New poster! Hachure illustrations of the highest Cascade Range volcanoes. This one took a lot of experimentation to get the layout right. If you or someone you know loves this area, check it out. www.etsy.com/listing/4373...

New author interview live! This one's with Nick Swartsell and Andy Woodruff, the editor and cartographer of Belt's forthcoming Cincinnati in 50 Maps. @awoodruff.bsky.social beltpublishing.com/pages/conver...

If you have a London person in your life, this looks very nice! (Unsurprisingly, coming from one of the best cartographers out there!)

Cincinnati in 50 Maps, by Nick Swartsell and me, is off to the printer, so you can get your pre-orders in now for the December launch! beltpublishing.com/products/cin... Get this, folks: I counted and there are 125 individual maps. That's 75 extra maps for free!

Since Boston is sounding the “don’t drive a truck on Storrow” sirens this week, time to post this map again, now with a timeline. As far as I can tell, either the messaging works or the idea of students smashing U-Hauls into overpasses is largely a myth. I couldn’t find any real spike in September.

Me at 7pm: wow, I made a vegan dinner that was actually pretty satisfying! Me at 11pm:

Making what might be my first real, work-for-hire grayscale maps after all these years. Monochrome is a fun challenge for a pet project, but when it’s “distinctly symbolize these 7 routes and 90 points that are all on top of each other if you want your money” it’s just kind of… hard?

The rail map of Columbus, OH, a city of nearly one million people:

XI. Thou shall not rest thy legs on the LORD’s landscaping

Another solid day in the 30+ years of progress in advancing this from Simpsons joke to actual GOP platform.

Build it! Everyone should learn the joy of changing trains at Park Street. This is what peak transit system design looks like. Seattle to San Francisco? Just go Inbound to Park St and change trains to go Outbound to San Francisco! Nothing could be simpler!

How a map is made: - 1640s: people write down property descriptions - early 20th century: amateur historians obsessively catalog them and derive maps - 20XX: someone (sorry, not sure who) georeferences those maps - 2025: I simply sit on a chair and trace said georeferenced maps

Not sure I'll ever see these maps in real life, but it's fun to know that someone will! Here's some work I did with the Community Geographics team to design new summer trail maps for the Appalachian Mountain Club's Maine Woods Initiative properties.

Sometime in the 1990s it seems I created a poster that my opponent can use, should I ever run for office.

Went to State of the Map US since it was here in town. Fun. Should attend more than once per decade. Anyway here’s this map we saw of Massachusetts (but missing the islands) labeled Cambridge, made of… hotel lobby bench cushion?

Typographic contour lines… 🧑‍🍳😚🤌

✋ who else?

While we are here, check out this brand new beaut…(spring ‘26 by @awoodruff.bsky.social; cover by @downpourdw.bsky.social)

I feel like I know a bunch of Twin Cities cartographers. Some of you must be on here and wanting to do a book!

summah

It's back now if anyone wants to trade me some dollars for a White Mountains map.

Do other US cities have similar markets to Boston’s Haymarket? (Super cheap overflow produce from the wholesale distribution center) I’d almost forgotten about it before wandering by recently, and as a parent of kids who eat nothing but fruit, am now considering rearranging my life to go every week.

1. Gross, obviously. 2. I was just working on a map of the combined sewer overflows into the Charles etc. around Boston! One internet dollar to anyone who can guess what the map's title is.

inscription=Potatoes Potato Potato Potatoes Potato Potato Potato Potatoes Potato Potato Potato Feels like my hard work of hitting "send" on a soon-to-be viral tweet about Boston's potato monument 8 years ago or whatever is finally making a difference. 💪 www.openstreetmap.org/node/1266317...

The other day I knew nothing about ship tracking data but wondered where the boats go in Boston Harbor. Turns out it's easy to get data for US waters! These maps represent the second half of 2023. marinecadastre.gov/accessais/

🚨 EXCITING NEWS KLAXON 🚨 My first book THE BOROUGHS OF LONDON, based on my London Borough maps series and co-written with the amazing @mattfromlondon.bsky.social, is published by @batsfordbooks.bsky.social in October! 🥳 🛒 UK customers can preorder from: www.batsfordbooks.com/book/the-bor... 1/5 🧵⬇️

I’ll be so angry if I learn that someone already digitized building footprints in Boston’s former West End, because even doing it fairly sloppily took me a lot longer than expected. A work in progress on the insane “urban renewal” that razed the entire neighborhood. (Yes, I will fix the typo.)

As someone racing to finish another book in the series, my current task is identifying which boxes I've left unchecked. Just finished my Climate Change Agenda map! Meanwhile, do throw some dollars at Pittsburgh in 50 Maps. There's even an LGBTQ+ map! www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/978...

~new map~ In a tribute to the springtime bloom, I painted a dataviz of where the blossoms are in DC! Full process from inspirations, to realizing you have to re-paint the whole thing at twice the size, to DIY photo sessions – all detailed in this blog post. moriartynaps.org/cherry/

LMEC also has made available the digitized data behind this map, for those (like me) who can use it in their own projects! data.leventhalmap.org#/catalog/dki...

I googled "Boston area pronunciations" in search of a good comprehensive list, and this troll job from 2001 was the top result. Amazing. web.mit.edu/kenta/www/th...

Okay I think I have to do another map of mean turkeys around Boston (have done it before thanks to @universalhub.com's tireless reporting: bostonography.com/2013/the-tur...) so I'm browsing 311 data and chuckling at how many are like "Case closed. Turkey flew away."

Take a long look at the watershed between the US and Canada, find all the lighthouses, track how the birds fly, spot monsters, and more from @alexbhill.bsky.social. Pre-order now and get your copy first (and tell your libraries and bookstores to order)

Maybe there’s a newer pearl-clutching NIMBY fear than the “Manhattanizaton of [already urban neighborhood]” since I haven’t heard in a while, but I think I’ll still include it in a forthcoming population density map.

Shockingly, nobody took me up on running the #BostonMarathon with this thing strapped to their wrist

Marathon Monday means it’s time to pull this map out of the bag for about the 10th time. If you didn’t qualify today, I’ve got some options for you.

Trying to write a description for a map of job locations and am going to blow past the target word count by having to spell out the LODES acronym (Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Origin-Destination Employment Statistics)

👀

The Alliance of Freelance Cartographers needs your help! By taking our short annual survey, you strengthen your #cartography community. This survey is for anyone (globally) who did any amount of freelance mapping last year (even a little). forms.gle/VaZqPpxeB8Qu... Please help spread this widely!

Okay here’s some good news: the crossword puzzle guy for the town newspaper made this one in the shape of a map of the town, with the outer edges spelling the names of adjacent cities/towns (I’ve highlighted Cambridge, for example). Love it!

Make a difference this summer -- Join @cmshintani.bsky.social and me for an internship at @woodwellclimate.bsky.social and contribute to critical research on climate change. Apply now: bit.ly/4l5D93W

We're about ready to send "Cincinnati in 50 Maps" to @beltpublishing.bsky.social, so I did a final count: technically, there are 121 maps. Big shoutout to one particular "map" that is actually 35 maps.

Pittsburgh in 50 Maps comes out in one week! This beautiful, full color hardcover is currently on sale for $24--get those orders in. @chefstentor.bsky.social beltpublishing.com/products/pit...

Okay last day for ANYTHING in my shop, for a while: looks like the free tier got even, uh, free-er and pointless, so starting tomorrow (12 March) I'm going to pause the whole thing until later this year. andysmaps.bigcartel.com

So many Dunkin’ Deserts

During the process of making a Very Important Map, I learned that there are 98 towns in Massachusetts with zero Dunkin' locations! In total, 221 are out of compliance with what surely is a real state law requiring a minimum of three Dunks per town.

Working on a book of Boston maps means it's time to revisit the greatest cartographic rabbit hole I ever went down: learning about the crackpot theory of a Viking city at Watertown, Massachusetts. There are plaques and monuments to this day. andywoodruff.com/blog/norumbe...

Everyone's favorite bit of Boston trivia—technically it's an island thanks to a little canal/stream connecting the Charles and Neponset—has some extremely dedicated historians over at Wikipedia. Hundreds of references! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_... Anyway, I made a map, of course.

Notice to the void: I'm going to drop these Cascades maps from my lil shop until the holidays (so I can go back to a free tier and stop losing money). If you or anyone you know might want one, you've got about a week left! andysmaps.bigcartel.com/category/cas...

As a Boston Maps Guy a thing I’d love to see is a map of where all the famous people/world leaders who went to Harvard lived and hung out. Cambridge must have some spots where both monsters and heroes of history used to go to grab a beer.