STREET MAPS AND PRIVATE-SECTOR MAP MAKING / A CASE STUDY OF TWO FIRMS MARK S MONMONIER Syracuse University ABSTRACT The indexed urban street map is a cartographic medium used by many people for way-finding and route-planning. Communication models addressing only map design and cognition ignore the flow of geographic information from government agency to map publisher to advertiser or retailer to user. Competition and territorial expansion in private-sector map making also affect the cost, accuracy, and graphic quality of street maps. "Who maps what cities?" may be as significant a focus for cartographic investigation as traditional concerns about graphic symbolization. A case study of the Champion Map Corporation, a national multi-level firm, and Jimapco, a local firm, demonstrates the effects of spatial contiguity and distance decay on the geographic expansion of a map publisher's area of operations. Product diversification accompanies competition, and the services of the local firm complement more than they duplicate those of the national firm operating in the same city. The public and private sectors of map making meet different cartographic needs. Public-sector cartography, particularly at the federal level, is generally respons- ible for base mapping and the control survey network, land use/land cover mapping, hydrographic charting, geologic mapping, cadastral mapping, and some small-scale thematic mapping, such as geographic summaries for census enumerations and maintaining a national atlas. The separation of mapping activities between sectors is far from complete, however distinct publishers' imprints might make it appear, for extensive parts of public-sector mapping are carried out by private contractors, particularly in aerial surveying, photogram- metry, software development and automated plotting, and scribing (Voisin, 1976). Private-sector map making activities also include the preparation of a variety of special-purpose maps for public utilities and for businesses requiring maps for marketing or transport operations, the manufacture of atlases, globes, and cartographic educational aids, and the compilation of indexed street maps and a variety of road and tourist maps (McNally, 1977). The cartographic literature gives private-sector cartography much less attention than its public-sector counterpart. Despite strong ties between the two sectors, a highly informative treatise on government mapping in the United States devotes less than a full page to commercial mapping (Thompson, 1979, pp. 12–13). In a survey of map makers and their activities, a recent textbook on map use devotes 15 times more space to government agencies than to private firms (Muehrcke, 1978, pp. 358–84). Most journal articles on private-sector mapping discuss the activities and practices of firms with employees active in professional organizations (see, for example, Leverenz, 1974). Cartographers tend to study map design more fully than map use – an article treating maps and advertising focuses upon the employment of maps in advertisements rather than their use as an advertising vehicle (McDermott, 1969). It might be argued that the past is better documented than the present: cartographic historians concerned with the recent past have provided comprehensive explorations of engraving techniques for commercial map making (Woodward, 1977), oil company road maps (Ristow, 1964), fire insurance mapping (Ristow, 1968), and the nineteenth century county atlas (Thrower, 1972). Modern commercial mapping, which directly affects more people than government mapping, merits additional cartographic investigation. MARK s MONMONIER is a Professor in the Department of Geography, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. He thanks Jack Croasmun, Vice-president of Champion Map Corporation, and James D. Fisk, President of Jimapco, for furnishing information about their companies, and Linda Buatti Egemeier for assistance in collecting copyright data. As always, the author assumes responsibility for errors of fact and misinterpretation, MS submitted February 1981 CARTOGRAPHICA Vol 18 No 3 1981 pp 34–52 http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/U644-7V56-5731-8443 - Friday, June 03, 2016 6:02:38 AM - IP Address:185.89.100.184