An imaginary city I drew by hand. This one is appr. 55x35 cm (14x21 inches). I used to draw my maps in blue, but the pencil shop doesn't sell my pencils any longer - only some red ones were left. The city is inspired on Dordrecht and Amsterdam. It's a typical Dutch city, as in Holland places can't just expand wherever people want to build; new buildings must be around existing towns. Urban sprawl simply doesn't exist, except very old urban sprawl. Therefore, cities are always distinct from other towns, agglomeration of suburbs is not possible. Between ever-expanding cities, green buffers must prevent cities from growing into one, large megacity, The city is on the northern bank of the imaginary east-west river (being not far away from the river's mouth into the sea) while at the point where the southern river flows into the main river, a fortress was built in order to have a good view of the river during war time. The old road to the fortress from the south is still in use, new neighbourhoods have been built around it, so it's a perfect bicycle/bus lane. In the southwest on the river, the Plaza area with a cruise quai, schools, station, P+R, ferry dock, sports palais, outlet shops, many offices and a hotel make this shore a vivid place. Newer neighbourhoods (Dutch: VINEX) are built at the southeastern bank of the river. 2011.
Normal people don’t have favorite cartographers, but I think many geographers do. I’ve simply fallen in love with the maps of Erwin Raisz. How? It’s not a name you hear too oft…
Hand drawn city map of Raalte (called after some Dutch town). The city is situated on two rivers, on of them being an affluent, ending in the other. It's drawn as a city as it could have grown in multiple centuries: city center, former bastions, station close to the river side, apparment buildings from the 70s and newer neighbourhoods surrounding the city. In a word: a very European city. Why it is called Raalte? Well, I just like place names ending on -e and after having made up twenty of them, I started to run out of own names, so started using real place names. 2011.
