Improved cartographic rendering and design of detailed street maps and urban atlases

Abstract

Services like Google Maps and OpenStreetMap have for a long time defined the level of graphical detail users commonly expect from a digital street map. Based mainly on a model that represents streets and other transportation routes as linear features, and intersections as points shared by two or more such routes, these maps are effective for representing a network of routes for a single transport mode (usually car-centric) at medium and small scales with appropriate detail. However, recent shifts in what users demand from a map of public space, particularly in urban environments, have challenged the hegemony of traditional street map products and their representation of mobility infrastructure: Multimodal and heterogeneous forms of sustainable mobility need a more detailed representation of transportation opportunities (car, bicycle, public transport, walking, ...); Current political struggles question the car-centric allocation of public space and demand a fair allocation of real-world space and corresponding representation of the status quo on maps; The concept of the 15-minute-city asks for new small-scale maps and urban atlases representing the richness of opportunities in public and semipublic spaces. Consequentially, methods for a more detailed representation of heterogeneous mobility infrastructure on large-scale maps, that seamlessly blend in with existing data models and cartographic rendering conventions, would be highly desirable.

In my talk, I will present current developments and new research directions for improving the depiction of urban mobility infrastructure on large- to medium-scale maps, while maintaining a fundamental node-line representation as the basic data model. I will review recent developments in this area of online street map providers (Google Maps, Bing, Apple Maps, OpenStreetMap), and existing prototypes based on open source software that improve the representation of multimodal mobility infrastructure, such as recent work by Carlino and others, Coppinger, Seidel an others and the Streetmix project. Furthermore, I will present initial experiments for improved rendering of multi-lane streets and intersections based on an annotated node-line data model compatible with OpenStreetMap, and conclude with an overview of research challenges and opportunities for street map design and the creation of new, highly detailed urban atlases for the future.