an addendum to that post about subway maps, courtesy of the always-great strangemaps. a couple things:
- of course this comes from an architecture school. architects have an unfortunate habit of making things that could be beautiful some kind of ugly. and check out the legend! why not arrange the legend to the size of the rings instead of alphabetically?! it becomes impossible to decipher, especially when there are 27 (27!) ring roads.
- as usual in america, size matters. it’s a point of pride for houston to have the giganticest ring road ever, though it shouldn’t be a point of pride for rice to memorialize this. enormous ring roads mean a severe auto-orientation, low, low densities, and a retarded urban form. if you can decipher the map, you’ll see that phoenix, st. louis, and kansas city are well represented in the outer rings. and yes, beijing and london also sport huge ring roads, but these are legitimate mega-cities. and for comparison’s sake, beijing (11.9 million) > kansas city (2 million). you should read the strangemaps post for the reasons why this map is also deceptive in its claim that houston’s is the biggest ring road of them all.
