**7. Creative mapping is alive and well**

Maps are essential efforts that aid our understanding about the importance of places, landscapes, regions, spaces, networks, surfaces and boundaries in many disciplines and fields of study. They are not, nor should they be considered, only the interest and concern of geographers or cartographers. Rather "umbrella" views of these concepts include displaying or picturing them graphically in some ways to those in many fields. Even a "surface" or casual thinking about earth places, spaces, surfaces, landscapes and boundaries will acknowledge that these are, or can be, a focus of those studying biology, geology, astronomy, architecture, health care, law, religion, languages and economies. Some study the earth's surface and features, others below the surface and others what is above the earth's surface. All these, to one degree or another, can use these geographical concepts and perspectives to explore the place or an environment concept in studying colonial, military or economic history, human rights and welfare, environmental issues and topics in biology, psychology, geology, society, politics, oceanography, astronomy and other fields. Maps in one way or other represent an important perspective or way to look at human relations and environments at all scales and between the social, natural and physical sciences and the sciences and humanities. Too often geographers may think that maps are the "singular" domain of those in geography. That is a rather narrow way of looking at the worlds around us, as places, locations, networks, surfaces and landscapes are all at the heart of studying many topics in many disciplines.

Recognizing the stark reality that there are thousands and millions of maps that can be constructed and hundreds of atlases that might be compiled at local and universe levels, we focus the discussion now on earth-maps that are familiar to many in an everyday world. This is the scale that geographers study and prepare maps, that is, places where people live and have lived, work, play, worship and interact. Other disciplines use spatial perspectives at other scales, including microbiology, geology, meteorology, oceanography, archaeology, law, physics and astronomy, all of which study and map many of the same concepts geographers use in seeking better visual knowledge levels to understand above and below the earth's surface.

In the following paragraphs, I present and discuss some examples of innovative maps that will help us better understand the earth's inhabitants and environments. In each example, a salient point is that "there is much more we do not know about a place or landscape or region than we do know." In the contemporary high-tech world using huge databases, unimaginable even three decades ago, there are ongoing efforts to examine the nature of these databases and to map distinguishing features about a place or a region or a landscape. Many advanced technologies use GIS or Geographic Information Systems. These utilize massive databases looking at weather and climate, disaster preparedness and impacts, global warming, land-use changes, population shifts, human welfare (rich and poor) gaps, elections, shifts in cultural, and political and religious preferences. Many innovative computer programs were written to map key features of some human or environmental feature or event. The collection and availability of these interdisciplinary and international databases have stimulated

geographers to explore the existing status of some phenomenon or a set of related phenomena at local, city, national and international scales. GIS techniques and models today are used in a wide variety of fields and disciplines seeking both to visually present the existence and appearance of some feature or using those maps and related graphics to consider new ways to understand interrelated, or previously considered unrelated, phenomena.

Another computer-driven innovation in the past several decades has been the emergence of search engines which provide massive datasets that can be used for popular use or scholarly research. Yahoo and Google were pioneers in these explorations; Amazon, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are also rich sources of information. The Google enterprises include massive generic databases about many topics and themes as well as data about regions, countries and cities. A second database called Google Scholar includes citations for articles, chapters, books and other materials, including maps, that appear in scholarly literature bases. Two additional valuable features of the Google databases are that the entries or hyperlinks are available in languages other than English and that the hyperlinks are ranked according to some industry-defined formula. That ranking is neither based on the most recent year an item was published, nor the number of citations, but probably some combination about the ranking of the journal. For example, one can examine the top 10 or 50 entries in the Google Scholar database to identify major recent research findings on a topic. In Google searches, one enters, for example, the name of a country and feature, such as, Baltic States + climate change; South Africa + COVID 19 vaccination rate; China + minorities, or the Mediterranean Sea + maps of water pollution. Entering these terms in the Google Search box will yield the number of hyperlinks available. The number of hyperlinks, as well as the rankings, constantly change and will vary depending on the language used in the search. The Google search engines provide the inquisitive scholar with contemporary and historical source materials and are the most important sources scholars use. In this context, they are more valuable than using current materials in college, university or national library collections or looking at the contents of a few major journals.

In undertaking this research using Google Scholar entries, I had little idea what would emerge from collecting the data as well as how best to map the results [22, 23]. The maps, as is noted below, contain some patterns and features that were unexpected. They clearly demonstrate that the knowledge base of a topic or of countries or cities is very uneven and that those differences raise questions about the best way to map the results for research either about a single topic such as Pacific Islands + missionaries or a region such as South America or North Africa.

The database was used to examine "how much do we know about a given country." The raw Scholar hyperlink data are from an English language search conducted in late November 2021 where the name of the country was entered into the Google Scholar search box. There were vast differences, as one would expect, from those states at the very top and those at the very bottom. **Figure 2** is compiled from these data. The Tokyo metro area has a population (39 million) almost equal to that of Canada, Poland or Afghanistan or the combined populations of Kazakhstan and Zambia or Syria and Guatemala.

Another perspective is gained by examining maps showing the vast differences in the absolute number of Scholar hyperlinks for the 198 countries. The countries with the most Scholar hyperlinks were the United States (6 million), Switzerland (5.8 million) and India (5.7 million) and the fewest were Eritrea, St. Vincent and Grenadines, Bahrain and Tuvalu, each with less than 75,000 hyperlinks. Because of the vast

*Perspective Chapter: Creative Mapping and Mapping Creativity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102729*

#### **Figure 2.**

*Maps of comparable population. Each area has about 39 million residents, which is about the same as the total population of the following 53 countries combined (listed from smallest to largest population): Vatican, Nauru, Tuvalu, Palau, San Marino, Monaco, St. Kitts & Nevis, Marshall Islands, Cayman Islands, Andorra, Antigua & Barbados, Seychelles, Tonga, St. Vincent & Grenadines, Grenada, Micronesia, Kiribati, St. Lucia, Samoa, Sao Tome & Principe, Barbados, Vanuatu, Iceland, Bahamas, Belize, Brunei, Malta, Cape Verde, Suriname, Western Sahara, Montenegro, Luxembourg, Solomon Islands, Bhutan, Guyana, Comoros Islands, Fiji, Dijbouti, Eswatini, Cyprus, East Timor, Mauritius, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Trinidad & Tobago, Bahrain, Latvia, Guinea-Bissau, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Lesotho, Botswana and Gambia.*

differences, the data were ranked into quintiles (**Figure 3**): 1–39 (the most), 40–79, 80–119, 120–159 and 160–198 (the fewest hyperlinks). A similar procedure was used when examining the number of maps about each country in the Scholar database. The United States (4.3 million) had the most followed by the People's Republic of China (3.5 million), Germany (3.5 million), France (3.4 million) and Japan (3.2 million). At the other end of the spectrum these countries had fewer than 10,000 Scholar hyperlinks each: Ukraine, Nauru, Micronesia, Belarus, Bahrain, Tuvalu and St. Kitts. The bottom map also shows the vast unevenness in the number of maps in the database.

**Figure 4** shows the vast differences in the number of hyperlinks among the world's capitals. In most countries, the capital city is the largest city, has the most hyperlinks and is most important culturally, commercially and politically. Exceptions are New York City (vs Washington, DC), Toronto (vs Ottawa, Canada), Sydney (vs Canberra, Australia), Cape Town (vs Pretoria, South Africa), Lagos (vs Abuja, Nigeria), Mumbai (vs New Delhi, India), Auckland (vs Wellington, New Zealand), Jerusalem (vs Tel Aviv, Israel) and Istanbul (vs Ankara, Turkey). The data were gathered by entering (in English) the name of the capital city and the country into a Google search (such as, Paris, France; Lima, Peru; Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea; Bratislava, Slovakia). There are very significant differences between those cities in Zone 1

#### **Figure 3.**

*The knowledge base of countries (top) and country maps (bottom) according to number of Google Scholar hyperlinks.*

(the most hyperlinks) and Zone 6 (the least). Regional differences again are stark, with much more knowledge in the database for European than for African (orange type) and some Asian (black type) countries. Examples of capitals with less than 50,000 hyperlinks were: Monrovia, Liberia; Minsk, Belarus; Vatican City and Libreville, Gabon. The pie graph clearly shows that six cities in Zone 1 have onequarter of the hyperlinks of all world capitals.

The data also revealed vast differences in the number of maps about capital cities. Some capital cities have many maps and others very few. Paris, London and Berlin have over 1 million map hyperlinks; Cairo, Egypt and Ankara, Turkey somewhere in

#### **Figure 4.**

*The number of Google Scholar hyperlinks shows a large variation in available information about the capital cities of 198 countries.*

the middle (99,000 and 62,000 respectively) and Monrovia, Liberia; Georgetown, Guyana; and Asmara, Eritrea had fewer than 10,000 each. The top of the figure shows that the combined Scholar hyperlinks of Beijing and Berlin approximate those of all 54 African capitals combined.

The third set of maps explores the vast differences in the amount of information about major water features, specifically oceans, seas, rivers, bays and straits (**Figures 5** and **6**). There are some major "knowledge gaps" in the scholarly literature about these features. For some seas and rivers, there were many studies, for others very few. Compare the North Sea and Persian Gulf (#1 and #20 on **Figure 5**) or the Congo and Mekong Rivers (#9 and #12 on **Figure 6**). A strong case that can be made from looking at global and regional patterns is that we are truly witnessing aquae incognitae. Additional research could be undertaken at below surface physical features, climate change patterns and natural disasters, fishing and mining economies, and coastal and island tourist destinations.

"Explorations into the unknown or little known" are extended to the eight world maps in **Figure 7**. Each world map is empty except for ??? which indicates that it

#### **Figure 5.**

*Knowledge base of planetary water features.*

would be useful to study the topic in the title. These include developing a database to explore social media networks, users and content; in what countries and especially what world regions scholars are studying global warming; what countries are the leaders and laggards in LGBT issues about rights, discrimination and empowerment; what networks of successful programs are addressing seasonal as well as deep poverty and illiteracy in Africa, Asia, Latin America and what role the UN, EU and faith communities are playing in these efforts; where the most successful national sustainability projects are when it comes to green energy projects, promoting biodiversity and innovative conservation and agricultural practices to reduce global warming; and what steps are most successful in preparing for natural disasters and reducing human and environmental impacts. These representative maps are meant to stimulate scholars in the social and natural sciences and the humanities to explore pioneering research in rural and urban areas in their own countries and major world regions.

*Perspective Chapter: Creative Mapping and Mapping Creativity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102729*

#### **Figure 6.**

*Knowledge base of the 20 longest rivers.*

The final map is a "blank" map (**Figure 8**). It is meant to stimulate the reader to consider tackling a topic important at any scale. The map could be a village, a city neighborhood, a large or small city, a coastal or inland tourist destination, a political capital or a university city, a country or group of countries, a region of a continent or a continent. It could also be related to features about humans including migration routes, children's and women's rights, networks and patterns of those barely surviving, border crossing points, crime rates, health/disease conditions, unemployment rates, etc. In an environmental context, it could be placed annually experiencing tsunamis or hurricanes or occasional earthquakes or a river basin, an ecozone or storm track region. All of these places and landscapes have features that could be mapped but seldom are. The list of sites could be expanded to include places of spouse, child and elderly abuse, child labor, human trafficking routes, historical and contemporary slavery networks, dispersal or clusters of undocumented refugees, white collar criminals, adults unvaccinated against COVID-19, community quilting projects, unregistered voters, foreign investments and ownership of countries and cities, geographical references in religious and secular music, variations in the books ordered for local libraries in a large city versus small city, elderly populations not covered by medical programs, geographical roots (home towns) of those in diplomatic corps and

#### **Figure 7.**

*Exploration into cartographies of the unknown.*

faith communities, the densities of foreign language translators and services, social class neighborhoods, time-space patterns of the disabled, news from little known places (Africa, rural areas in the Global South), underemployed, college dropouts, networks of volunteers and criminals, the daily travels of mobile health workers and volunteer lawyers for indigenous peoples, devolution patterns in global tourism due to COVID-19, fashion industry and sports communities' responses to COVID-19, song lyrics in COVID-19 music, mapping morality in COVID-19 times, immobility during COVID-19 times, changes in bird migrations with climate change, and many more

**Figure 8.** *Invisible, silent and unknown geographies.*

topics. The world is literally full of unexplored silent and invisible spaces awaiting the attention of geographers at all scales.
