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In the era of Google Maps , when everything seems located and mapped, there are still places without a map. From environmental communities in Scotland to utopian corners like Christiania , a self-governing neighborhood of Copenhagen or new islands that emerge from the thaw and islets without owners on lost roads. These are some of the stories compiled by the British Alastair Bonnet, professor of Social Geography at the University of Newcastle and author of the book Places without a map, an amazing trip to unknown places, published by Blackie Books.
"Geography is increasingly rare: islands that suddenly appear, familiar territories that are split, unknown kingdoms that open their doors .... The tumultuous spaces of the planet are increasingly and are changing rapidly." And that is what led Bonnet to a total of 39 stories corresponding to 39 extraordinary spaces as an ode to an increasingly fragmented and connected world where, despite everything, the mystery and the unknown still persist . In addition, it also exposes the reasons that exist: global warming, ethnic violence, eccentric experiments , historical whims, technological evolution. These are some of these enigmatic places.
ISLANDS THAT APPEAR OR GROW OF REPENT
Building an island is not so difficult, according to Bonnet, that rescues the Spratly bathed in the waters of the South China Sea and that are gradually increasing its extension becoming more square every time. Inside, they house aggressive military bases full of bunkers, the goal of their creation. They also emerge rapidly in the provinces of Western Botnia , in Sweden, and Eastern Botnia, in Finland, where one of the great geological epicenters of the planet is located . To the extent that part of the territory has been declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco for its "extraordinary geomorphological attributes". And it is that they emerge so quickly by the thaw that their inhabitants must address again and again to whom the new territory belongs.
NEIGHBORHOODS WITHOUT STREET VIEW
The very rich and the very poor have something in common: they don't appear in Google Street View. It is the conclusion of Places without a map , which rescues the example of Hidden Hills, in California , where 648 luxurious residences in the area appear hidden from the Google tool: the entire area is a blank space. There they say that his house has characters like Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian , but no sign of the specific place. The same happens on the other side of the world: in the shanty town of Wanahtamulla , in Sri Lanka, where Street View ends abruptly after crossing the lush trees of Veluwana Place. Google does not go into this type of suburbs.
THE FREE CITY OF CHRISTIANIA
Christiania is a free city that extends over 34 green hectares in the center of Copenhagen e. And the issue of freedom is literal: the Constitution of this corner says that everyone is free to do what they please as long as it does not affect the freedom of others. The nearly 1,000 inhabitants of this microstate have their own laws, currency (the lon, exchangeable in 50 stores), Government and values. Everything arises in 1971, when a group of Danes who were looking for an open space where their children played in freedom settled in abandoned military barracks . The protest became a social movement, Provo, which proposed to award this place to function as a commune. And until today.
Trap streets that don't exist
Trap streets are deliberate errors that are inserted into maps to protect intellectual property . It is a way to denounce plagiarism in the case of the use of foreign maps, but it is also a double-edged sword, since places that we consider real (streets, towns, cities) can be fictional and intermingle with the authentic world. These non-places have their origin in Google Maps and specifically the time before they began to compose their own maps through Street View. Before 2012, Google hired a Dutch company called Tele Atlas to sneak these errors. And so there are examples of unreal places like Whitfield Road, in Blackheath, a fictional street that cuts into two Blackheath Common, in London.
SOIL-FREE METROPOLIS
There are places where the ground, the oldest reference point of all, is losing sight of completely. This is the case in Hong Kong, where walkways, escalators and elevators are taking over the space, so it is very difficult to move on a stable floor. There are even cities without land: a guide to Hong Kong , the world's first three-dimensional map book. It details through automated colors and geometric design "automated people transporters" , terraces and sidewalks that save the gap between the vertical profiles of the city's skyscrapers .
GHOST STATIONS OF WHICH YOU ARE NOT EVER
The busiest train station on the planet, Shinjuku , in Tokyo, is also one of those spooky corners where fears and fantasies come to life. Not surprisingly, it is considered the Bermuda Triangle of the Japanese capital , as they say that some of the thousands of people who cross it every day never reach their destination. They err once or twice on their way, get disoriented, go down the wrong stairs or end up in the elevator that is not until disappearing forever . No one ever sees them again. It is a legend that runs like gunpowder in the metropolis. Even books such as Tokyo, imperial city have been written : the secret of a hidden underground network , which holds that information about these disappeared is hidden.
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