{"id":1789361,"date":"2020-09-30T18:36:38","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T22:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/?p=1789361"},"modified":"2020-10-01T11:19:23","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T15:19:23","slug":"underground-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2020\/09\/underground-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"Underground Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Amazon<\/a> (Canada<\/a>, UK<\/a>)
Bookshop<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mark Ovenden has made a career of publishing books about transportation systems and their maps that are both comprehensive and copiously illustrated. These include books about transit maps<\/a>, railway maps and airline maps<\/a>, as well as books about specific transit systems like the London Underground<\/a> and the Paris Metro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His latest, Underground Cities<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (Frances Lincoln<\/a>, 22 Sep), is in some ways a natural progression from his past work: in the introduction he muses on the link between transit geekery and wondering about \u201cwhat else lies down there beyond the walls\u201d (p. 6). But in other ways this is quite a different book.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For one thing, Underground Cities<\/em> is a book about cities\u2019 underground infrastructure in general: not just subway lines and stations, but pedways, sewers, pneumatic mail systems and other utilities. For another, though maps, diagrams and other illustrations are found throughout this book, it\u2019s about the infrastructure, not the maps.<\/p>\n

The book is organized by city: 32 in all, 19 of which are in Europe, starting on the west coast of North America and moving eastward across Europe and Asia. Each chapter has a short essay on the underground infrastructure of the city, and is illustrated by photos (mostly of subway stations) and diagrams. Twenty of the chapters come with more detailed diagrams and maps. There are three types. First, each has a vertical scale showing just how deep<\/em> the sewers, pipes caverns and subway stations go. Second, there\u2019s a featured three-dimensional cutaway diagram showing the layout of some key facility, like a subway station or shopping mall. (London\u2019s Picadilly station and Paris\u2019s Forum des Halles are absolute standouts here, as are the facilities you wouldn\u2019t expect, like Tokyo\u2019s bike vaults, Helsinki\u2019s swimming hall, or the Boring Company test tunnel in Los Angeles.)<\/p>\n

Finally, there\u2019s a two-page map spread of the underground city, which includes subways (and some surface rail lines), sewer lines and pedestrian passages. Each map spread uses a single colour scheme; all subway lines are orange regardless of the colour assigned to them by the official subway maps, which means that the Red Line and the Blue Line are all depicted with orange lines. A dense subway network like Paris\u2019s becomes cluttered and indistinguishable. The map shows that there\u2019s a subway line there, but it\u2019s decidedly not for navigation. It\u2019s an overview. So too is the text an overview, though there are some interesting gems there, like the cheese storage in New York City, and the tunnels carved into the Rock of Gibraltar.<\/p>\n

Even with the included photographs, maps and diagrams, compared to some of Mark\u2019s earlier books Underground Cities<\/em> seems a bit sparse, if only because Transit Maps of the World<\/em><\/a> and Paris Underground<\/em><\/a> (the two books I\u2019ve seen and reviewed) were so lavish and colourful. (Also, 12 out of the 32 cities have no maps or diagrams.) It occurs to me that this is probably a function of its subject matter. Transit systems have maps, posters and other ephemera that can be reprinted; sewer systems, pneumatic tube lines and bomb shelters, not so much. Those systems may (like Moscow\u2019s secret Metro-2, or Tokyo\u2019s mystery tunnels, both of which are tantalizingly and all too briefly mentioned here) be unmappable, though it may simply be that the systems are just unmapped, at least not in an accessible fashion. Rather than reprinting, Mark must have maps (by Lovell Johns) and cutaway diagrams (by Robert Brandt) made for purpose, which is (I\u2019m guessing here) an impediment to going all-out.<\/p>\n

For the purposes of The Map Room<\/strong>\u2019s audience, this is not a book where the maps are front and centre; it\u2019s an interesting introduction to a map-adjacent subject, and it\u2019s got interesting maps and diagrams, though not nearly enough of them. This was a pregnant book that left me wanting more: more cities, more maps, more detail in the text and illustrations, as though every chapter ought to have been a book in its own right.<\/p>\n

Disclosures:<\/strong> I received an electronic review copy of this book from NetGalley. Mark and I are acquainted in an online sense, and I\u2019ve published an essay of his on The Map Room<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n

\"UndergroundUnderground Cities<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
\nby Mark Ovenden
\nFrances Lincoln<\/a>, 22 Sep 2020
\nAmazon<\/a> (Canada<\/a>, UK<\/a>) | Bookshop<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Ovenden has made a career of publishing books about transportation systems and their maps that are both comprehensive and copiously illustrated. These include books about transit maps, railway maps and airline maps, as well… More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"autoblue_enabled":true,"autoblue_custom_message":"","autoblue_shares":[],"autoblue_post_url":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,737,94],"tags":[30,54,1485,1300,1487,1486],"class_list":["post-1789361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-infrastructure","category-transit","tag-books","tag-cities","tag-ovenden","tag-sewers","tag-subway-stations","tag-subways"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1787955,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2019\/10\/out-today-airline-maps\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789361,"position":0},"title":"Out Today: Airline Maps","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"29 October 2019","format":"link","excerpt":"Out today: Airline Maps: A Century of Art and Design (Particular Books\/Penguin), Mark Ovenden and Maxwell Roberts\u2019s book about the history of the airline map\u2014those maps showing where an airline flies that you often see in in-flight magazines. Hundreds of images span a century of passenger flight, from the rudimentary\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Aviation"","block_context":{"text":"Aviation","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/aviation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Airline Maps","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/airline-maps-flat-1024x530.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/airline-maps-flat-1024x530.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/airline-maps-flat-1024x530.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/airline-maps-flat-1024x530.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6069,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2017\/11\/london-underground-architecture-and-design-map\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789361,"position":1},"title":"London Underground Architecture and Design Map","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"20 November 2017","format":"link","excerpt":"Blue Crow Media's latest map of urban architecture is the London Underground Architecture and Design Map, a collaboration between transit system guru (and friend of The Map Room) Mark Ovenden and photographer Will Scott. \"The guide includes a geographical Underground map with featured stations marked, with corresponding photography and details\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Transit"","block_context":{"text":"Transit","link":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/category\/transit\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.maproomblog.com\/xq\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/london-underground-architecture-design-map-206x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3328,"url":"https:\/\/www.maproomblog.com\/2016\/11\/london-corrected\/","url_meta":{"origin":1789361,"position":2},"title":"London Corrected","author":"Jonathan Crowe","date":"8 November 2016","format":"link","excerpt":"We've seen geographically accurate maps of the London Underground, in which the Tube map is corrected\u00a0for geography. 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