Why the Maps of London, Tokyo, New York, and Other Major Cities Look the Way They Do

If you’re try­ing to under­stand a city, its map isn’t a bad place to start. Today, of course, we can call up an accu­rate map of prac­ti­cal­ly any part of any city at any time we like, with detailed point-to-point direc­tions avail­able on com­mand. Turn on the satel­lite view, street view, or 3D mode with its offer of every imag­in­able point of view, and you soon feel you’re engag­ing with less a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the city than the city itself. Yet the famil­iar­i­ty this makes us feel we pos­sess is decep­tive, a real­iza­tion that comes afresh when­ev­er our phone runs out of bat­tery, leav­ing us bare­ly able to find our way through even neigh­bor­hoods we’d thought we knew. Sheer habit can get us between the places we fre­quent, but that’s a far cry indeed from under­stand­ing the city as a whole.

That last is just what YouTu­ber Daniel Stein­er attempts to do in his series of map explain­ers, which draws con­nec­tions between the large-scale, abstract­ed view of the map and the con­crete expe­ri­ence down on the street. He not only uses maps both cur­rent and his­tor­i­cal to illu­mi­nate why the street net­work and neigh­bor­hood bound­aries of a giv­en city have tak­en the shape they have, but actu­al­ly trav­els to that city and meets with experts equipped to point out phys­i­cal traces of that process of urban evo­lu­tion that escape the atten­tion of most locals.

Those could be the infra­struc­tur­al rem­nants of Roman Lon­don (or rather Lon­dini­um); the unloved Tokyo over­pass where the major roads of old Japan once con­verged; the sur­vey­or’s rod from the orig­i­nal grid­ding of Man­hat­tan stick­ing out of what’s now Cen­tral Park; or the con­tours of Ams­ter­dam even before its famous canals went in.

One vis­it to a city, of course, can hard­ly an under­stand­ing make. Stein­er has so far returned to New York to cre­ate addi­tion­al videos focus­ing on Broad­way, Brook­lyn, the Bronx, and Stat­en Island, and his exam­i­na­tion of Los Ange­les ends with a call for requests for more sub­jects to cov­er with­in the vast odd­i­ty of the south­ern Cal­i­for­nia metrop­o­lis. His map explain­ers on oth­er Amer­i­can cities from Chica­go to Seat­tle to Savan­nah, Geor­gia also show great poten­tial for fol­low-ups, to say noth­ing of how deep he could get into Mex­i­co City after hav­ing told the sto­ry of how it used to be a lake. Part of these cities’ appeal lies in the fact that, no mat­ter how long you spend in them, you can nev­er get to know them com­plete­ly, irre­sistible though it is to try. To the ques­tion of whether that attempt is best made top-down or bot­tom-up, Stein­er’s videos respond implic­it­ly — and con­vinc­ing­ly — why not both?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Why Dutch & Japan­ese Cities Are Insane­ly Well Designed (and Amer­i­can Cities Are Ter­ri­bly Designed)

A Won­der­ful Archive of His­toric Tran­sit Maps: Expres­sive Art Meets Pre­cise Graph­ic Design

Ani­ma­tions Visu­al­ize the Evo­lu­tion of Lon­don and New York: From Their Cre­ation to the Present Day

The Genius Urban Design of Ams­ter­dam: Canals, Dams & Lean­ing Hous­es

136 Maps Reveal Where Tourists & Locals Take Pho­tos in Major Cities Across the Globe

Japan­ese Design­er Cre­ates Incred­i­bly Detailed & Real­is­tic Maps of a City That Doesn’t Exist

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.