Hovertown is thrilled to unveil our very first map, a lovingly developed compositional map of Jacksonville, FL.
Whereas most of our maps will be of an analytical or storytelling nature, this one represents the first in our "Hometown" series, which takes a more intimate approach to the presentation of a place.
Jacksonville is best known for being the largest city in the United States in terms of sheer land cover, and for having one of the very few north-flowing rivers in the Northern Hemisphere, the St. Johns River. It has a rich musical, architectural, and artistic history, and features far more than its fair share of different types of places: historic districts and planned residential areas, a Spanish-influenced region, funky hippie spots, retreats for the elderly, some of the nation's best schools situated in economically languishing neighborhoods, major-league sports and rolling farms, swamps, ocean, rivers and smaller rivers.
This map is a portrait of Jacksonville, a city sprawled out flat under the weight of its many identities, with one face to the river and another to the sea. Click to enlarge.
To those who live there, it seems to be either a place you're from, a place you end up in, or a place you go through on your way to somewhere else. It somehow doesn't feel like a place you stay. Jacksonville has been honored with the first iteration of our Hometown series because it's actually the cartographer's own hometown. As an exception to the trend, she's actually come back as a permanent resident after having left the city behind for nearly a decade, returning to find it simultaneously the most familiar place in the world, and a very new home for someone returning as an adult. This map served as an exercise in reclaiming the familiar in a more personal manner, like drawing a portrait of a grandparent and all the lines in their face.
This map presents the geographic and administrative boundaries, the hierarchy of roadways, and certain special regions as the layers which most directly make up the city's configuration. These elements are faithfully expressed and artfully layered to present the form of the city as a composition. A place made circular by its sheer size, and reaching urgently for connection with everything around it. Its weight is unevenly distributed, and we find it continually mid-turn, tentatively focused on the river, around which its greatest cultural richness and urban density lie, but always with a foot toward the ocean. Like the city itself is always running to the sea with the river.
Note the legend in the upper-righthand corner. Duval county is expressed in a deeper shade of the same blue chosen for the land, over which the sprawling and circling transportation network is highly visible in white. Contour lines play a subtle textural role in this map, overlaid on the ground and lying under the rest of the information. The ubiquitous presence of water, the rambling streams that playfully assemble themselves in their eventual pursuit of the open sea, are illustrated in a sleepy shade of blue that's reminiscent of the steely color the sea actually takes on in this region, in contrast to the almost mythically bright turquoise found in southern Florida. The city's extremely involved relationship between the itself, the St. Johns River and the Atlantic Ocean is one of its most inextricably key attributes. The entire place is oriented around the water.
Shown in a soft shade of green are the designated parks, including golf courses and cemeteries, there being several protected forests and reserves besides, as labeled in green. The airports, of which there are several more than most residents are likely aware, are distributed throughout, strengthening this highly extroverted city's connection with the country and the world. Closely related to the airports are the multiple military areas, representing the city's great usefulness to the US Navy and Marine Corps. Finally, appearing in both the 'fatter' and 'leaner' areas are the key higher education resources of the region, which make Jacksonville an increasingly desirable destination for students.
The attributes of Jacksonville that aren't discussed in this map greatly outnumber those that are included. Topics such as its stellar healthcare networks, its relationship with the hydrology of Florida, its public library system, its complicated history of architectural preservation (and lack thereof), and more, will be explored in our thematic maps of Jacksonville.
In the ongoing Hometown series, we present a cartographic portrait of a selected city, artistically developed to showcase the nature and distribution of its features. We take this from the perspective that just as everyone is from somewhere, everywhere is also where someone is from; every town is a hometown, and whatever kind of town it is, it's not exactly like anywhere else. These maps will present the unique likenesses of many places, which when viewed together will showcase the dazzling diversity of the places we call home.
This map was produced using Maps for Adobe by Esri, and with reference to information available through Google Maps.
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