GALLERY XCI
The Map
Every map is an argument. Projection, colour break, unit of aggregation - each is a decision, and each can make the same data say opposite things.
ON THE FLOOR
Charles Horton Cooley
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“You learned who you are by watching what other people reflected back at you. The mirror, it turns out, was people all along.”
ON THE FLOOR
Edward Soja
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“Space is not the stage the story happens on - it is one of the actors. Ask WHERE, and half the mystery answers itself.”
ON THE FLOOR
George Herbert Mead
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“The self is a conversation: the I speaking, the Me listening with everyone else's ears. You rehearse society every time you think.”
LAB2-046 · The Map — Open the drawer
A color-coded residential security map from the 1930s Home Owners' Loan Corporation, marking neighborhoods by perceived lending risk. Red zones indicated highest risk; green indicated safest investment. These maps shaped decades of lending discrimination.
LAB2-047 · The Map — What is this thing?
A 1930s color-coded residential security map produced by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, classifying urban neighborhoods by perceived investment risk. Each color—green, blue, yellow, red—encoded a lending decision that shaped decades of segregation and disinvestment.
LAB2-048 · The Map — Read the source
A color-coded residential appraisal map produced by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, rating urban neighborhoods by perceived credit risk. Each color—green, blue, yellow, red—encoded investment safety judgments that shaped lending patterns for decades.
LAB2-049 · The Map — Map it / time it
A color-coded residential appraisal map produced by the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation, categorizing urban neighborhoods by lending risk. Spatial boundaries and color assignment encode economic and racial assumptions that shaped decades of credit access and neighborhood disinvestment.
LAB2-050 · The Map — Two sources disagree
A 1937 color-coded residential security map by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, classifying urban neighborhoods by lending risk. Cartographic choices in color, boundary placement, and aggregation unit embed racial and economic assumptions into geography itself.
LAB2-051 · The Map — State the claim
A 1937 color-coded residential security map produced by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, classifying city neighborhoods by perceived lending risk. Each color—green, blue, yellow, red—encoded a cartographic argument about who deserved credit.
LAB2-052 · The Map — Take the other side
A standard 1:24,000-scale USGS topographic quadrangle map, the institutional baseline for American cartographic practice, demonstrating how standardized projection, symbol systems, and data hierarchies constrain mapmaker discretion.
LAB2-053 · The Map — Weigh it
A 1937 color-coded residential security map from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, classifying urban neighborhoods by perceived lending risk. Its cartographic choices—color palette, boundary placement, aggregation unit—embedded racial and economic bias into ostensibly objective geographic data.
LAB2-054 · The Map — Build the answer
A blank choropleth map base and accompanying numerical dataset designed to be colored and classified by students, revealing how identical data yields opposite visual arguments through projection, color scheme, and aggregation-unit choices.
LAB2-055 · The Map — For the file
Two choropleth maps of the same quantitative data rendered with different classification schemes, projections, or color ramps—demonstrating how cartographic choices reshape interpretation without falsifying underlying numbers.
LAB2-056 · The Map — Go and look
A contemporary portable GPS receiver paired with a waterproof field notebook—the standard tools for ground-truth data collection in watershed surveys, environmental audits, and participatory mapping projects.
LAB2-057 · The Map — Now, today
A choropleth map of county-level US election results, showing the spatial distribution of votes by colour. The choice of colour scheme, aggregation unit, and normalization method each reshape the narrative of electoral geography.
LAB2-058 · The Map — Teach it back
A paired set of choropleth maps displaying identical election or public-health data using different color-break intervals (equal interval vs. quantile), demonstrating how classification method alone reverses visual conclusions about geographic pattern.
LAB2-059 · The Map — The other place
A 1930s-era residential security map from the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, color-coded to grade neighborhood investment risk. These maps institutionalized racial and economic discrimination in lending, making visible the cartographic logic that shaped urban disinvestment across America.
LAB2-060 · The Map — One object, close
A 1930s color-coded residential appraisal map produced by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, marking neighborhoods by perceived credit risk. Each color—green, blue, yellow, red—encoded a lending decision that shaped American housing segregation for decades.
From the gallery’s own wall — “LAB2-046 · The Map — Open the drawer”.
🎧 A moment to consider
What will you carry out of this room?