Mark OvendenBesprekingen

Almost everything a fan of the Paris Metro could want is here. Although a lot of background on the genesis of the subway is presented, along with some of the hurtles of digging the tunnels, the main focus is on the maps, most of which are small illustrations that only give one an overall idea of its presentation and utility. Many of the photos of stations and their entrances are postage-stamp in size, which is a shame, because the art deco/art nouveau detail is often very attractive and interesting. Early on in the book there are design and construction details that only whet one's appetite for more (such as the decision to use beveled-edge tile to help reflect light).

The book is most useful for Paris residents with a curiosity about when certain "lignes" were added, or how a particular station design came about. The system is organic, a monster of engineering design that keeps expanding over the decades. A cutaway diagram of one "correspondence", where several lignes come together, shows just how complex the problem is of getting passengers from one to another.

But my eyes started to glaze over at a certain point; one can only stare at hundreds of subway maps rendered in a 3"x4" size for so long.

I had wanted more detail on station design and innovation. I remember taking the Paris subway in the 80's and the use of the magnetic-strip tickets. This is one case of automation with unattended consequences. These little yellow tickets littered the ground of stations, the steps, and the entrance/exits.

By the way, one reviewer listed what they thought were the greatest subway systems in the world. Having used the London tube, the New York subway, and the Paris system over multiple visits, I have to add Berlin to their list. I have made many extended visits to Berlin and lived there for a while (my spouse is a native), and their system is first-rate: the U-Bahn connects to the regional S-Bahn system, and bus stops are present at every station. I don't know about other cities, but I could also take my bike on the train. Many stations have elevators that help folks in wheel chairs as well as those with bikes, cumbersome parcels, or luggage. And the stations and trains are clean. I'd like to see a book like this on the Berlin U-Bahn!

Underground Cities by Mark Ovenden is an interesting view at what is beneath many of the cities of the world. While most such books concentrate on one city, often in mind-numbing detail, this one covers 32 cities in enough detail to pique interest in the topic more generally. It makes me curious about other cities as well as offers a few instances here that I will likely seek more details about.

My initial interest in the book was as something I could read in those brief moments when I have time to read a little but not enough time to get back into a novel or nonfiction work that requires concentration. It would have served that function well, much the way I use collections of short stories or essays, but I just kept reading because I was curious what some of the differences were between cities.

I would recommend this both to readers already with an interest in underground cities as well as those simply curious about the topic. Those already interested just need to understand this is not an in-depth look at any of these cities, it is an overview from which you can research or explore further.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

The strength of this book lies in the photos and poster reproductions. If you are a visual person, you will enjoy this book. If you are like me, and you enjoy looking at old time vintage images, then you will like the book as well. Most of the text is pretty interesting, especially, the first part of the book that contains the historical things. However, text is often pretty small (the font they chose), making it a little hard to read. Overall, this is a book to browse and enjoy for the visual appeal. Railroad buffs will very likely enjoy it.

This is a gorgeous collection of maps and other advertising materials from the early days of aviation to the present. It’s a nice oversize book, not too heavy, perfect for spreading out on a table and poring over. The authors accompany all photos with captions that provide details of the artists, trends in the industry and in society at the time, and explain at a very high level the histories of the various airlines. There were many I hadn’t heard of, and a lot of beautiful illustrations. My favourites were the Canadian Airlines “pinball machine” poster, with close seconds being the Air Canada and Swissair “wiring diagram” ones.

And while I liked the explanatory text in the photo captions, I found the running commentary had layout issues—this book must have been a challenge to lay out. There wouldn’t be a lot of room on the page for the commentary, so sometimes it would cut off mid-sentence and be continued six pages later. This made it hard to keep the narrative thread. So perhaps my only suggestion for another book of this type would be to provide an essay for each chapter at the beginning, then just present the photos and their captions.

I would recommend this for people who like travel posters and airplanes.

In contrast to a previous book on mass transit maps in general, this one focuses on the Paris system, in glorious and informative depth. There is a great deal to enjoy here, including the origins of the system, the design of the famous entrances, and how the system has grown and evolved over the century or more in service. Lovingly and lavishly illustrated. Of great interest to mass transit buffs, but also to lovers of Paris.

Entertaining book that shows the development over the decades of various subway systems' maps, the kind given out to riders and posted in stations and cars. There's a lot of discussion of various techniques, but if you're not interested in the recipe, you can still enjoy the "cake" of a lot of neat historical maps, such as the ones for Moscow and Berlin. Lots of fun.

Atlas de los metros del mundo es la primera y única colección de mapas históricos y actuales de todos los sistemas de transporte suburbanos existentes en la Tierra. A través de unas espléndidas imágenes y gráficos, Mark Ovenden traza la historia cartográfica de este medio de transporte, incluyendo mapas históricos, diagramas y fotografías, algunos de ellos accesibles por primera vez desde su publicación original. Este libro es una biblia para el diseñador gráfico, una colección imprescindible para los entusiastas del transporte, y un libro esencial tanto para los amantes de los viajes como para el turista de sillón.

rail maps

This is beautifully illustrated book of maps of the urban rail transport systems of the world. It is complete enough to show old mps of New York subways and the Paris Metro. Zone 1 shows information on the "world's mightiest metro systems." These are Barcelona, Berlin, Boston, chicago, Hong Kong, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Moscow, New York City, Paris, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Zone 2 shows the next 32, Zone 3 are 100 diverse systems. Zone 4 is the index including some systems for which no map is shown. This book is the 4th version of much smaller volume that came out in 2003.½

A very attractive book of maps, selected for their cartographic interest and design qualities, rather than being intended for use as an atlas. The examples cover all nations where there are currently passenger rail services operating, and historic maps are shown for comparison in many cases. The author has made a specialism out of railway cartography and design, and he shows interesting examples of maps used for publicity, to encourage colonisation (especially in North America) and for wider political ends. The East Berlin commuter rail map that manages to almost completely exclude West Berlin is a particularly notable example.

The maps of North America in particular showed me something I hadn't previously understood, and that was the extent and density of railway penetration across the United States as far west as the Rockies.

Sadly, although the author knows a lot about railway maps, he doesn't know as much about railways, and there are numerous errors in the text that have gone unchecked and uncorrected by the publisher. Moreover, although many of the illustrations are attractive, many are also reproduced at low resolution and some of the maps are almost impossible to read. Even though the book is not intended, as I said, to be used as an atlas, it would be good to be able to read some of the names and some of the text on the illustrations. Also, the text is very fragmentary and the illustration placement and keying is not consistent or always intuitive.

So: an attractive book, but one which can be irritating (because of the design failings) if you attempt to read it all the way through.

This book consists of two parts; the first is a rather desultory topical presentation of railway maps to illustrate various themes, and the second part aspires to present at least one map of each nation of the world's railway system, if they have one. The second part, especially, represents an accomplishment. The book's physical presentation is poor, however. The map reproductions are almost always so small that they cannot be studied, and all that remains is to admire their aesthetics, if that. Even worse is the excruciatingly fine print of the text, which is even less legible when, as it frequently is, it's displayed on pastel colors. The author has a limited command of prose style; among many other solecisms, he seems to think that 'infamous' means 'very famous'. This is a browser's paradise,. but it gets a halfhearted recommendation as something to actually read.

This is a handsome collection of railway maps from all over the world. This is a must for any transportation buff or historian. There is a nice aesthetic appeal to many of the maps, and the coverage seems reasonably representaative considering the enormity of the possible selections for inclusion. Mark Ovenden has done it again having compiled a sampling of transit maps already.½

Started out very interesting, but since I am neither an extreme transit geek or map nerd, at 144 pages it is too long. The authors have one (correct) conclusion that is belabored throughout. The Platonic subway map is Harry Beck's 1933 map of the London Underground, and all other maps are successful only so far as they copy its features.½

Bright, informative and fascinating at the same time, this is a real must-have for map geeks, transit-lovers and frequent travellers (armchair or real!).

This is a beautiful romp into Parisian transport history through maps. The Paris Métro is one of the great rapid transit systems in the world, along with those in London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, and Moscow. Perhaps every style of map of the the underground in Paris is represented in this book and layed out beautifully. It is not only a treasure for transit fans, but also for anyone who loves Paris. Although commuter rail lines had been opened up in the latter part of the 19th century, and there had been many proposals for rapid transit, the first line did not open up until the year 1900 (the first underground in Europe was in Budapest; the first in the United States was in Boston). Paris' lines twist through various neighborhoods in order to serve the whole city, but the lines were all developed with two tracks, unilke New York, which has some lines with four tracks to allow express service. But in 1969, the RER (Reseau Express Régional) opened its first line to enable an express service for Paris and its close-in suburbs (not serviced by commuter railroads). The RER lines complement the regular Métro lines, rather than parallel them. It should be nored that the use of rubber-tired trains was pioneered in Paris, and influence greatly the Montreal and Mexico City metros.½

http://lampbane.livejournal.com/607837.html

"I have to admit it's kind of disappointing. Mostly in that many of the maps are too small to properly enjoy looking at them; I think they should have added 50 pages so they could have printed more of the maps much bigger."

"I'm going to snuggle in bed and read the geekiest book ever written, " I proclaimed and went off to read Transit Maps of the World (2007) by Mark Ovenden. "That is a geeky book," my wife confirmed. But it's a book so wonderfully geeky that it goes all the way around to being cool again.

As the title implies this is a book of maps from transit systems around the world, not being too picky about a strict definition for urban transit thankfully. The book approaches maps of metro systems from an historic and design perspective. The book is divided into six zones with the older and larger systems getting more attention in the early zones, with less detail on the smaller and newer systems (although amazingly some of the systems in Asia that are of recent vintage are growing in leaps and bounds).

Ovenden appreciates the simplicity of a diagramatic map that eschews topography, where the lines branch out at 45 degree angles, the stations are marked with simple white circles and bulls-eyes for transfer stops, and the stations are clearly labeled in a unique font where the words do not cross the lines. The book illustrates that most metro maps in the world are variations on these simple design themes that originated with Harry Beck's famous map of the London Underground. The major exception is the New York MTA map which is geographically based, and I think appropriately so due to NYC's unique topography, although here I disagree with the author (I also found an interesting topographically-correct map of Boston's MBTA system at a website called Radical Cartogaphry).

What I like about this book most is the author's delight in the maps and the maps and the transit systems they represent. There's really a lot of positive commentary in this book and joy in public transit. Even the MBTA, much-maligned by Bostonians, comes off sounding pretty good. He even includes this classic, hand-drawn map of the old Boston MTA system where the elevated tracks are rendered in 3-D.

Here are a list of transit-related websites suggested by the book, plus one that makes up maps for Boston's future that I've been a fan of for some time. I think my fellow transit geeks can waste away many an hour here.

• UrbanRail.Net


• MTA Transit Museum


• London Transport Musuem


• UITP


• The Subway Page


• NYC Subway.org


• Subway Maps


• Subways.net


• The Future MBTA

Archetypal coffeetable book: Pretty, superficially interesting, glossy pictures, a smidgen of intanational style, and ultimately of much more interest to obsessive freaks than the populace at large.

Mark Ovenden assembled a book that contains maps of every urban train system in the world. Subway geeks will love it. And plain old map geeks like me as well. Older systems with more history get more pages and a series of maps that show the changing styles of the maps as well as the expansion of the systems. Newer ones get fewer pages. The newest, including ones that are only in the planning stages, get thumbnails. But it’s pretty complete.½

Interesting, but not very useful.

Maps can tell you many things; my main delight in them is the plethora of metadata they are stuffed with, with our without intent thereof.
This book is a rare collection of metro plans from all over the world and in some cases from a stretch of years, showing how map design and network have evolved under a series of years. The map freak can sit and browse, page up and page down with resplendent (and sometimes less so) map design. Or; at least I can.

The only setback: Given the multiple views you can have of maps and the information they convey this book could easily have been twice or trice the size it is. The author focuses on the development of the present day diagram plans and on information design/graphic design issues. How history and urban development can be read through these plans are left unsaid, and even in such a sitting target as Berlin the political implications visible in the maps are left without notice; in p. 13 the interested can see how the 1934 map shows a stop as Adolf Hitler Platz, changing name in the 1960 map to Reichskanzlerplatz, and, finally, to in 1965 it gets the present day name of Theodor Hauss Platz. No mention of this in the text.

Still, it's an impressive book, well worth the money.

I lost over an hour to this book and I have yet to read any of the text! It's great to imagine the cities whose subways are shown here, both the ones you know and the ones you don't. You can see how the systems change over time, how the maps bow to trends in information graphics and differ in usability -- basically, you'll be reminded that every manmade object is a design object.

The title really says it all: this book shows a map from pretty much every metro system in the world, including historical examples of maps from the largest systems. If you're interested in the topic, this book does a good job.½

WOW! Stunning and colourful collection of every official subway map on the planet! wfzimmerman is right: the TOC based on metro diagram design principals is so cool - but check out that Page 1 illustration of the entire world as a subway map, now that would make a great wall poster!
Text gives great insight into how the maps have evolved from (in some cases) pretty poor beginnings, to smart, informative and effective pieces of information design. Every art student needs this in their collection.
Amazing to see how many cities have subways and how different, yet similar their maps all are. It's fun to use the book to see where you've been and where you'd like to go!
One drawback: could've done with more pages for those smaller cities at the back (in "Zone 6" - a nice touch to give the book zones like rail systems have for ticketing instead of dull old chapters) as their thumbnail images dont really do some of those maps justice.
That said; a really practical, intelligent and quirky book that I've already had to keep my eyes on to stop it walking out the building!½