Source: Radio New Zealand
From the famous Universal Studios globe in Florida to a 2019 IKEA wall map, New Zealand has been cropping up as a glaring omission. But why does it keep happening, and what does it reveal about the way we read maps?
These are the sorts of cartographic puzzles that British comedians and geography enthusiasts Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman — better known as Map Men — delve into in their book This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (and Why It Matters).
After years of producing punchy YouTube episodes about oddities in geography, the pair realised they needed more space to unpick the stranger corners of cartographic history: vanished Soviet cities, phantom borders, “paper towns”, and the idea that smartphone maps might be eroding our ability to navigate.
A visitor takes a selfie at Universal Studios theme park on its reopening day during the coronavirus pandemic, on 5 June, 2020, in Orlando, Florida.
AFP / Gregg Newton
