Mark Ovenden. Transit Maps of the World

Transit Maps of the World by Mark Ovenden



I’ve discovered a love for oversized coffee table books. Unwieldy troves of trivia, in them novelty wins. I’d buy one browse it for a couple months. They’re books to enjoy slowly, over time, digesting niblets of facts on some geeky, specialized subject. Mark Ovenden’s Transit Maps of the World fills this niche, it makes the journey worthwhile.



In the preface, he smartly defines a transit system. Urban transit maps remain the book’s primary focus, though, while questionable to some, he defends the inclusion of other mixed systems – those with above ground as well as below ground transit systems.



The book is divided into six zones or sections, the first three of which being the richest. The zones are further divided into cities. Ovenden details histories, from the inception of a city’s urban system to its recent model and also includes proposed plans. These biographies of the cities are filled with beautiful reproductions of the maps as they change, grow, and become standardized.



Yes, standardized. Not only is the book interest in the development of the urban systems, but the maps themselves. Some include topography, landmarks to orient travelers where they are aboveground. Standardized, for cleaner looking maps, rids itself of topography and settles instead for standard angles, equal station distant, black station ticks with open circles, among other practices. The book becomes even more interesting where the cities take risks on the maps, trying out a new design. Some experiments early on are phased out, others became the standard.



For most major cities, the development of the systems started in the late nineteenth century, where exponential population growth created demand. Faced with the population surge above, engineers went underground. This was when the maps appeared. The systems grew, some massively. During the Depression, many plans were scrapped, and some systems were put on hold indefinitely. Several of the cities in the later zones had plans before the Depression, but were hit so hard that nothing was done until as recently as twenty years ago.



The book, for all its geeky pleasure, is not serendipitous. After such richly detailed early zones, the latter zones feel included simply for the tagline across the front cover: “The World’s First Collection of Every Urban Train Map on Earth.” It drags once you understand the transit map’s history and trajectory. Even Ovenden has to devise creative ways to say the same thing over and over.



But for novelty value, the book is worth it.


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