The NYC Parks Department offers an amazing resource in the form of an online map that “includes every street tree in New York City” (spanning 422 species) first mapped by volunteers in 2015 and now updated daily by their forestry team. “On the map, trees are represented by circles. The size of the circle represents the diameter of the tree, and the color of the circle reflects its species. You are welcome to browse our entire inventory of trees, or to select an individual tree for more information.”

Clicking the trees reveals not just species and size but also ecological benefits provided, quantified in dollar terms, from things like capturing storm runoff and reducing air pollution. “We know that trees improve the environment and the health of a city in measurable ways. Trees can capture storm water runoff, reduce energy costs, and make the air less polluted and easier to breathe. We can calculate the benefits that each tree provides to the people of New York City based on a formula developed by the Center for Urban Forest Research. The benefits each tree provides varies based upon its species, size, and location.”

Fans can even track their favorite trees over time and add notes about tree-related activities. So far, nearly five thousand trees have been “favorited” and 20,000 activities reported. For those interested in doing even more, the Parks Department also encourages people to become involved: “It’s easy to become a tree steward! We host volunteers all year long. We can train you in basic activities such as watering trees, adding mulch and soil, and removing weeds and litter; as well as advanced activities such as installing a tree guard, expanding tree beds, and installing or removing stone or brick pavers.”

One caveat: the map only shows trees that grow on land under the jurisdiction of NYC Parks, but this includes trees planted along sidewalks or other public rights-of-way (still, it doesn’t have all trees maintained by the state or federal government or, of course, on private property). Still, with over 600,000 trees to explore, urban plant fans should have plenty to do just tracking and examining the ones that are covered!

A few years back, artist Nobutaka Aozaki started asking directions from strangers on the streets of Manhattan, then collecting those maps (hand-drawn from memory) to assemble into a huge and growing work of geographic wall art.

To aid his work, the artist pretends to be a tourist, donning souvenir apparel and carrying around a shopping bag from a popular tourist destination. He then asks New York pedestrians how to get from one location to the next, all in ways designed to fill in the gaps of his larger composition.

From Here to There, he explains, is a “map of Manhattan composed of hand-drawn maps by various pedestrians whom I asked for directions. I have collected and aggregated together small individual maps provided by strangers that constitute a contiguous map of the island of Manhattan.” Like a pre-digital version of now-popular subjective maps (like the one below, the result of this art project is a patchwork quilt made up of slips of paper ripped out of notebooks, even paper plates from street vendors — whatever is handy to draw on, scribbled upon with whatever is handy to write with, in whatever style and format is favored by the individual creators.

It’s a beautiful thing to watch evolve, and it may never be complete, but that isn’t really the point of the project. These days, few people rely on paper maps anymore, so it becomes a reflection of what people still know, or think they know, about the city around them. It also turns out to be a handy way to gauge the helpfulness of strangers on the streets of a big metropolis, showing how they respond when asked for a simple kindness from a stranger.

The map is not the territory, but the exception also proves the rule, as in the case of this book, which samples over 1,000 different maps to deconstruct their design approaches and inspire designers through their visuals. It’s not about the territories the original maps were made to represent, but all of the different design strategies embedded in the pages of past atlases.

Kerim Bayer combined over 5,000 small map images in Map Section. “Deconstructing them really did help me personally to double down on my interest in the graphics, in reducing them to their empirical elements and appreciating them mainly for their beauty,” he explains. “Although presented in a book the size of an atlas, it contains not maps of countries but maps of the graphic devices we use to translate and produce spatial information: lines, dots, colours, symbols, illustrations, shading, text, insets, hachures, legends, grids and contours.”

At first, Bayer considered selecting the thumbnails manually, but worried that would lead to biases in the results — instead, he tapped into his collection of scientific, transit and city planning maps programatically, letting randomness work for him. “For the purpose of highlighting the graphics of the maps and providing a resource, which is the mission of the project was anyway, randomisation worked just as well, if not better.”

“I’ve been looking for a way to better relate to my own maps for a long time,” says the book’s creator. “Maps always have been a learning tool, even if I don’t necessarily fully yet understand how. They’ve also been a resource and an aide for learning a great many other things.”

Amidst the modern architecture and undulating spaces of this station in Delft, one design detail stands out above the rest: a huge abstracted version of a map from the late 1800s that connects across a series of aluminum ceiling fins.

As travelers move through the space, their perspective shifts — overlaid on vertical slats, the map becomes abstract or concrete depending on the viewing angle, and periodically reveals details (like the name of the city) to new arrivals.

Developed by Macanoo over the last decade, this hub is more than just a station, containing a new city hall and municipal offices as well, but sited above the main transit tunnel is the grand open space connecting it all — an apt place for a massive map.

Within the station hall walls and columns are adorned with a contemporary reinterpretation of delft’s famed blue tiles. References to the region can be found in the facade and window designs, too.

The halls are separated with a glass wall and two further volumes that house the public counters, consultation rooms and technical services of the municipal offices, and the commercial functions of the station hall.

Mounting maps on walls is nothing new, but getting floor-to-ceiling wallpaper designed to fit in a wide variety of individual spaces and existing color schemes allows a lot of fresh possibilities.

Point Two Design has a collection of maps spanning 30 major global cities (and more on demand), including Seattle, London, Amsterdam, Manhattan, Tokyo and others. Land and water hues, meanwhile, can be set to enhance contrasts or blend into backgrounds.

There are two options, aimed at renters and owners, respectively — a removable vinyl version designed to stick but also come back off, as well as a more permanent suede-finish variant aimed to livening up spaces for years to come.

Bought by the square foot, the featured areas can be selected by the buyer, and cut to fit individual living spaces and selected by color to match existing painted surfaces, furniture, fixtures and other household accessories.