Top Ten lists

As landscape architecture and environmental planning have increasingly acknowledged an important and central role for climate and weather, this list of Top 10 weather events of 2012 seems interesting for our few year-end readers. Might as well throw in Slate's list of Top new species too.

The 1st Amendment and the 2nd Amendment

The Journal-News, out of White Plains, NY, has published a very detailed interactive map of every resident in their area that is registered to own a gun.  On the surface it is an interesting map. Depending on your expectations, it may show that there are more legal guns (or legal gun owners, to be precise) than you expected in a small neighborhood in Yonkers. Here is a small close-up of the map of pistol owners in Southern Westchester County:

Pretty detailed, right? It might be interesting to make a map of the streets without guns. Or compare a density map of guns with a density map of population or crime. Add schools and you have a different map.

While the website does not give the details of the gun, it does list the name and address of each license holder. Some pro-gun advocates see this, not as a thoughtful mapping of a timely issue, but as intimidation of citizens simply exercising their 2nd Amendment rights. Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds writes, " I guess nobody could object to people putting the newspaper staff’s addresses on the Web now, right?."

The interesting distinction here is that the gun licenses are public records. They have been all along. In theory, anyone could have gone to the courthouse or ATF or whomever, and gotten these seem records themselves. So why is improved access and heightened visibility off public records such an issue? Mappers should be aware of this response because it also happens when someone makes a map of long-public property tax records. Suddenly, this public display of public records feels like a violation of privacy to many. And, yet, mapmakers rarely seem prepared for this backlash (whether it is justified or not).

While geographers have long been aware of mapping as a political act (even unintentional), seom neogeographers are just relearning the lessons of the literature.

PPS puts its stamp on Madison, NJ

Project for Public Spaces began helping redesign Madison, NJ back in 1980. Now, the town has been named by the NJAPA as one of the great places in NJ.

6 Best Maps of 2012

GIS Lounge has posted a great list of the Top 6 maps of 2012.

Jane Holtz Kay

Architecture and planning has lost one of its most notable critics, Jane Holtz Kay. The NY Times published an obit a few weeks ago. The Nation has now offered a lengthy remembrance. 

Word of the day: Geotag

Eariler this week the OED chose Geotag as their word of the day. We've really made it.

I was surprised to see them tracing the word back to 1996.

(Direct links to the OED online may not work for all readers, but on-campus users at Rutgers should use the OED as much as possible.)