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...

Cycling in London is on the increase, however it can be tricky to discover the best routes for cycling in London – the ones that use proper infrastructure, or avoid busy roads, while still getting you from A to B in an efficient manner. Cycling maps are tricky to do – on the one hand, you can try a purely geographic approach, but this tends to results in huge maps showing the entire road network, 90% of which is of not of interest (though see this nice example.) There is an alternative approach – taking the famous tube map, with its straight lines and bright colours (see this prototype). But, above ground, such a simplified representation is difficult to follow. The Route Plan Roll Cycle Map has a good attempt at merging the two main mapping styles together. It essentially is the Tube Map for cyclists, with straight lines representing the main dedicated, protected and otherwise signed routes in inner London, – but in centre of the capital it switches to a geographic map, to help navigate where the various Cycle Superhighways converge and tourists on bicycles, unfamiliar with London’s geography, are likely to be. The transition between the two types of mapping is handled well (see below). Routes are coloured by their status – being part of the Cycle Superhighway or Quietway networks or a key radial or orbital route. The lines are then infilled according to the level of protection they offer – the solid colours showing the “gold standard” fully protected ways. Key parks and the ever-important River Thames are included. The fonts used are similar to those on the familiar London “tombstone” maps and are nice and clear. This is probably the best London cycle map we’ve seen, as it...

There’s a tube strike on today, with many tube stations expected to be closed. The inner city and central London are likely to be hardest hit, with stations closed in most in Zone 1 and all inside the Circle Line’s loop. Usefully, TfL recently published this map, which shows the central part of the Tube network (zones 1 & 2) with numbers between stations indicating the amount of time it takes to walk that section along the street network, at an average pace. There are some large numbers in places, many due to the obstruction of the River Thames and the fact that the map is not particularly geographically correct, but in general it shows small numbers between most stations. Inevitably, with a tube strike, the bus network will be overloaded and slow, and the roads will be completely clogged with people deciding to drive – so don’t think the taxi or Uber networks will be as useful as they might normally be. So, maybe walking is the way. (One curiosity of the map is that it does assume use of the Greenwich and Woolwich foot tunnels, but not the Rotherhithe Tunnel – despite appearances, it does allow pedestrians and has a pavement – however the omission is perhaps understandable as it is a very unpleasant route to take, particularly as the Victorian-era staircases have remained closed after damage in the Second World War, meaning the pedestrians have to stay beside the traffic in the tunnel for a long period.) You can see the full map and download a printable PDF here, or find out more about walking options in central London. Map © Transport for...

From British Gas comes this lovely map of a walking trail in central London, that highlights many of the streets and locations that are still lit by gas lamps in London – it may come as a surprise to many people, but there are many gas lamps still in the oldest parts of London, lit by a gas supply rather than electricity. British Gas may just be one of many UK fuel companies these days, but it retains a historic duty – a small but dedicated team at the company are in charge of maintaining and repairing the gas lamps. Londonist created a fascinating short video showing the team at work, last year. From the company themselves: There are 1,500 gas lamps left in London which British Gas’ team of five lamplighters look after. These historic lamps stretch from Richmond Bridge in the west to Bromley-by-Bow in the east. The oldest lamps are in Westminster Abbey and the newest lights up a popular retail store in Covent Garden. Many of the lamps survive from the Victorian era.   The earliest lamplighters lit each lamp by hand at dusk every night and extinguished them at dawn. The role of the lamplighter has evolved since then and now they can be found making their way around London on scooters.   When tending to the lamps the mechanisms have to be wound up and checked, the glass polished and the mantles replaced. They may also require repairs if damaged by a lorry or building work around them.   Iain Bell leads the team of lamplighters at British Gas. He says: “People love historical dramas which may be a reason why more and more people across the world have taken an interest in what we do. There are...

Tower Hamlets council, one of the 32 London borough councils, has produced this simple pictorial map as part of a consultation for “Tower Hamlets 2031”, setting the “local plan” for urban realm policy for the next 15 years. The map appears on various advertising panels throughout the borough at the moment, and also appears on their website. It is purely an illustrative graphic of the present day Tower Hamlets, with the consultation documents themselves containing many much more detailed (but less pretty) maps of current and planned designations. We really like the map being simple and attractive, it showcasing the many famous buildings in Tower Hamlets, both old (Tower of London, Chrisp Street Clock Tower) and new (East London Mosque, Canary Wharf) as well as highlighting the three city farms and other larger green spaces in the borough. It also shows the extensive canal network, basins and docks that are a key part of the borough’s fabric and the focus of its regeneration work. If every borough had a map like this then it would show just how interesting (almost) every borough in London is, rather than the traditional focus on the tourist hot-spots in Westminster, Camden and the...

Welcome to the Mapping London Christmas List 2016! Not long now until Christmas Day – if you are having a last minute present crisis, our list includes direct links, so you can browse, order, sit back and relax in the knowledge that the present selections for your London map geek friends (or yourself!) are all sorted.     Books     London: The Information Capital – The ground-breaking book on data, graphics and maps about London, by Mapping London co-editor Dr James Cheshire, has been recently published in a softback edition and is currently available for the bargain price of just £10.49. See our review or get it on Amazon.     Curiocity: In Pursuit of London – This huge, whimsical and alternatively focused compendium of London was published earlier this year. See our review or get it on Amazon.     Where the Animals Go: Tracking Wildlife with Technology in 50 Maps and Graphics – The second book by James is newly out. Find out, in a series of stories, maps and graphics how animals migrate and move through the world. Yes, there is a London map in it! Guess which creature it features? Get the book on Amazon.     The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps: 1939-1945 – We’re highlighting this one as it’s been a consistent best-seller with readers of Mapping London since it was released just over a year ago. A weighty tome reproducing the detailed, carefully coloured maps of districts of London, showing the damage wrought by the Blitz of London and other attacks during the Second World War. The maps were painstakingly drawn for the London County Council, shortly after the war’s end. See our review or get it on Amazon.     The Great British Colouring Map: A Colouring Journey Around Britain...

Here’s a rather nice map combining the famously colourful and diagrammatic tube map with Christmas tree lights, to create an infographic, “The London Christmas Map”, showing the Christmassy events happening in London. You can see a full version of the map, including a key and listings for each event and how far it is from the nearest tube station, here on the Marbles website (the map was commissioned by them). Ironically the map doesn’t include the locations of the best London Christmas lights – for those, visit Regent Street, Oxford Street and Carnaby Street. I’m sure Old Bond Street’s are also impressive! This is a really nice, clear artistic map which brings me into mind some of the decorative tube maps produced by Max Roberts, particularly his Art Nouveau one. I like particularly the ends of the lines, where the cables unravel to reveal the “plug” at the end of the line. There is also a good balance of lines and adornments, the latter giving the map a suitably Christmassy flavour. Spotted on Reddit. The author is...

This is one of seven London neighborhood maps, each drawn by different artists from the University of the Arts London and recently released by the Walk with Me project. This map, of Dalston and Stoke Newington in north-east London, was drawn by Martina Paukova. We like the distinctive shade of blue used for the map itself, with some blocks shaded in a darker blue, speckled grey, pink or yellow to provide contrast. Parks appear in purple, with very rounded corners, to contrast with the angular street network. Various animals, people and large houses are colourfully scattered throughout the map. Cats playing with balls, round blue trees, smiling post-boxes and other whimsical adornments and interest to the map. A small amount of road and park labels adds utility to the map without distracting from the visual impact. You can buy a print of the artwork on the Walk with Me website. Via LakesClaire, Stanfords and...

Tubermap is an extremely easy and quick way to find the fastest route between any two stations the TfL tube/train networks in London (London Underground, London Overground, DLR, London Tram, TfL Rail and Cable Car). Just click your start and end station, and the fastest route is instantly shown, along with transfer stations and the contactless price. Tubermap uses a modified form of the classic “Tube map” network diagram – just different enough to stand apart from TfL’s own version, but incorporating the famous 45-degree bends, Zone 1 area exaggeration and straight lines out in the suburbs: It’s a great example of a clean map and easy-to-use website hiding a complex routing system. It’s entirely powered by Javascript, with the calculations being done locally by your browser. By clicking Options you can adjust the map to show a heat-map background of times to every station from your currently selected one, and you can even miss out Zone 1 and see how the network, routing and timings change: Tubermap is brand new and in active development, with a mobile-friendly version having recently gone live – and lots of other things in the pipeline. One to keep an eye on. Try it...

Mapping London’s co-founder and “Editor at Large” Dr James Cheshire co-produced “London: The Information Capital” with Oliver Uberti in 2014. We mentioned the book on its initial release. The book has this month has now been published in a softback edition by Penguin, with some minor corrections applied. If you missed out on the book the first time, this is therefore an ideal opportunity to pick it up (e.g. here on Amazon) at a new, low price. The book, containing over 100 data maps and graphics, visualises London, its people and its data. The book runs to nearly 200 pages and every map style is different – many techniques have been employed, each aiming to best show its dataset in an original and eye-catching way. Some of my favourites are: Islington has Issues. This graphic (above, also see full online version) uses glyphs to represent each borough as a face, with the mouth, eyes, eyebrows, perspiration and general “glow” varying according to four measures of well-being. The graphic is also a map – the glyphs are arranged in three concentric circles, the innermost being an average and the middle and outer rings representing inner and outer London respectively. The boroughs are arranged approximately relative to each other in geographical space. This technique has been used in hexagonal and square forms before and I think it’s an effective way of simplifying borough boundaries (which are largely unfamiliar to most people) while preserving borough separations to show a changing picture across the capital. A single futher glyph represents the rest of the UK, showing that Londoners are generally unhappier than most. Top Crimes. The Met Police release the approximate locations and category of all crime reports in London. Crunching this data can derive information showing the...

London: A World of Eating is a little map from Herb Lester – prolific producers of quirky pocket London maps with bespoke cartography (we recently featured their Punk London map). The map, which showcases some of London’s many interesting eateries featuring food from other countries, is sold out on their own website, but copies are available from Place in Print for just £4. We like the simple green-toned map, with bright coloured buttons showing the food hotspots. As you might expect, Covent Garden and Soho form London’s biggest cluster, though King’s Cross, Brixton and Borough are three of the other areas with multiple must-visit locations – there’s over 100 in all. Like food maps? See the “Related posts” links for more great London food maps. Competition! To celebrate London’s fantastically varied cuisine, we have a competition! You can win three pairs of tickets to the BBC Good Food Show taking place at London’s Olympia exhibition hall, from 11-13 November. The tickets are good for visiting the show on Friday 11 or Sunday 13 (so not Saturday 12). We will pick three winners randomly and will post you the tickets. To be in with a chance of winning, you need to (1) be following MapLondon on Twitter, and (2) retweet our competition tweet (or this one). We’ll three winners at random and direct message you to let you know and find out where to post them to! Competition closes at 2pm on Tuesday. Good luck! Terms and conditions: This competition is only open to UK residents. The prizes are three sets of two complimentary passes to the show, for use on Friday or Sunday. The tickets do not have a cash value. There is no cash alternative. Winners will be contacted by a Twitter direct...

London’s street network appears on a new cycling jacket – when you shine a light at it! Showerspass, a Portland (Oregon)-based company, has unveiled two new versions of their Elite cycling jacket – “Hi-Vis” and “Torch” versions (each of these are available in Women’s and Men’s cuts). Both of the designs contain MapReflect, which is a rather brilliant idea for using a map design as a reflective panel. The map is a stitched together pattern featuring the street networks for various different cities, including part of London – specifically Whitechapel, Wapping and Rotherhithe in east London, as well as part of the River Thames’s most famous wiggle. You can see the London section in a couple of places – as well as on the main part of the jacket (see bottom photo), it appears on a sleeve: The Hi-Vis jackets are predominately neon green and have the map section in their side panels and underside of the sleeve in two versions – Silver Reflective, where the road/pathlines are black and the spaces between the roads is reflective, and Black Reflective, where the road network itself is reflective, on a black background. The Torch jackets have the colours reversed, so the main body of the jacket is reflective, with the street/path network overlaid in Black. These are pretty intense when you shine a light straight on! More about MapReflect on the Showerspass blog. Showerspass approached me a while ago about obtaining the map graphic, which I put together for them. It’s OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors) for a number of city centres, woven together. The cities chosen include London and Portland, as well as other cities known for a strong urban cycling culture and a regular high density of streets in their...

Just in time for Hallowe’en comes Grim London, a spooky and atmospheric map of central London. Navigate around the bleak, faded map of the city you thought you knew, then type in a postcode (try WC1E 6BT) or a borough name. This loads a number of Maltese crosses for the local area – clicking on these reveals the grim history of that place. This is really well themed data map by creative agency Impero, great to see this new and impressive piece of cartography, with a suitably restrained colour palette and a Rustic fonts, faded tube roundels, and occasional missing sections of streets, add to the cognitive dissonance of the map, while WebGL fog swirls across the browser. Click the lamp and find out the scary stories local to your neighborhood. Visit the map...

The Great British Colouring Map taps into a sudden enthusiasm for adult colouring-in books, by taking Ordnance Survey maps of many classic British places, stripping out all the colour, shading, labels and above-ground contours, and inviting the reader to use their colouring pencils to shade and tone it as they please. The book, published by Laurence King in close association with the Ordnance Survey themselves, is big, and printed on suitably rough-textured art paper that is ideal for pencils. We’ve chosen to review it here on Mapping London because the centre-fold of the book, which folds out into four pages (over a metre wide – that’s going to keep you busy colouring for a while!) features central London, with the unmistakeable wiggles of the River Thames: The book cover also shows the Thames’ most famous meander. The book’s maps range from the classic Landranger “pink cover” 1:50000 maps, the more recent Explorer 1:25000 range, and also some directly derived from the vector OS Open Map Local, shown at an approximate 1:10000 scale. Outside of London, a mixture of both urban and rural landscapes are presented for your colouring pleasure, from the Norfolk Broads to Mount Snowdon. Even Milton Keynes gets an inclusion, for all of you that have always wanted to colour in its hundreds of roundabouts. You can buy the Great British Colouring Map on Amazon and at all good bookstores, with a sticker price of £19.95. Thanks to the Ordnance Survey for sending a review...

Curiocity is a weighty tome, written by Henry Eliot and Matt Lloyd-Rose and published recently by Particular Books. The book follows on from a short, alphabetically organised series of pocket maps, some of which that we featured (C) a few years ago (D). This is a book which certainly delivers on its back-cover promise to “see London differently”. The work is eclectic, stretching to 452 pages long and bound attractively in a rough fabric cover. The title and front-page font being in the font “Johnston” famously seen on all signs on the London Underground. The title itself contains two footnotes, and the indices include sections by year, people, place, day of year, day of month and day of week, time of day, fonts and even a puzzle. With this level of detail, before even considering the main body of text, you know you are in for a treat. The book is loosely structured in chapters from A to Z, or Atlas to Zones, but when that goes via Hagiolatry, Mint and Wyrd, then that gives some indication of the quirky nature of the topics written about, and that this is not a “conventional” London guide – more a compendium of miscellany than a discourse on history or geography, although it includes plenty of both of those too. There are footnotes galore – many pages have several, allowing the more specialist-interest reader to get the extra detail they desire. The book includes a numerous artistic maps, commissioned specially, and produced by a number of artists, and it is just four of our personal favourites, from within the book, that we feature and review here: 1. The Thames Archipelago (top) Mapping the more significant islands that are on the River Thames as it flows through London...

Time Out London, the venerable London free magazine, have spotted that everyone in London loves maps, and so have launched a regular London Mapped feature in their City Life section & blog. This week’s map is rather interesting and not one I’ve seen before. It shows ONS 2015 data on net migration between each of London’s boroughs and the rest of the UK – so it includes cross-borough moves within London (which typically radiate outwards from Zone 1 to 6 as people age) but doesn’t include international migration (which tends to come straight in to Zones 2 to 3). Instead, it looks at the migration that happens when Londoners form families and need a bigger space than they can afford in their local borough or pensioners that yearn for the seaside or a quieter part of London (e.g. the east and south-west boroughs) or somewhere else in the UK, balanced against a steady, but often temporary, move to the universities and graduate opportunities in the capital. The key statistic is an overall outflow (domestically) seen in London’s population. London in general is increasing in population, but this is mainly due to a combination of births and inwards international migration (and in particular, the high birth rate of international immigrants.) By removing these particular population sources and flows, London suffers just under a 1% population decrease from 2014 to 2015 – a lesser reported statistic in between the headlines that London’s total population has recently hit an all-time high. We like the simple, blocky style, which approximately retains the shape of the 32 boroughs (+ the City of London), so is a hybrid of a pure squares approach and a regular geographic data map. Bravely, the creator omits the River Thames, and also leaves out...

This map shows the cross-borough London commuting flows in a different way to the conventional approach of drawing lines between the start and end of each commute (as shown here. It’s a large map of London boroughs, which each borough itself containing a small map of London. The intensity of the colour in each of these mini-maps shows the size of the flow from the origin borough (on the big map) to the destination borough (in the small map). Once you get your head around it, it’s a powerful and simple way to show a complex dataset. The simple grey, white and red colours reduce the clutter of the map (although personally I would have added a River Thames link through the main map and mini maps, for clarity) and, as long as you are familiar with London’s boroughs and their approximate location relative to each other, studying the map allows some interesting results to appear that would otherwise be hidden if just using lines. For example, in the affluent boroughs to the south west, most commute flow seems to either remain within the borough itself, or to the centre of London. In the poorer north east boroughs, the pattern is different with a strong additional commute flow to intermediate boroughs, as well as the local and central-London flows. This is likely caused by the different location and nature of jobs performed by residents in these respective borough groups. This technique of nested maps to show flows was developed at the giCentre at City University London. The map was created by Robert Radburn and he explains in detail its creation, along with an interactive allowing the display of different types of commutes, in this blog post. Via a...

Here’s a great new mural that’s has just been unveiled in Clapham, where it appears on the side of a wall. The Clapham Cultural Map was drawn by Jenni Sparks (we featured her map of London a few years ago and was commissioned by This is Clapham, the Business Improvement District corporation for the area. The map follows Jenni’s signature style of black-and-white building outlines set isometrically, with places of interest appearing coloured in. Clapham’s famous common adds a large splash of green to the map, drawing the eye in. The blue plaque also add historical interest: Here is a pic of the map in situ: You can see more pics of the map on the artist’s portfolio page. Via Twitter. Top two photos by Jenni Sparks, bottom photo by Cllr Wellbelove on Twitter. The work is copyright Jenni...

The tube map is a useful base for data maps of London, because most people (north of the river, at least) tend to think of the city’s layout in terms of the tube map – generally, you know what your nearest tube station is. We’ve used the idea before to show maps of life expectancy, jobs and local languages, but TotallyMoney have taken the idea for one of London’s most discussed metrics – the cost of property in the capital. There’s been a few property price/tube mashup maps that have crossed the Mapping London desk over the years, but we particularly like this one because rather than using the official map (which TfL get upset about, and can be hard to work with), or a geographic map (which is less recognisable, if more representative) it uses a hybrid, custom-created map which is recognisable enough as the tube map but has a design which works well in showing the data. We particularly like the ribbon-like, always-important River Thames which flows organically through the map. The creators have also been careful to make clear what they are showing – it is the average price per square foot of properties for sales within half a kilometre of each of the tube stations, based on data from Zoopla on 1 May 2016. In some cases this may only be a small number of properties (and Heathrow is removed altogether as there are obviously no sales there!) but the variations as you travel along tube lines are relatively smooth, suggesting the measure is accurate and useful. Values range from £300 around Dagenham, in the east, to Knightsbridge, in central/west London – the latter being handy for Halfords but a property would set you back £2000 per square foot. A...

Here’s a nice hand-drawn map created by graphic designer John Hathaway, of his neighborhood, Acton in west London, along with some local landmarks. We like the good, crisp cartography and the detail, particularly the individual trees and the Robin Reliant! Event better, here’s a speeded-up video of the creation of the map itself: Sent by the...

Here’s some arty maps of localities in London which have a distinctly culinary theme. “Edible Clapham” drawn by Lis Watkins and commissioned by Incredible Edible Lambeth – more a series of colourful, detailed drawings linked together by a walking route, it nonetheless is the map needed for a foodie tour of this trendy neighborhood: “Tootopia”, drawn by Lauren Radley and commisssioned for the Tootopia festival in Tooting, a vibrant map of the eateries and other food delights of the area: “Baking Tube Map”, drawn by Matt Brown of Londonist magazine – it’s another take on the tube map, with an impressive 300+ stations renamed as food puns. King’s Cross St Pancakes anyone? Found on the...

Alexander Brett has created this interactive map of London using the D3 visualisation framework and its “Force Layout” view. This places the data points (London ward centroids) at their geographic origin, and then applies a series of competing forces, as if the points are connected by a mesh of springs, to subtly adjust the locations based on the data value. Alex has seeded the map with a number of socioeconomic datasets from the London Datastore. You can set two variables – one, a list of categorical measures, controls the colours, and the other, a list of qualitative measures, controls the area sizes. You then sit back and let the code do its magic, as the map warps and the circles grow and shift into their new data values. The technique is both clever and simple at the same time – it’s a neat bit of D3.js programming, and the results are easy to interpret and navigate. It reminds me of the After the Flood cartograms, although it’s more geographically accurate. I’ve tried a similar technique for my London Election map although I’ve not allowed my circles to ebb and flow based on the data, so my data can overlap or leave empty spaces. The code is open source so it should be straightforward for the community to adopt and enhance it. I would love to see the London Datastore use this as a “default” visualisation of their ward and borough level datasets. While a map with regular geographical features certainly has its place, sometimes stripping nearly everything away can be just as clear and informative. Above – crime rate for each London ward, based on crimes per resident population, 2014/15, Met Police area only. Each borough is coloured different. Westminster in the centre stands...

Network Rail, who own most of London’s “heavy rail” track, have created this graphic showing where in London they are improving the rail network (short answer: most of it). The graphic is part of an interactive that you can view here. It’s slightly buggy and a few years out of date (e.g. no Lea Bridge station, Overground expansion or Reading Crossrail extension) and has some spelling mistakes (Bushey Park?) but does still contain most of the recent and current work going on. The map is presented in isometric form – there are relatively few examples of this type of map for London – and includes a number of landmarks (although one has a topological error – can you spot it?) We like the 3D “orange army” rail workers wielding mallets, holding maps and pointing at things around the worksites. There is no key but I think orange lines are ones being upgraded or built, with blue ones being the existing network. Crossrail is the orange dotted line running right across the map, free of the blue lines (existing track) for most of its length. The map perhaps looks particularly odd because it’s an network map of London that doesn’t include any tube (or DLR) lines, except in the few cases where they run on National Rail track (e.g. District line near Richmond). As such, it looks surprisingly odd and unfamiliar. In London, we’re so familiar with seeing the tube map that it’s actually quite difficult to navigate another network map that doesn’t include it. At least the River Thames is there as a navigational backup. So while the data on the map is far from perfect, the map style is nice and provides a fresh way of looking at the capital. This type of...

Following on from their Brutalist London Map, Blue Crow Media have moved back a few decades and produced this new map of Art Deco London. The map is presented in an attractive slip and folds out to A2. It’s printed on silver paper, which gives the roads and rivers a lovely, sparkly sheen to them. As well as the silver background, the colours used (black, with white station symbols and dark green parks) gives the map a rather unique feel. The map reveals the locations of London’s key Art Deco (1920s-40s) buildings, in red. Art Deco buildings come both the imposing and the delicate. Former examples include Senate House, the chunky building that is the University of London library (and allegedly was going to be the UK HQ for the Germans if they had won the Battle of Britain), and the London Underground HQ at 55 Broadway, which sits above St James’ Park station. More delicate buildings include the gorgeous former Daily Express building on Fleet Street (which has this amazing staircase), and the equally curvy Florin Court in Charterhouse. Oxo Tower is there. Famously, the chimney had windows shaped as “O”, “X”, and “O”, to get around strict advertising regulations of the time. Plus Battersea Power Station also gets a mention, even if it is (temporarily) without its iconic towers. The reverse of the map includes a complete list of the buildings that are highlighted on the map, including the designer, build year and listing status. We really like the silvery background paper which makes the map stand out and gives it a bit of style. The guide is ideal for an art-deco tour of London and will almost certainly reveal interesting buildings you haven’t spotted before, even if you know London well...

I’ve seen maps of food locations in London before, but not one actually made of food. Food 4 Thought, created by artist Ali Zaidi a few years ago, for “Multiwalks”, a mobile tours platform, has a distinctly organic feel to it. Lower Marsh, a street full of eateries near Waterloo station, is mapped in detail with food items. The nearby street structure is also mapped out in a similar way, with building areas made out of lentils, a nearby public park made out of green peas, and the trains in Waterloo Station itself represented with long lines of red kidney beans. The effect is rather delicious! Some more information about the project is here. The graphic accompanied a mobile app walking tour that is sadly no longer available to...

These attractive hand-drawn maps have been produced for a pocket guide “London’s Canals & Rivers” published by the Canal & River Trust by illustrator and cartographer Bek Cruddace. They show the navigable waterways around London, including the Thames and Lea Rivers and the Regent’s and Grand Union canals. The maps are designed for walkers and cyclists using the towpaths beside the canals. The locations of the locks are marked, as are tube and railway stations, allowing a one-way walk to be planned. Insets show key sections where a specific route is needed: I really like the strong but not garish colours, the subtle textures applied to the parks and urban areas, the hand-drawn tube roundels, and the attractive fonts. The rounded corners of the water features and parks also act to smooth and soften the graphic. It all comes together to create a both attractive and useful map. Visit more of Bek’s creations, or her Etsy shop – with some more London cartographical artwork coming...

The tube map is almost certainly London’s most widely produced and collected map, with many millions of the pocket version being issued for free every year by TfL from London’s 270+ tube stations. But how about having one that’s made of steel? Well, now you can thanks to Suck UK, who have produced an officially licensed, photographically etched version of the famous tube map for central London, on a credit card-sized sheet of highly polished stainless steel. The product is very thin – about half the width of a credit card, but, being steel, is of course very strong. It fits very nicely in your wallet, and as a bonus acts as a signal barrier, stopping your contactless cards from accidentally being used or suffering “card clash” at barriers. In order for this to work, they need to be lined up with it, and right beside it. One additional “extra” is that the reverse side is completely blank and, being highly polished, acts as a good mirror. The map itself is a variant of the TfL Version M black and white map. The normal line colours are replaced with patterns of dots and dashes. The map includes a small key at the bottom left. Purists will spot that the map doesn’t quite perfectly match the current one – it doesn’t show the extended Circle line going out west to Paddington, or the Overground lines (except for around Canonbury) – but then, they aren’t really tube lines anyway. It also does only show Zone 1 – essentially, the complicated section within central London for which such a map is actually very useful. Buy it for £6.50 including P&P from Suck UK on Amazon. It’s also available from the Transport Museum shop in Covent Garden. Thanks...

This is one of the many data visualisation and design postcards that Stefanie Posavec and Georgia Lupi sent each other of the course of a year. It’s a personal map of Stefanie’s London history – where she lived, studied and worked, her main commute and other routes. Everyone living in London will build up a map like this – in their head. Stefanie drew hers. Stefanie is giving a talk about the Dear Data project that she and Georgia created, at the St Bride Foundation on Fleet Street on 26 April. See here for more information about the talk. Copyright Stefanie Posavec. Many thanks to the St Bride’s Foundation for inviting me to the...

The Shard, London’s tallest building, has a viewing platform at the top, the The View from the Shard. To access the platform, you use two lifts, the first from the 1st to the 33rd floor and then a second lift from the 33rd to 68th floor. The viewing galleries are then on the 69th floor (inside) and 72nd floor (outside), above which the Shard continues to taper to the 87th floor. Transferring between the two lifts, visitors walk over a large map that covers the floor and walls of the sky lobby there. The Shard themselves describe the map as a “graffiti word map” but I would consider it a nicely designed typographic map, that is, a word-based respresentation of the capital. The location of the Shard itself is shown as a discrete red dot, the rest of the map being made of of main roads, the River Thames, and two hundred sentences, that “flow” through rather nicely through the gaps between the mapped roads. The map is arranged around a corner, and carries on up on the walls too, so forming a rather unconventional way of looking at London’s layout – rather like the viewpoint itself. Each sentence is a description of a well known local feature of the area, without naming the feature itself, so providing teasers for visitors waiting for the next lift. For example, “Where houses line up like a slices in a toast rack”, corresponds to the Toast Rack area of Wandsworth – I must confess I’d not heard of this one before! The River Thames itself remains on the floor part of the map and so provides the focal feature for the visitors to walk along to get to the next lift. The corner of the route corresponds...

As an update to our previous feature on a replica map set of the John Rocque eighteenth century map of London, we feature the Locating London’s Past project. At the heart of the website is a high-resolution scanned version of the aforementioned historic map, allowing anyone to see this 260 270-year-old snapshot of (central) London in wonderful detail, including the individual alleyways and yards (with names clearly visible) linking the medieval street network. The project has “orthorectified” the old map, lining it up with the modern “Google Map” which is also available from a drop down on the website for a direct comparison. Interested researchers can add pins to the map referencing various historic records, such as plague deaths and Old Bailey proceedings, via the Data tab. 1740s London looks distinctly different – it’s much smaller, of course, and while the familiar street pattern is familiar in many places, there are some big changes too. One of the most striking differences is the lack of the Embankment road (for example, in the snapshot below). Instead, streets and yards just lead straight down to the edge of the River Thames, often ending at a flight of stairs down to the water itself. Most of these have disappeared now, the building of the Embankment and modern bridges across the Thames having put paid to that, although some are still intact, including a rather spectacular set accessible just east of Tower Bridge – the Horsleydown Old Stairs, which appear on the map too. University College London was still 80 years off being founded when this map was produced, and the area is shown simply as some small garden plots off Tottenham Court Road and the “Road to Highgate”. Spellings have changed – back then it was “High...

Here’s an attractive map commissioned by The Watch Gallery to highlight some of the key places in London, in the development of timekeeping. From the Old Observatory at Greenwich, to Big Ben, there are many horologically significant places featured here, including some recent location such as the Swiss clock installed in Borough Market to commemorate the Swiss pavilion for the Olympic Games in 2012. The map is appropriately called Winding Streets. It’s nice to see a dedicated map like this, rather than a common (but lazy) way of mapping a particular topic by sticking pins on the default render of Google Maps. A particularly nice touch is the treatment of the parks in a watercolour style, and little features drawn in with a pen stroke, such as Westminster Bridge and fish in the River Thames. Not too much to overwhelm and distract, just the right amount to add character to a map that is telling a story. See a zoomable version of the map here. Thanks to The Watch Gallery for the...

The latest pocket guide and fold-out map from boutique urban cartographers Herb Lester is “Punk London“, celebrating 40 years since the punk movement of the 1970s, by mapping key locations in central London where it happened. Mike Haddad is the carrtographer/designer. As with all Herb Lester maps it’s a proper, custom made and litho-printed map, with an eye-catching pink, grey and white colour palette. Researcher Paul Gorman has done his leg-work and identified 111 locations across the city, marked with black pins, so the accompanying A6 pocket guide runs to 28 pages, with the enclosed map folding out to A3: “Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s Sex shop at 430 Kings Road; the Hampstead flat shared by Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious; Saint Martin’s School Of Art, where the Sex Pistols made their debut performance; Pathway Studios in Canonbury, where The Damned recorded New Rose, the first UK punk release; The Clash’s Camden Town rehearsal space and many more locations associated with all the movement’s key figures.” It’s priced at a bargain £6 from the Herb Lester shop. Thanks to the heads-up from the Herb Lester team. Photos from their...

Argotopolis is a map of London slang, created by Adam Dant (cartographer) and Jonathon Green (lexicographer). At first glance it looks like an ornate tree, look more closely and you’ll realise it is indeed a map, with Farringdon Road acting as the trunk of an “Old Oak” (aka the “Big Smoke”, aka London) – and with leaves clustering around branches of the trunk. Each group of leaves outlines the slang associated with a particular profession that is traditionally clustered around the corresponding geographical location. For example, at Bank, represented by a little Royal Exchange building subtitled “Lucre” and sitting on a branch that splits four ways, the leaves surrounding the building read “Gelt” and “Sponds”, amongst others. The northern tip of Bishopsgate, i.e. Shoreditch, has “Hipsters” around the Tea Building – aka “Amazeballs” or “Humblebrag”. Recently, Londoners have become astomoned to giving nicknames to the various crazy tall towers sprouting in the City, and there is a branch for that, with the Gherkin sprouting leaves with the names of other skyscrapers, planned or built – namely the Cheesegrater, Walkie Talkie and the Can of Ham, to name but three. It’s really rather fascinating to study, especially once you spot all the detail hidden in the “branches”. Being a hand-drawn piece of artistic cartography, created by the careful hand of Adam Dant, the colours are appropriately arboreal and the piece is very pleasing to the eye. A hand-tinted limited edition print of the map is available at TAG Fine Arts. Spotted on Spitalfields Life. The map is the copyright of its creators – scanned by TAG Fine...

Crossrail is a massive new railway that is due to open towards the end of the decade. It’s underground in central London, so largely unseen – but Londoners will be familiar with the many, surprisingly large building sites across the route, as the stations and other infrastructure get built. We’ve featured Crossrail’s official construction map in a previous post, when it was showing the progress of the various TBMs (tunnel boring machines) drilling through London; but with the tunnels themselves now burrowed, it’s received a welcome update – if you zoom right in, you can now see the shape and extent of the underground stations. And they are HUGE, with some of the central London ones having different tube stations at each end. For example, the Liverpool Street Crossrail Station’s western entrance is actually at Moorgate, the next tube station along: Tottenham Court Road Crossrail Station is a particularly complex set of tunnelling, as it has to link with both the Central and Northern lines already there, while the new lines themselves are some way to the south of both of them. There’s also some short links for integrating with a future Crossrail 2 line, and the map includes the huge new ticket hall which has already opened – with passages to Crossrail blocked with blue walls until opening day in late 2018. Ironically, no part of the new station is actually on Tottenham Court Road, which runs away to the north from Oxford Street: Entrance to the new ticket hall, approximately where the “pond” is in the map above: Bond Street Crossrail Station also lies to the south of the existing tube station, so includes a link snaking north to it, as well as some additional mysterious tunnels even further north – possibly...

So London’s myriad of suburban commuter rail services, many of which are south of the River Thames and so act as the equivalent of the largely north-of-the-river tube network, may in the future come under the control of Transport for London, the main transit authority for the city. It makes a lot of sense – TfL’s Overground network has already reinvigorated many old and unloved commuter rail lines in the last few years. It has however added a lot of orange to the tube map and if more lines come under TfL’s command (albeit continuing to be operated by private companies and with the track continuing to be owned by Network Rail) then the tube map is going to turn into a real mess. The London Connections map which includes the commuter rail, already is hard to read with its wiggles and dashes, and that’s without turning it orange. Step forward architect and transit cartographer Jug Cerovic who has mapped many metro networks around the world, and has come up with a lovely map of the London system that manages to combine the tube and commuter rail networks into a single map that is clear and pleasant to read, unlike the official ones. The INAT London Metro Map is a lesson in simplifying and making attractive a complex topological map. A key decision decision shows the commuter rail in varied pastel colours – much better than the visually noisy dashed lines on the official map, or an orange apocalypse. The map abounds with other visual pleasantries, such as zone indicators shown beside each station, rather than as arbitrarily shaped and ugly blobs of grey. Key walking links are shown with walking symbols – fancy that! – and stations with multiple lines are shown generally...

Lumiere London is a festival of light and art taking place every evening until this Sunday. From 6:30-10pm, nearly 30 temporary artworks in central London will come alive with lights. From a holographic elephant to neon sausage-dogs and a strange organic-looking structure suspended over London’s principal crossroads (Oxford Circus), it’s a great excuse to brave the cold weather – for tourists it’s extra to see in London’s traditionally quiet January, while for locals it’s an opportunity to get out to the city to see something impressive and free, to stave off the post-Christmas low. Most of the pieces are around the Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square area, all of which are closed to regular traffic in the evening to provide more space for the crowds. Further away from the main zone, King’s Cross Central (the space going northwards from the gap between King’s Cross and St Pancras) has a line of lit artworks, while Westminster Abbey, to the west, is also precision-lit with a mosaic of colours. The organisers have released a couple of maps, one for the general central London area (below) and one for King’s Cross (extract above). In addition, TfL have released a special tube line walking-distance map (bottom) for the Lumiere areas. Tube stations are likely to be unusually busy, and bus routes suspended – the purpose of the last map is to emphasise that it’s really not that far walking between the tube stations in the vicinity. It’s great to see these proper maps being produced for the event (paper copies of the first two are available at some of the installations). They are attractive to look at and informative about what’s happening. All three are supplied as vector PDFs so they are nice and sharp at...

SmellyMaps reveals the “olfactory footprint of London” – the streets which are dominated by traffic fumes, the animal smells emanating out from London Zoo, and the influence of parks and greenspaces on London’s scent experience. Streets are measured for four smell groupings based on tags from Flickr photos calibrated from a smell taxonomy: emissions (coloured red on the map), nature (green), food (blue) and animals (yellow), the map colouring each road by the most dominant of the four. Clicking on the segment reveals the measurements. The results are attractively presented on a background map. SmellyMaps is an output from Bell Labs’ Daniele Quercia, based partly on many urban walks and surveys by RCA student Kate McLean, which created the smell taxonomy from which the Flickr and other social media data was categorised, creating the final map. I wonder how big the smell footprint from the Lush cosmetic shops extends? See the interactive map here. From a presentation by...

To celebrate one year since the release of London: The Information Capital by Mapping London co-editor James Cheshire and graphic designer Oliver Uberti, and the book recently winning the BCS Award, the authors have released a number of new excepts from the book. Here we feature “What Lies Beneath”, a map of the tunnelled sections of the forthcoming (2018+) Crossrail line that snakes right through central London. During the archaeological surveys that took place prior to excavating the tunnels, a wide variety of historic artefacts were found, some of which are celebrated in this graphic in the book, along with a map of the route itself and a cross-section of key buildings the line will pass by. From plague skeletons to woolly mammoths, The cartography of the map is very pleasing to the eye, it combines the characteristic “sketch style”, with both the artefacts and the rail and river lines appearing as “pencil strokes”, but forming proper geographic map accurately showing the route. You can, by the way, see how Crossrail will mesh with the existing TfL routes in London on this interactive map (the line line is in purple on this latter map). You can buy the book on Amazon. See also our previous feature on the official Crossrail tunnel map. Sketches by Oliver Uberti with data from...

Every year, for the last few years, Mapping London editors Oliver and James have been invited to create and submit an artwork for 10×10 London, a charity art auction organised by Article 25, the architectural development charity (originally called Architects for Aid). Being neither artists or architects, it is very flattering that we have been invited to contribute to this good cause. We create our submissions as “data driven” art, using geographical data, GIS and other software to produce the work, along with a large-format plotter and canvas paper, and a skilled canvas mounter (Miles) in the department drawing office. This year’s 10×10 project is themed “Drawing the River” and each participant is assigned a square alongside the River Thames in central London, to interpret in their own way and product an artwork from. Our square was near Lambeth Bridge, so we decided to utilise the Environment Agency’s huge and newly opened archive of LIDAR-derived digital elevation models (DEMs), which have just been released with an open data licence allowing for easy access and reuse. We downloaded the DTM (the DEM which includes buildings) of the area, which has the terrain heights at 50cm resolution (horizontal) and 0.1cm (vertical) and then used multidirectional hillshading to draw out the building structures and shapes. The image was then vectorised and a filter was used to reduce the speckle and noise and further draw out the relief, with a gradient finally added to emphasise the contrast of the River Thames and adjoining land. We were particularly pleased by some of the features that were brought out using the combination of these techniques, such as the large trees in Archbishop’s Park – the graphic here is from EA data and has had no manual intervention: By way of...

Mapping London stumbled upon this lovely cartographic art-piece of London, created by illustrator Josie Shenoy, at her stall at the South Bank Christmas Market (almost underneath the southern end of the Hungerford Bridge that goes across to Charing Cross, near Foyles’s South Bank outpost). It’s called River Thames and is available as a print and in a number of other formats (e.g. notebooks and cards) from the stall as well as online. We really like the combination of landmarks, placenames and flora/fauna. A cartographic trick (variable scaling – like on the tube map) is used to include mentions of all boroughs, including the outermost (hello Havering), while retaining the famous wiggles of the Thames, and the most iconic landmarks in the centre of the capital. There is also another design, of London secrets – it includes the lost rivers that follow under our feet, abandoned and closed tube stations, and other hidden London miscellany. This second design is not on the website yet so you’ll need to go to the stall itself to see it! This is the first in a series of articles featuring great maps that would make good Christmas gifts. Tis the season! Spotted on a walk along the South...