GeoNotes

The 2015 Turkish Election: The Unclear Economic Dimension

Economic Geography, Elections, GeoNotes, Southwest Asia and North Africa / By

Turkey 2015 Vote Parties MapThe 2015 Turkish General Election struck many observers as highly significant, due mainly to the drop in support for the previously dominant Justice and Development Party (AKP), closely associated with president and former prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Although the AKP remains the largest party in the Turkish parliament, it gained only 41 percent of the total vote, thwarting Erdoğan’s plans for strengthening the presidency. To some extent, the election can be seen as a referendum on Erdoğan himself. Highly popular a decade ago, when Turkey’s… – Read More

Xinjiang, China: Ethnicity and Economic Development

Central Asia, Cultural Geography, East Asia, Economic Geography, Ethnicity, GeoNotes, Linguistic Geography / By

China GDP by Prefecture MapAn impressive map of China’s per capita GDP by prefecture, reposted here, appeared in late 2012 on the website Skyscraper City, posted by user “Chrissib” Cicerone.  According to the map, the two poorest parts of China are in southern Gansu province, an area demographically dominated by Han Chinese, and in southwestern Xinjiang, an area demographically dominated by Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking, Sunni Muslim people.

As noted in the previous GeoNote, the level of economic development in Xinjiang as a whole is slightly lower than the… – Read More

Regional Trends in Chinese Economic Development

East Asia, Economic Geography, GeoNotes / By

China GDP by province growth 2011 mapA widely distributed China Briefing map shows per capita GDP gains by province* for 2011. As can be seen, all parts of China experienced rapid economic expansion in that year, but the more prosperous and productive coastal zone did not fare as well as many interior areas. The mineral-driven boom in Inner Mongolia is well known, but the rapid recent growth experienced in such provinces as Sichuan and Guizhou has not received as much attention in the international press. As several of these rapidly… – Read More

Mappery and the Problems with “True” and “Real” Maps

Cartography, Featured, GeoNotes, Geopolitics / By

"Real" Map of PakistanThe useful website Mappery “was created for map enthusiasts to find, explore, and discuss great maps. Anyone can contribute maps, comments, and ratings to the site.” The site contains numerous maps, and is certainly worth exploring. Thankfully, users seldom exploit the site for propagandistic purposes. Mappery does contain, however, a few problematic political maps, such as the “Real Map of South Asia” posted here. This map not only appends all of Kashmir to Pakistan, a common and understandable maneuver, but also includes other parts of India in… – Read More

Remapping Poverty in India

Economic Geography, GeoNotes, South Asia / By

Indian Households without Assets mapData Stories (“… on India, One Chart at a Time”) recently published some intriguing maps and other visualizations of poverty and wealth in India. Its poverty map, posted here, shows households that “don’t own any of the assets listed on the census forms – that means no phone, no TV or radio, and no vehicle of any kind…,” a category that encompasses 18 percent of Indian households nationwide. This map deviates from more conventional maps of poverty in India in several regards (see the Pinterest map… – Read More

The New York Times’ Flubbed China Cartograms

Cartography, East Asia, Featured, Geography in the Media, GeoNotes, Population Geography / By

NY Times China Population CartogramAn interesting story in today’s (April 9) New York Times—“Hello, Cambodia: Wary of Events in China, Foreign Investors Head to the South”—is illustrated in the print edition with two striking cartograms of eastern Asia, one of which shows population and the other economic output. The cartogram legends claims that “countries and Chinese provinces are sized according to population” and, respectively to “economic output.” Actually, they are not. On the population cartogram, for example, compare the sizes of Hong Kong and Taiwan with that of Thailand. Is Thailand… – Read More

Egypt and the World Diesel Price Map

Economic Geography, Energy, GeoNotes, Southwest Asia and North Africa, World / By

World Diesel Price MapThe price of fuel in Egypt, and especially that of diesel, has been featured in many recent news stories, owing to the perilous state of the Egyptian economy. As an April 1 article in Financial Times notes:
Egypt imports up to 70 per cent of its diesel, which it uses to fuel cars, farm equipment and power plants. In addition, it subsidises diesel to the tune of at least $1.5bn a month, draining the country’s already perilously low hard currency reserves. A spate of shortages in recent… – Read More

Mapping the Cell Phone Revolution

Economic Geography, Featured, GeoNotes, World / By

Mobile Telephone Subscriptions World MapIt is often noted that inexpensive cellular telephones have revolutionized communications across much of the world, especially in poor countries that lack landlines. Confirmation of this development is found in the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report, which features detailed data tables for 140 countries. According to the report, 80 countries have more mobile telephone subscriptions than people. The United States, Canada, and France are not among them. Over most of the world, levels of economic development correlate poorly with cell phone subscription… – Read More

Some Strange Fantasy Maps

GeoNotes, Imaginary Geography, Indo-European Origins / By

Drenai MapThe world of science fiction and fantasy is an excellent place to find strange maps, and few are stranger than the Drenai map posted here. David Gemmell’s Drenai series has prompted a number of fans to map the world depicted in the novels. Most are rather straightforward pictures of the author’s fantasy realm. One amateur cartographer, however, decided to map the world on the basis of the Earth analogues of the various societies portrayed in the series. To do this, he has smashed together the British Isles, France… – Read More

Mapping the 2013 Swiss Referendum: Executive Compensation

Economic Geography, Elections, Europe, GeoNotes / By

Switzerland Executive Compensation Election Map2In the Swiss referendum of 2013, voters overwhelming approved a measure to limit executive compensation. Despite the fact that opponents outspent proponents 40 fold, and despite warning that the move would “undermine the country’s investor-friendly image,” 68 percent of voters approved the initiative.

As specified by the Wikipedia, the measure will:

  • require an annual vote by shareholders for the president and other members of the management board of directors, members of the remuneration committee, and any advisory board and executive officers of
– Read More

Geographical Patterns in the 2013 Swiss Election, Part I

Elections, Europe, GeoNotes, Linguistic Geography / By

Swiss Family Law 2013 Election MapA three-part referendum held in Switzerland in early March received minimal press attention. Some media reports noted the passage of a measure to restrict executive compensation, but the family policy initiative was virtually ignored, as was the one on land-use planning. Today’s post briefly considers the family policy issue, whereas tomorrow’s will look at the executive compensation measure.

The Swiss election guide description of the family policy measure is not very specific:
Do you want the federal order of 15 June 2012 taken… – Read More

Zoï’s Fantastic Central Asia Water Map, and Turkmenistan’s Geo-Engineering Projects

Cartography, Central Asia, Environmental Geography, GeoNotes / By

Aral Sea Water MapThe Geneva-based Zoï Environment Network has created some detailed and well-designed environmental maps. Available through flickr photostream along with many other images, the maps are not very well catalogued. Regardless of such organizational problems, the site is well worth exploring. The map that I have posted here, moreover, is the best presentation of the Central Asia’s water crisis that I have seen.

Note on the map how the Amu Darya no longer reaches the Aral Sea, which as a result has largely turned into a… – Read More

Intense Ethnic Divisions in the 2013 Kenyan Election

Cultural Geography, Elections, Ethnicity, GeoNotes, Geopolitics, Sub-Saharan Africa / By

Kenya 2013 Election MapMedia reports of the recent Kenyan presidential election have generally focused on the facts that the contest was not as violent as many feared it would be, and that the winner, Uhuru Kenyatta, has been charged by the International Criminal Court with committing crimes against humanity in relation to the bloody presidential election of 2007. Some articles have also mentioned the intensely ethnic nature of the voting pattern, the topic of today’s GeoNote.

Although the election was relatively close, with Kenyatta receiving just over 50 percent… – Read More

Mapping Evangelical Christian Missionary Efforts

Cartography, GeoNotes, Religion, Southeast Asia, World / By

World Evangelical MapIt is difficult to find maps depicting religious adherence in areas outside of the historical boundaries of the major universalizing faiths, such as much of sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania. Many such places, however, are characterized today by profound religious change, as missionaries seek converts and as syncretic forms of worship emerge. Some proselytizing organizations, however, maintain intricate maps of their own activities. One prime example is the Joshua Project, an evangelical organization that defines itself as “a research initiative seeking to highlight the ethnic people groups with the… – Read More

Punjabi and the Problems of Mapping Dialect Continua

Cartography, Cultural Geography, GeoNotes, Linguistic Geography, South Asia / By

Dialects Sometimes Called Punjabi MapThe Wikipedia list of the world’s most widely spoken languages, by mother tongue, puts Punjabi in tenth place, with its roughly 100 million native speakers exceeding the figures given for German, French, Italian, Turkish, Persian and many other well-known languages. The Wikipedia article on the Punjabi language stresses its growing appeal, noting that, “The influence of Punjabi as a cultural language in Indian Subcontinent is increasing day by day mainly due to Bollywood. Most Bollywood movies now have Punjabi vocabulary mixed in, along a few… – Read More