Mapping DIstortions

This project is an interactive application investigating the hidden distortions in rationalized transit maps. The app allows the user to display San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York, with a number of different layers of data, and then warp those geographically accurate maps to the geometry of the rationalized transit map. Conversely, one can also warp the transit map to the true geographic projection. Finally the program offers the user a layer of visualization that represents the magnitude of the distortion in a field of dots, in order to make more apparent the inflations and compressions present in the distortion.

The objective is to reveal the subtle ideological content present in large-scale infrastructural planning, especially in its particular, utilitarian modes of representation.

Click here to launch the applet.