Corey Clark produced this fabulous 3D map of the London tube system. Having spent a month with that twisty maze of stations (all alike) as my only means of transportation, the Underground holds a special place in my heart.
It’s very interesting to see the network in three dimensions. The top-down, simplified, two-dimensional view produced by Transport for London is etched onto my brain (as it is on the brains of most Londoners), but the network itself is anything but flat. The tubes would encounter some serious problems, indeed, were they to plow headlong through the Thames.
What I find most interesting is that even this more complicated, three-dimensional view fails to capture the true chaos of the London tube system. Despite the map’s regular geometries, London and its tube stops aren’t lined up with such regular precision. I’ve got a book on the history of the Underground (buried on a shelf far away from this computer, alas) that contains a geographically accurate map of the tube stops, and their layout is reminiscent of an explosion stopped mid-blast, or a widely dispersed buckshot blast. There is no rhyme or reason to the stops when pulled from the context of their surroundings.
The simplified map presented by both the official 2D rendering and Corey’s 3D version makes the chaotic system much easier for the human brain to grasp. The reality is simply too irregular for most people to make any sense of it, particularly when attempting to catch the next train before it pulls out of the station.
via Boing Boing
