Interplace

Hello Interactors, Today’s post happens to land on my last day at Microsoft. After twenty-nine years of incredible good fortune – that has given me much – it is time I give back. I’ll be spending more time and energy on Interplace and advocating for sustainable transportation and land use policies that enable better interactions between people and place. I’ll also be helping nurse some local nativ...

Hello Interactors, Today we begin the summer series on the environment. I didn’t seek learning about the physical world intentionally; I was more interested in maps. But as a geography major it’s unavoidable. Now I’m glad I was exposed to the workings of the natural world as we’re confronted with its wrath on a daily basis. Which begs the question, When did this calamity all start and what should...

Hello Interactors, This is the last post of the Spring 2021 cartographic portion of Interplace. My recent trip to Kansas City got me thinking about the role land use mapping and planning played in the formation of select surrounding suburbs. It’s also a bit of a teaser for the Summer season as Interplace moves toward the environment, physical geography, and its role in urban planning and design. A...

Hello Interactors, This week I’m coming to you from Kansas City. My plan was to avoid the hot and humid Midwest summer to visit family, but instead I’m battling a heat wave and soon a thunderstorm. It made me wish I’d done a post on weather maps. As a result, this week’s installment is a review of my spring posts on cartography as we approach the last week of the season. Next up is summer and the...

Hello Interactors, The shape of national maps are no accident. They’re not even natural. They’ve been created with intent. Yes, they represent political boundaries, but they also sell a brand. As  interactors , you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation. Please leave your comments b...

Hello Interactors, Chicago was bursting at the seams at the turn of the century. People were stressed, companies were panicking, and something had to be done. They needed a plan; a map of a 20th century city. They needed someone to draw a picture, ease their minds, and persuade Chicago’s industrial elite. As  interactors , you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary jo...

Hello Interactors, So far this spring I’ve chronicled the spread of cadastral mapping across America. It was all part of Jefferson’s gridded agrarian vision. But by the middle of the 1800s immigrants started flooding in, the industrial age was taking hold, and cities were the thing to map. As  interactors , you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re al...

Hello Interactors, We’re learning every day just how embedded racism is in the workings of American polity. My recent posts have picked on the history and influence of America’s cadastral and topographic cartography. Today I weave together European scientific determinism, early ‘big data’ authoritarianism, and White supremist cartography. As  interactors , you’re special individuals self-selected...

Hello Interactors, Today we’re branching into topography and the role western colonial expansion plays in the creation and articulation of our naturally occurring geography. Most of us are not very skilled at critiquing the role maps have played in shaping how we see the globe and the people on it. But I’m optimistic that when we do we can better confront the boundaries that maps have created betw...

Hello Interactors, Today I’m wrapping up this April series on the role large scale surveying played in determining how people of the United States of America interact with each other and the government. Jefferson had a vision for the country that combined his desire for agrarian expansion west, tax revenue for building a world dominating military, and his fascination with astronomical, nautical, a...

Hello Interactors, Welcome to the third in a series on the role surveying and cartography played in the establishment of the United States. Today we continue further west into Ohio in the lead up to the 1800s. The U.S. government needed money to fulfill their dreams of being a global superpower. And it all hinged on Jefferson’s plan to extract money from neatly surveyed squares of land occupied by...

Hello Interactors, This week we continue to explore how maps played a major role in the shaping of America. Thomas Jefferson had a vision of a neatly portioned empire, just as the globe was neatly partitioned into a grid of latitude and longitude lines. Sure he wanted land for farmers, but he also needed to extract property tax revenue to fill the newly formed government’s coffers that had been em...

Hello Interactors, This week we pick up where we left off with Thomas Jefferson . Jefferson had appointed Thomas Hutchins to be Geographer of the United States in 1781. In 1784 Jefferson was preparing for expansion west and was combing over Hutchins’ descriptions of what lie west of his beloved Virginia. Jefferson was dubious of Hutchins’ mapping facts and took it up with him in a personal corresp...

Hello Interactors, This is week two of Cartography. The next few posts will serve as a series looking at how the map of the United States came to be and its role in charting our history. This post looks behind the origins of those neatly organized polygons that enable the choropleth maps I talked about last week. Mapmaking’s history dates back to ancient times – as do the motivations behind them....

Hello Interactors, Welcome to spring. We now transition to cartography. This post weaves the story of how I came to study cartography as an undergrad, the challenges of drawing maps, and how a spinning logo led to a mapping feature in Excel. As  interactors , you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome...

Hello Interactors, We’re coming up on spring in the northern hemisphere so this post eases us in to cartography — via the brain. Cognitive maps play an integral role in our ability to interact with place. We don’t even give it much thought, but our brains are amazing cartographers. As  interactors , you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also membe...

Hello Interactors, More Microsoft history and it’s role in the growth of itself, other companies around the world, and our pervasive connections to each other and the internet. I was lucky to play a small part in this transformation. I did my best to understand the behavior of people using the software that fueled these expansions. It taught me lessons I’m now applying to understanding behavior of...

Welcome to March, Interactors! Despite the daffodils blooming here in Kirkland, it’s still winter. And I’m still focused on Behavior. This post bridges interface with interplace through the one thing they have in common: Cognition. Weaving past and present, I look at how our rational selves can do irrational things. Or at least it seems that way. As  interactors , you’re special individuals self-s...

Hey Interactors! A mid-week surprise. I’m experimenting with recording select episodes for those who would rather listen than read. I recorded my final February post, WASPs and Weeds Gone Wild — Complete with amateur voice acting. 🙄 It’s my first attempt at this kind of content, but I look forward to seeing where it goes. Let me know what you think! And If you haven’t already, please check out th...