Geo Standard Two

GEO STANDARD TWO

Slide 1

Text: Standard 2: Metal Maps

• Mental maps are the spatial images that we carry inside our heads about places, peoples, and the land.
• When we hear directions to someone’s house or a particular place, our mind conjures up the streets and landmarks that will help us arrive at that place. We walk the street, or drive our car in our heads.

[Image of a mental map to a Costco]

Audio: Standard 2 is mental maps. In standard 1, we learned about maps and other geographic representations. Mental maps are also representations. But these are representations of the Earth that we carry inside our heads. About places.About peoples and the lands that they occupy. When we hear directions to someone's house or a particular place, a favorite place of ours. Our mind can conjure up streets and landmarks that will help us arrive at where we're going. Essentially, we're walking the streets or driving the streets in our cars in our heads.

Slide 2

Text: Mental Maps

On the micro-level, spatially envisioning where we are going helps us understand and remember how to get there, and how to tell someone else how to arrive at a place.

On a regional or global scale, visualizing “where on Earth” places, mountains. Lakes, rivers….are, help us gain perspective of the whole, and better understand and be able to make connections about Earth systems.

[Image of puzzle pieces imprinted with a map of the Earth]

Audio: On the micro level, spatially envisioning where we are going helps us to understand and remember how to get there. And how to tell someone else how to arrive at a certain place. Imagine you're walking from your apartment to Downtown Mill Avenue to your favorite night spot. On your way, you're going to pass a barking dog behind a wall. You're going to remember that barking dog. It's going to be ingrained in your head. Then you're going to keep walking. And you're going to pass a wall with bougainvillea falling over the wall. Beautiful vegetation is going to stay in your mind. And that's going to become part of your mental map. When you get closer to Mill Avenue, you're going to have to cross a major intersection. That's going to stay on your map, in your mental map. The honking of the cars. Perhaps the smell of a restaurant that you pass as you arrive to Mill Avenue. All of these things, even -- even your sense of smell, can be added into your mental map. And so the more you observe the surroundings, the more information or data that -- that is going to go into your mental map. When you try to describe to your friends how to reach you in your restaurant. You're going to be able to give them those same mental map landmarks and images and elements to help them find their way. So the more you know about your environment, the more you can help explain it to somebody else. On a region or a global scale, if you visualize where on Earth places are. Mountains, lakes and rivers. You gain a better perspective of the whole. And you can better understand and be able to make connections about Earth's systems. Note the puzzle pieces on this slide page. It's almost as if, when you -- when you add to your mental map. When you add more information about a certain place or -- or compare a certain place relative to another place that you know. All of this can be added into your mental map. And the more you know, it grows. And it grows. And it grows. And it becomes much more densely populated with information.

Slide 3

Text:These maps were made by fifth and sixth graders in Austin, Texas. The students were encouraged by their teacher to envision and then draw their street, and then to draw the places that they liked and the places they did not like on their street. In the picture on the right, the student took just a tiny piece of his street and he drew a scary, abandoned house in fairly great detail.

[Images of hand-drawn maps]

Audio:These maps were made by fifth and sixth graders in Austin, Texas. The students were encouraged by their teacher to envision and then draw their street and then to draw the places that they liked and the places they did not like on their street. In the picture on the right, the student took just a tiny piece of his street and he drew a scary, abandoned house. So this is, obviously, something in his mental map that impacts him significantly; and that's how he sees his street and especially the place he does not like on his street. In the map in the upper left-hand corner, the student has taken a larger piece of earth's surface and he's drawn streets and intersections; and he's noted sidewalks and houses and the Zavala Elementary School and even some green space in the picture. So his view is quite different from the other -- than the other student's view.

Slide 4

Text: How to use mental maps

• We use mental maps on local to global scales; from envisioning a particular street, or a particular block, to envisioning a particular country’s outline when we listen to the world news at night.
• Depending on what we know about a place, our mental maps can be quite detailed, or very sparse. As we learn more about a particular place, or visit some place in our city or state, our mental maps become more detailed and accurate.

[Map of The Mill Avenue District] {Map of Iraq]

Audio: We use mental maps on local to global scales, from envisioning a particular street or a block, to envisioning a country's outline when we listen to the world news at night. Depending on what we know about a place, our mental maps can be quite detailed or very sparse. As we learn more about a particular place or visit someplace in our city on a regular basis, our mental maps become more and more detailed and more and more accurate. Note, for example, the two maps on this slide. The top map is the Mill Avenue District next to Arizona State University. If you're an ASU student, you probably know where your favorite stores are, your favorite coffee shops, your favorite restaurants; and you can tell other people how to arrive at these places by landmarks that you have in your head, in your mental map. And it's really easy for you to get around this way because that mental map is so full of data. The map on the bottom shows an outline map of Afghanistan. Most of us haven't been to Afghanistan, and most of us don't have a very detailed mental map of Afghanistan in our minds. We might be able to tell the outline of the country. We might be able to remember the borders of the country and which other countries border it. We might know where Kabul, the capital, is or a couple of other cities that we've heard about over the last nine years on a regular basis. But that's probably all most of us know about the country of Afghanistan. So comparatively, the Mill Avenue District map is very rich in detail and mental images in our mind if we know a lot about that area for ASU students. And contrarily, the bottom map, showing Afghanistan, is one that we probably carry in our mind that is much, much less detailed with information because we simply haven't had the experience to accumulate that information in our mental map.

Slide 5

Text: Mental Maps

Audio: Therefore, the more we learn about a place or our surroundings, the better we can imagine it or conjure it up in our minds; and the better we can describe it to someone else. For someone who is listening to us describe a street or a place or some other feature on earth, the more vivid a mental map becomes as we add more and more detail to our description. And as we spend more time traveling the same route or exploring or studying the same place, we will continue to add layers of information to our description. Each time we make the same trip, we'll observe and take in more information that then becomes part of our mental image of that place.

Slide 6

[Image of the cover of The New Yorker from March 29, 1976]

Audio: Mental maps, or cognitive maps, help us organize and make sense of the world around us. We sort and we compartmentalize information about places in our minds. And as we do that, we begin to develop patterns and distribution of the physical and human features on the earth. The map on the right is how one illustrator for the New Yorker Magazine back in 1976 suggested that New Yorkers envisioned Manhattan, as compared to the way they envisioned the rest of the United States. If you notice the bottom portion of the image, you can see Manhattan in quite rich detail. You can see 9th Avenue 10th Avenue clearly marked, and then the Hudson river. You can see buildings on the street carefully drawn so you can identify those buildings if you're in New York and pass them regularly. In fact, this map is so rich in detail that you can see cars on the street and you can see people on the sidewalks. This indicates that New Yorkers really know their streets. Many of them walk, as opposed to taking a car. So they have a very, very good feeling of what the city is about and what their space in that city means to them. Looking at the top portion of the New Yorker cover, you see the artist's rendition of what he thinks the New Yorkers think of the rest of the world -- or the rest of this country. You can see that you've got a few landmarks. You've got Kansas City and Nebraska and Las Vegas and Texas, Los Angeles. He's got the border of Mexico. He's got the border with Canada, the Pacific Ocean; and then across the Pacific Ocean, we see China, Japan, and Russia. And this map indicates that the New Yorker doesn't have a lot of rich detail about any of these places. He suggests that the average New Yorker knows only a little bit about the United States as a whole but knows a very great deal about the city in which he or she lives.

Slide 7

Text: How we use mental maps

[Image of hand-drawn map]

Audio: A mental map incorporates both objective and factual information about a place or feature of earth, as well as the subjective perceptions about that place that we might have about it. People imagine and create maps varying detail. For example, a well-traveled person can mentally compare and contrast places. She might describe a place in great detail, even using information such as sounds, smells, colors, humidity or dryness in the air, or any other characteristic that gives life to that place.

Slide 8

Text: Mental Maps

[Clipart of cyclists] [Clipart of person being transported in a wheelchair]

Audio: Conversely, someone who has not traveled widely may not be able to describe a place rich with detail. Also, people who travel by car will offer different descriptions of a place than a person who rides a bus, walks, takes a bicycle, or wheels through the streets in a wheelchair. Note the two images on this slide. Where do you suppose the bicyclists will be looking? Will they be observing the landscape around them; or are they more likely to be looking at the ground, hoping to avoid rocks and potholes? Then note the lady and her companion in the bottom picture. The young woman is pushing the lady in the wheelchair. What are they going to be looking at? They're going to be walking much more slowly than the bikes are riding. They'll probably be able to note the trees and the buildings and everything around them. They'll certainly be looking for the wheelchair ramp at the end of the sidewalk, which will lead them across the street and to the next wheelchair ramp that takes them up onto the next sidewalk. These two groups of people are going to be observing and focusing on very different things in their mental maps.

Slide 9

Text: Modes of Transportation and Mental Maps

Audio:A person who walks to work every day may be able to describe how the smell of bread from a nearby bakery permeates the air as you walk by. A walker or bicyclist might add that a particular corner is very treacherous, as there's no stop sign and cars whisk pass them with little regard for someone crossing the street. A person in a wheelchair will know which streets are accessible and which streets or sidewalks have too many potholes. On the other hand, someone who rides the bus does not have to pay such close attention to those details, but instead might be able to list every store he passes on his route as he watches out the window or every stop or even stops of other people that happen to be riding his route. He'll be focusing on completely different things that bicyclists or people in wheelchairs. And then again, someone on a fast moving train or subway might only be able to describe their route to work or home in a linear fashion, offering information about how many stops before they exit the train or by using color descriptors, such as the Red Line or the Green Line to give directions to another train user.

Slide 10

Text: Understanding Neighborhoods Through Mental Mapping

[Image of hand-drawn maps of Jersey City portraying Kevin Lynch’s theory from The Image of the City]

Audio: Mental maps are not only useful finding our way to the grocery store or to the coffee shop but they're also useful for people who are planning neighborhoods. Kevin Lynch the author of The Imagine of the City in 1960, listed five elements that are important on mental maps; paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. Paths he said consist of the routes that the observer or the traveler moves about in. These paths can be streets, or bus routes, car roots or any other defined path of movement. This is the most basic way in which we experience a place on an everyday basis. Edges he defines as boundaries that separate one region to another. Like seams that connect two regions or areas or barriers that separate two areas or regions. To neighborhoods for example. Districts are medium to large scale sections of a city or a place. They represent the broader structure of a city that travelers might pass through and they're daily journey to and from work. Nodes are generally the main focal point to someone who is travelling to and from. A node might be someone's work place, a place of worship, a grocery store that they regularly use. Nodes may also be a convergence of one's paths an intersection. Landmarks are point references. They could be buildings, or favorite pizza joints or a nearby park or any other feature that helps the observer or the traveler know or experience a place.

Slide 11

Text: Other factors that affect our mental map-making capabilities

Audio: What are some other factors that effect our mental map making capabilities? A person's relative level of affluence might also effect how one describes or conjures up a mental map. Somebody might be focusing on good neighborhoods and bad neighborhoods. Safe neighborhoods, unsafe neighborhoods. Neighborhoods where there are upscale shops or neighborhoods where there are factories. Stereotypes and prejudices also might play a role in how a mental map looks in our mind. Again, rich versus poor neighborhoods.Particular demographic groups of people in one neighborhood as opposed to another demographic group in another part of a neighborhood. People with stereotypes are prejudice. Prejudices might consider those neighborhoods very differently. So just as we might learn about a particular place on earth from someone's description of that place, we will likely learn something about the person who's describing it.

Slide 12

[Image of a mental map on the cover of The New Yorker]

Audio: The map on the left of this slide is another mental map by an artist for the New Yorker magazine. In this map the cartographer or mapmaker is portraying how she perceived the city of New York culturally and demographically. The map offers no useful information on how to arrive at a certain place. Instead, its labels point out the cultural, ethnic age and economic diversity of New York City. Who do you think lives in areas of New York such as Botoxia [phonetic], Irate, Irant, Taxistans [phonetic] and Hipopobad [phonetic]?

Slide 13

Audio: So what's the power or the importance of observation and mental maps? If geography is to be useful in creating a framework for understanding the world, its past, the present and the future, then coherent mental maps must take shape and become increasingly refined as students progress through their school years and beyond. Students should be encouraged to develop and update their mental maps to ensure that they continue to have essential knowledge of place location, place characteristics and other information that will assist them in personal decision-making and in establishing a broad-based perception of earth from a local to a global perspective. Additionally, students need to understand that developing mental maps is a basic skill for everyone who wants to engage in a lifetime of geographic understanding.

Arizona State University | United States and Arizona Social Studies / 1