Through the Ages – serie

In our modern day and age, when satellite imagery and GPS services like Google Maps, offer strikingly accurate images of the world, we can easily forget that for most of human history the world was an unknown tabula rasa on which cartographers, scientists, men of god, and kings imprinted their own dreams and ideals. This new extended edition, with the addition of about 15 maps, explores changing perceptions of the world map through the centuries and across multiple vastly different cultures. It juxtaposes 18th century Buddhist cartography in Japan with European mercantile maps of the same period. It travels with speculative cartographers and they argue in the scientific academies of Paris, London, and St. Petersburg over theories about what 'must' fill the great unknown. The book observes the emergence of the modern world view through the cartographic lens.

This book is an overview of plans, maps, and occasionally map-views of great cities all over the world. It follows the development of the city plan from its earliest stages in the Renaissance, through the Enlightenment, to the colonial city, the Grand Tour, Asian cities, the Industrial Revolution, gold rush and frontier cities, the administrative city plan, and finally the modern pictorial city map. Each map will be accompanied by a textual description of the map placing it within its historical, political, social, and /or economic context. In addition, we will also include short biographies of the cartographers who produced each map highlighting their contributions to cartography. While the work will cover many of the world's great cities, the book revolves around a loose group of anchor cities with a long mapping heritage, such as New York, London, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, Rome, and others, that appear repeatedly as the book progresses through different styles and eras of the urban plan. This enables readers to better understand how the city plan has changed over time as well as how these great cities have changed and, at the same time, extrapolate a better understanding of the other city plans offered. While the book follows a loose chronical progression, overlapping urban planning and cultural differences, prevent this book from following a strict chronological order.