the time being. Unsurprisingly, Thames-side London is well and truly in the drink, with some new islands appearing at Wimbledon Common, Kingston Hill and Richmond Park, while Shooters Hill, Crystal Palace, Highgate and Epping Forest form new peninsulas. Dark blues show particularly deep water – as well as the Thames itself, the Bluewater shopping centre, currently deep inside a chalk quarry, becomes a dark pool. This is a nice looking, if alarming, piece of cartography by Jeffrey, using the classic altitude and bathymetric colour ramps made famous from the Times Atlas and other classic physical maps of the world, with the lush, verdant greens of low-lying areas offset by the barren yellows and browns of higher places. The existing main road map is lightly superimposed in grey, to ground this map in current reality and allow for easy checking of the under/above water status of your neighbourhood. Quite a bit of climate change will have had to have happened for this scenario to happen. A more pressing scenario, showing a water rise of just 10 metres, will still put plenty of London...

Time Out London, in conjunction with official Harry Potter portal Pottermore, created this lovely map showing 18 places in central London that have featured in the Harry Potter books and films. From Platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross station, to the Knight Bus crossing Lambeth Bridge, the map allows you to construct your own Harry Potter themed tour of the capital. Filming locations are marked with a purple logo while book locations are in brown. The places are overlaid on an attractive, muted map of central London streets, parks and the River Thames, the map being finished off with an attractive border and adornments that makes it so much more than just pins on a Google Map. If you are wondering why the Happy Potter studio tour (aka “Warner Bros Studio: The Making of Harry Potter”) is on this map, it’s not actually in central London, or indeed London at all, but is up near Watford, just beyond the suburbs of the city – trains from Euston Station will get you to Watford Junction in less than half an hour, followed by a shuttle bus that runs to the studios from there. The other key London-related Harry Potter attraction is the location of the West End play Harry Potter And The Cursed Child. This is at the brown No. 3 “Charing Cross Road” on the map. Both the play and the studio tour are very hard to get tickets for, you need to book a long way in advance. The best walk-in Harry Potter experience in London is without doubt Platform 93/4, where there is an embedded luggage trolley where you can pose for free for photographs, and a rather unusual shop right next door. See the full size map and detail here. Copyright...

We do like arty tube maps here at Mapping London and Travelzoo have obliged with this rather pretty map of 50 free things to do in this summer in London, attaching the attractions to tube stations, with the key elaborating on the station names and walking distance to the place of interest. With London’s size and diversity, such a graphic is always only going to show a small selection of things, but Travelzoo have tried to include a decent variety across the capital, from Highgate Cemetery in the north to the Horniman Museum in south London and deer-spotting in Richmond Park to the south-west. The map is not perfect to use as a tube map, nor indeed as a map of how to get from the tube station to the “thing”, but it’s a nice graphic to use as a starting point for planning a trip to London that doesn’t just involve the standard Tower of London + Buckingham Palace tourist circuit. In terms of the cartography, the map adopts the famous straight lines and angles of the official tube map, although the river gets a more natural treatment. The addition of some icon-type artwork to illustrate locations in the capital is also a nice touch. It’s not perfect – I could nitpick and say that Highgate Cemetery isn’t free (unless you look over the fence) or that the Routemaster bus is in the wrong place as you’ll need to go to Trafalgar Square and eastwards to see one in regular service these days, but that would be mean. Download the full map as a PDF from here. Map copyright...

[Updated] TfL have published a “London Digital Speed Limit Map“, showing speed limits for cars on a map of London’s public roads, for the last few years. It is updated annually, and it’s latest version has just been released. The map is a graphical representation of data supplied to digital mapping data providers, so that they can program in the correct speeds for satnavs in cars. The updates over the last few years reveal the gradual switch, in inner-city London boroughs, from 30mph (blue) to 20mph (green) limits for residential roads. In 2017 and 2018, this has resulted in a glaring hole in west-central London, where Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Wandsworth boroughs have resolutely stuck to allowing motorised traffic to travel at up to 30mph in residential areas, with a few small area exceptions (e.g. Queen’s Park in Westminster borough). This is not a particularly pretty map to look at, being essentially the output from a GIS (geographic information system) rather than a cartographically produced work designed for regular viewing. The 20/30 split is clear but the colours used to distinguish 30/40, and 50/60/National are hard to see – not that many roads in London have speed limits about 30mph anyway. The trends described above, however, are clear. Zooming in a long way helps, revealing your local familiar street network. Nonetheless, it deserves inclusion on Mapping London as it is an important snapshot of how different parts of London are evolving from car-centric design to a more inclusive street scene. Spot the Westminster borough boundary: An earlier edition from September 2018: The map in March 2017 looked like this: ..and from June 2016: As well as these official maps, OpenStreetMap contributors have been diligently adding speed tags to the roads of London (and...

Caught short on the tube? TfL publishes all sorts of maps of the London Underground network, including this map of toilet facilities at stations. This is particularly useful as no TfL train, of any kind, has toilets on board, including the new Crossrail trains now starting to appear on the TfL Rail line. As well as the Underground, the map includes the aforementioned TfL Rail, London Overground, DLR and Tramlink services, and even the Emirates Air Line. Red icons show that you need to be already on the network (i.e. within the ticket gateline) while black ones are outside. Greyed out stations have no facilities of any kind. There are a few quirks in the map – for example, it suggests that the Northern Line doesn’t stop at King’s Cross or Bank. But overall, good to see a reassuringly familiar map being lightly and effectively adapted in this way. The map shows that outer London is well served, particularly the Jubilee, Metropolitan and Central lines in north London and beyond – just as well, as it’s quite a long trip from here into the centre. Download the map If you are not on the tube, but need a bathroom break, check out The Great British Public Toilet Map, a OpenStreetMap-powered project from the Gail Knight at the Royal College of Arts. Copyright Transport for London,...

As London swelters a heatwave, people in search of a cooling waterside stroll might notice that London doesn’t apparently have many rivers. There is of course the mighty River Thames, and a few others here and there visible. But there are many more that you don’t just come across – they are just hidden underground. The book London’s Hidden Rivers, which launches this week, is the third in a London waterways trilogy of water-themed books by David Fathers, following a guide to the Regent’s Canal and to the River Thames. Like the others in the series, the book is full of attractive maps showing the route of the rivers (here shown as pipes) and the nearest walking route (shown with red dots). It is also crammed full of interesting tidbits about the rivers themselves, and indications of their existence on the surface, such as nearby roads with appropriately watery names. Other landmarks that are positioned on or near the route of the culverted water channels are also mentioned, with attractive sketches showing them in context. There are twelve subterranean rivers featured – some are quite famous, such as the River Fleet (of Fleet Street fame) and River Tyburn, while some, like the River Neckinger (which drains the low-lying area around Bermondsey), or the River Peck (Peckham is named after it) are less well known. The visual contents page (with a map showing the position of all the rivers in the book) is rather wonderful. A Londoner, seeing the contents page, might suddenly realise they are probably closer to a river than they thought. The clear and attractive maps, and consistency and attractiveness of presentation make this a lovely book just to idly read through, or alternatively it is an ideal guide book to walk...

We normally feature “modern” maps on Mapping London, however this map despite being also known as the Map of Early Modern London, is certainly not new. It was first printed from wood blocks in 1561, the extracts here are from a 1633 edition which has been digitised at a very high resolution as part of the “MoEML” (Map of Early Modern London) project at the University of Victoria in Canada. It is commonly known as the Woodcut Map or the Agas Map, after Ralph Agas, a local surveyor of the time, who had created a similar map of Oxford, but it is now believed he was not involved. Its formal title is “Civitas Londinum”. The MoEML project has also carefully catalogued the building and other London objects that appear on the map – these appear as categories on the map key and can be highlighted on the map from there. For example, a number of the City of London’s many Victualling Houses (aka pubs) can be toggled on and off. Above is Bishopsgate, now home to Liverpool Street Station and the eastern part of the City of London or “Square Mile” (which essentially *was* London back in 1633, along with Westminster, a village beside the Thames.) Below is a larger extract from the full map, and at bottom is what is now Clerkenwell, just north of the City. View the full, high resolution map here. Thanks to Kim McLean-Fiander, of the project, for letting me know about it. Reference: Jenstad J. (n.d.). The Agas Map. In J. Jenstad (Ed.), The Map of Early Modern London. Retrieved June 07, 2017, from...

We’ve long been fans of artist Stephen Walter’s monochromatic cartographical style and have featured numerous map-based artworks by him over the years. It’s been interesting seeing his style subtly evolve, from intense and slightly angry detections of “seas” of houses and caustic comments, to the slightly more restrained, but still very distinctive, style of his more recent works, including this piece, “Mayfair & St James”. The work covers the opulent Mayfair and St James’s districts of London, in Stephen’s forensically detailed “sketching” style but with the addition of gold leaf to highlight certain roads and park areas. The glint of the gold leaf adds an appropriate sparkle to the map of the area. Stephen has also extensively written labels vertically, with lines of letters falling down. This helps with the annotation of the area and is a rather pleasing style that makes it feel less like just being an intensively detailed map. The vertical writing, and level of detail, ensures this is a work that people will spend quite a bit of time looking at. The work is co-published by by TAG Fine Arts and Shapero Modern and the work is available in an signed and numbered edition of 75 from the two galleries. Thanks to TAG Fine Arts for inviting Mapping London to the London Original Print Fair, where this work was...

Londoners will be very familiar with the crowded London Underground services and their famous diagrammatic Tube Map, but might be less familiar with another public transport network – boats on the River Thames. Yes, you can commute to work by catamaran – as long as you live and work close to the river. London’s river services are underused, certainly compared to most other modes of transport in the metropolis, so you have a good chance of a seat, even at at the height of rush hour. Travelling with a view, and much faster than on buses through clogged up streets – what’s not to like? You can even use your Oyster card or contactless card to pay for the River Bus services (RB1-6) – these are the ones shown with solid lines on the map. Transport for London has produced the map we feature here (see larger version), as part of its London River Services booklet. There is also a simpler dedicated map, without the details on tourist attractions. We like the pseudo-tube-map styling, although it could of course be simplified even further, with the Thames just being shown as a straight line. The inclusion of isometric squares showing the major landmarks near each pier is a nice touch. TfL has never really decided whether its river services are for tourists or commuters, but this map should satisfy...

Following a data release of Southwark’s publically maintained trees a couple of years back, the Greater London Authority recently published a map which shows street trees (trees along roads and public paths, and trees in public open spaces, such as small parks and other minor green areas). Each borough has its own tree database and not all boroughs have, at the time of creation of the map, supplied their data, so the map is a little incomplete (for example, it includes Islington and Tower Hamlets, but not Hackney which lies between the two, except alongside TfL-managed “red route” roads). Still, it has good coverage in many parts of London and reveals interesting patterns, not only in planting patterns differing coverage across different streets, but also the variation of species – for example, the red dots in the extract below show lines of pear trees in Marylebone. In total, there are currently 700,000 trees shown, out of a total of around 8 million across London (including those on private land, in forests, and in major parks not managed by the councils.) The GLA has published the underlying data on the London Data Store as a huge CSV file, along with notes about the collection process. 25 of London’s 32 boroughs released the data in a form which was easy to map, so for 7 borough the map remains largely blank. Within each borough, the level of detail, and the scope of the trees recorded varied. Boroughs can be reluctant to release such data, as tree damage and ownership disputes can arise from such datasets, but it’s great to see this information, showing the greening of what can be a gritty urban streetscape, being made available to all. See the map here. Download the data here....

A new flagship Lego store opened in London a few months back, in Leicester Square. Since the launch, there has been an almost continuous queue to get into the shop, let alone to buy anything. This is mainly because of the amazing Lego sculptures that adorn the shop. To one side is full-size section of a tube carriage, in which you can sit surrounded by lego characters bigger than yourself. On the other side, is a large model of the Elizabeth Tower (aka Big Ben), while adorning the staircase up to the first floor is a mural of central London, showing the Thames, various skyscrapers and other landmarks in lego form. But the most exciting creation, for Mapping London, was a large map of the London Underground in Zone 1, made entirely of – you guessed it – lego. The station circles and lines are translucent, and the map shows pulses of coloured lights showing the movement of tube trains, the stations lighting up as a train arrives. Landmarks are also included on the map. A close-up look reveals the individual Lego pieces. It’s really rather impressive. The Lego Store is on Leicester Square, opposite the M&Ms Store, we had a 10 minute wait to get into the store on a rainy weekday evening, but you likely don’t have to queue if you visit on weekday...