Lab 3: Let's Make a Map

For this assignment, we were asked to use the Google Maps "My Maps" interface to create a mashup map of our own.  As I am a very big classic rock enthusiast and recently watched VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of All Time," I thought it would be interesting to map the home towns of the top twenty American artists on the list.  Below is the mapping result (Please be sure to click the link beneath the map for further detail):


View Home Towns of VH1's Top 20 (American) Artists of All Time in a larger map

As you can see, this map exhbits several evident trends both geographically and generationally.  The different colored markers identify the home towns of these top artists and the decades across which the list spans.  Colors were chosen according to the peak years of the artists' careers.  To distinguish between decades, green represents the 1950s, yellow the 1960s, light blue the 1970s, pink the 1980s, and dark blue the 1990s.  Clearly, the majority of these top artists were born on the eastern side of the country, with a substantial concentration in the south.  Two significant historical population trends seem to justify this distribution.  First, the eastern states have a high population density; thus, it would be likely that several talented artists would come from such an area.  Additionally, most of the artists in the southeast, as well as the entirety of the map, peaked in the 1960s, indicating that they were born in the earlier part of the century.  As the eastern part of the country was more heavily populated than the west in the early twentieth century, it seems logical that many of the artists were born in that area.  It is also interesting to note that the chosen artists of the 1980s were all born in the northeast.  Finally, the location of the two music halls of fame is also significant, for their position is fairly central to the majority home town concentration.  This positioning suggests that these locations would receive the greatest amount of traffic or would appeal to the subsequently high concentration of fans living in the same area as the artists' origins.

While this map is particularly interesting, it also possesses a few flaws.  For example, it does not outline the geographical career path of these artists from their home towns, and it is assumed that many of them traveled to become successful in the music industry.  Furthermore, it does not show where certain music trends were popular geographically or differentiated between genres, knowledge which could indicate why a person was inclined to one type of music over another.  These are just some issues that stem from user-created maps availble with neogeography.  Although the map presents valuable information, it cannot show enough to provide the user with a comprehensive understanding of the subject.  In addition, the amateur nature of neogeography may incline a user to question the information being presented to him. While I did my best to research the artists' home towns, I am certainly not an authority on the topic and I relied heavily on other sources for my presentation.