Lately, Russia seems to be soft-pedaling their attempts at world domination, choosing to use ads on Facebook or Youtube clickbait to exert their influence over global politics rather than overt threats of nuclear annihilation. But, of course, this wasn’t always the case. As well as providing a fascinating look at perhaps one of the most comprehensive pre-Google Maps mapping endeavors ever, John Davies and Alexander J. Kent’s The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World is a surefire way to reignite those bygone feelings of Cold War paranoia by demonstrating just how serious the Soviets may have been about invading a town near you, or your actual town, as the case might have been for many of America’s larger metropolises. Including, as the maps below illustrate, Chicago. As a review of the book in a recent issue of National Geographic notes, the detailed Russian maps–some of which were only smuggled out of the country within the last decade–were compiled from a variety of sources, including information borrowed from contemporary USGS maps, which the Soviet maps seem to mimic extensively. But other specifics, like detailed depictions of depths and channels around rivers and harbors, including the Soviet-era map . . .
Mapping race in the city
If you want to get our attention here at the Chicago Blog, all you need to do is combine two of our favorite things—maps and urban sociology. Our love for maps is strong, and our interest in the social dynamics of cities, especially those of our hometown, is deep. So it’s no surprise that today’s infographic of the day from Fast Company caught our eye. That post presents Eric Fischer’s finely detailed and rather beautiful maps depicting racial integration (or its lack) in many major American cities. Fischer was inspired by Bill Rankin’s map of Chicago’s racial makeup, which reveals that while the city continues to be highly segregated, some traditional ethnic enclaves are transforming. One such Chicago neighborhood—Andersonville and the area around the Argyle stop on the red line—is analyzed in detail in Japonica Brown-Saracino’s A Neighborhood that Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for Authenticity. As Rankin notes, his map overturns the usual way of delineating areas of cities, where “neighborhoods are almost always drawn as perfectly bounded areas.” That traditional approach can undermine our understanding of what’s really happening in cities. The power of maps to change our perception of reality has been at the . . .
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