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Land Use Map of Guanghsen
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Photo by Blackbeltjones, on flickr
This is a Land Use Map of the sides of highway in China's Pearl River Delta, by Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix. It shows buildings on the right and left hand sides of the highway, on the top and bottom of the black line in the center. Apparently the researchers went out and gathered this data, made this map, came back afterwards to check their research, and found that conditions on the ground had completely changed: restaurants were now office buildings, office buildings were now parking lots, the works. The landscape on the ground bore very little relation to the map that they had made, not long before.
I think that this is becoming an increasingly common condition for mapmakers, and we need to find a way to deal with it moving forward. There are lots of other examples you can find where the map is not the territory.
For instance...
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