I rediscovered the maps and work of Alasdair Rae this morning. (He has appeared on this blog before in posts like this one here.) Alasdair works in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield and is author of the blog, Stats, Maps n Pix. Recently, he's been publishing maps showing population densities around the world. He also gets into the details of how they're made. They are pretty cool to see.

Here are the Great Lakes.

And here is Brazil, as well as a map of the world (without any land shown). Canada and the United States barely register on this second one.

Dezeen just published the below video of Chicago’s revitalized riverfront. The Chicago Riverwalk extension and renovation was completed in 2016 by Boston-based Sasaki Associates and Ross Barney Architects, and the video is by Chang Kim. It does a great job showcasing the city’s enviable connection to the water. If you can’t see it below, click here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T9xH2C-Ggk?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

On a separate but somewhat related note, I am continually impressed by the work that is coming from filmmakers, vloggers and YouTubers like Casey Neistat and Sam Kolder (who, by the way, is from Toronto). Individual content creators continue to change the way we all consume content and, consequently, the way companies now need to market.

Daniel Ibañez, Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, and Mason White have just published a book analyzing the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River. It’s called, Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan.

The Great Lakes represent the world’s largest collection of freshwater; a feature that is likely to become only more valuable. Their coastline is longer than the Atlantic and the Pacific coastlines of the US, combined. Hence the name “Third Coast.”

The reason the book is called a “prelude to a plan” is that it doesn’t propose a plan or a path forward. Instead, it is focused on analyzing the current state. Here is an excerpt about the book taken from the Daniels Faculty:

Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan describes the conditions for urbanization across the Great Lakes region. It assembles a multi-layered, empirical description of urbanization processes within the drainage basins of the five Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River. This thick description encompasses a range of representational forms including maps, plans, diagrams, timelines, and photographs, as well as speculative design research projects and critical texts.

I find this topic fascinating and I suspect that many of you might as well. It’s also an important one. So I wanted to get it on your radar. If you happen to be in Toronto next week, the launch/book signing is happening this Tuesday, October 24, 2017.