No Dig, No Fly, No Go: How Maps Restrict and Control - Softcover

Monmonier, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226534685 ISBN 13: 9780226534688

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Some maps help us find our way; others restrict where we go and what we do. These maps control behavior, regulating activities from flying to fishing, prohibiting students from one part of town from being schooled on the other, and banishing certain individuals and industries to the periphery. This restrictive cartography has boomed in recent decades as governments seek regulate activities as diverse as hiking, building a residence, opening a store, locating a chemical plant, or painting your house anything but regulation colors. It is this aspect of mapping—its power to prohibit—that celebrated geographer Mark Monmonier tackles in No Dig, No Fly, No Go.

Rooted in ancient Egypt’s need to reestablish property boundaries following the annual retreat of the Nile’s floodwaters, restrictive mapping has been indispensable in settling the American West, claiming slices of Antarctica, protecting fragile ocean fisheries, and keeping sex offenders away from playgrounds. But it has also been used for opprobrium: during one of the darkest moments in American history, cartographic exclusion orders helped send thousands of Japanese Americans to remote detention camps. Tracing the power of prohibitive mapping at multiple levels—from regional to international—and multiple dimensions—from property to cyberspace—Monmonier demonstrates how much boundaries influence our experience—from homeownership and voting to taxation and airline travel. A worthy successor to his critically acclaimed How to Lie with Maps, the book is replete with all of the hallmarks of a Monmonier classic, including the wry observations and witty humor.

In the end, Monmonier looks far beyond the lines on the page to observe that mapped boundaries, however persuasive their appearance, are not always as permanent and impermeable as their cartographic lines might suggest. Written for anyone who votes, owns a home, or aspires to be an informed citizen, No Dig, No Fly. No Go will change the way we look at maps forever.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mark Monmonier is distinguished professor of geography at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the author of many books, including, most recently, Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change and From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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NO DIG, NO FLY, NO GO

HOW MAPS RESTRICT AND CONTROLBy Mark Monmonier

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Copyright © 2010 Mark Monmonier
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-53468-8

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments...................................xi1 Introduction: Boundaries Matter.............................12 Keep Off!...................................................63 Keep Out!...................................................304 Absentee Landlords..........................................515 Dividing the Sea............................................706 Divide and Govern...........................................867 Contorted Boundaries, Wasted Votes..........................1048 Redlining and Greenlining...................................1179 Growth Management...........................................13010 Vice Squad.................................................14611 No Dig, No Fly, No Go......................................16012 Electronic Boundaries......................................180Notes.........................................................189Selected Readings for Further Exploration.....................217Sources of Illustrations......................................223Index.........................................................229

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

BOUNDARIES MATTER

Maps exert power in two ways: by shaping public opinion and by telling us where we can't go and what we can't (or must) do in specific places. This book examines the second type, which I call imperative maps because of their similarity to imperative sentences—the bossy ones that often end in an exclamation point. Whether blatant or subtle, the imperative map is usually intended either to stifle movement or to restrict an activity with a spatial dimension. Examples include aeronautical charts with "no-fly" zones, world political maps, and municipal zoning maps, backed up, respectively, by military aircraft, border guards, and code enforcement officers. The genre also embraces floodplain and fault-zone maps, enforced jointly by environmental agencies and Mother Nature. Whether the penalty for defiance is explicit or implied, an imperative map is a geographic threat that warns of unpleasant consequences. Not surprisingly, most restrictive maps are blatantly prohibitive.

Prohibitive cartography emerged as a distinct dimension of map use sometime after 1900, when restrictive maps increased markedly in variety, pervasiveness, and impact to reflect the growing complexity of cities, governments, and corporations. Although this intensification has roots in Roman property maps, partly intended to thwart trespass, any map with boundary lines delineating a territory as small as a farm or building lot, or as large as a nation-state, is fundamentally a restrictive map. Longstanding public acceptance of property maps and other boundary maps quite likely underlies an expectation by government officials that a wider, more intensive use of prohibitive maps would be understood and accepted. Prohibitive elements are now apparent in most cartographic modes and institutional practices.

Factors underlying this expansion include advances in transportation technology and public administration as well as an increased wariness of urban growth and hazardous environments. While maps portraying historic districts and marine protected areas are necessarily prohibitive, nautical charts and many recreation maps include restrictive elements but largely address other, more important concerns. And even the comparatively nonauthoritarian topographic map shows municipal and state boundaries, which can separate marked differences in tax policy, criminal codes, zoning laws, and environmental regulations.

Perhaps the quintessential prohibitive map is the aeronautical chart, which defines and regulates navigable airspace. Complex and often ephemeral restrictions embedded in contemporary aeronautical charts reflect a historically significant transition from the map as a tool for exploration, discovery, and navigation to the map as a comparatively complex instrument with roles that include public safety, growth management, and environmental protection. Among the diverse roles of prohibitive cartography, the no-fly zone has become a tool of humanitarian intervention, and map-based regulations are indispensable in wildlife conservation

Prohibitive cartography has its own graphic rhetoric. Because efficient enforcement depends on well-defined territorial restrictions, the primary symbol on most prohibitive maps is the boundary line, underscored perhaps by labels and contrasting colors. By convention, small-scale political maps printed in color rely heavily on dissimilar hues—when France is green and Germany is purple, there's less need for the prominent dot-and-dashed "international boundary" symbol common on graytone maps. The mapmaker can emphasize national sovereignty with thick, solid black lines—the most prominent symbol on many State Department maps—or underscore disputed or otherwise tentative boundaries with equally thick dashed lines. By contrast, the thinner, less prominent dot-and-dashed line is a convenient, readily understood code useful with less strident atlas maps, on which political boundaries have a weaker claim to continuity than roads, railways, and rivers. By chance, line symbols with periodic gaps afford a more accurate representation of boundaries like the U.S.-Mexico border, which is far more permeable than an unbroken line might suggest.

Just because a boundary is mapped is no reason to assume it's accepted by the neighbors it separates or by the world at large. Indeed, of all features shown on maps, boundaries are by far the most contentious. While most boundaries signify peaceful sovereignty or undisputed ownership, more than a few assault national pride or personal dignity, often with tragic results. Aggrieved nations declare war, feuding neighbors go to court, and parents upset over reconfigured school attendance zones elect a new school board or pick up and move. Any sudden, unexplained change to a mapped boundary can incite spontaneous resistance, and festering resentment of an old boundary can evoke a forceful reaction.

No less controversial are boundaries tied to zoning ordinances and wetlands regulations. In much the same way that lot lines confirm a property right to sell land and exclude trespassers, boundaries that restrict the owner's use of a parcel transfer some of that property right to the public at large. Imposing these restrictions can be enthusiastically embraced as responsible government or vigorously condemned as an "unconstitutional taking."

Boundary maps have a rich history, with ancient roots and a modern resurgence. Some of the earliest maps no doubt portrayed property boundaries, but the cartographic record here is spotty at best. Because primitive drawings rarely survived, archaeologists can only assume that ancient Egyptians diagrammed the painstaking measurements used to reestablish boundaries after the Nile's annual inundation. Historians trace the modern property map to the Roman Empire, where boundary stones were altars to Terminus, the god of boundaries, and anyone who destroyed or moved one was subject to death or a large fine. Roads, aqueducts, and other engineering works required maps, to be sure, and Roman town plans described the layout of streets and structures. By contrast, national frontiers were comparatively vague and mapped largely by military commanders, whose topographic maps focused on rivers, mountains, settlements, forts, bridges, and roads. National boundaries gained prominence much later, in sixteenth-century atlases, in which recorded borders reinforced notions of national identity, but imperative maps were not a coherent cartographic genre until the twentieth century.

Boundary lore includes fascinating tales of ignorance and greed. It also affords an opportunity to explore popular misconceptions about the accuracy and significance of boundary lines. For example, the perimeter depicted on a property map usually says nothing about the rights of neighbors or utility companies to cross or control part of the parcel. The fundamental document in any real estate transfer is the title, which defines the rights conveyed and provides a legal description of the boundary, typically as a list of monuments, distances, and directions. But nearly as important are easements, rights-of-way, and encroachments, which are poorly understood unless mapped. Boundary law adds its own quirks, most notably on broad floodplains, where a meandering river can slowly cede a landowner's lot to a neighbor.

Far more troubling are international and provincial boundaries drawn up hastily with little concern for inhabitants, resources, and long-term consequences. A classic example is the arrogant partitioning of Africa in the late nineteenth century by European imperialists unaware that putting feuding tribes in the same colony was a recipe for insurrection and genocide. The Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s and the more recent tragedy in Darfur attest, sadly, to the hidden costs of boundaries designed for the convenience of colonizers and anchored all too easily to a meridian, a parallel, or a river.

Boundary maps have become more sophisticated since satellite positioning made it easy (but not always reliable) to determine whether a car, an airplane, or a known sex-off ender was within a polygon defined by a list of latitude-longitude coordinates. At a more local scale, a properly calibrated GPS (global positioning system) receiver can prevent contractors from digging into a gas main or telephone cable—the long, thin buffer zone centered on a pipeline or buried cable is the perhaps the late twentieth century's most noteworthy contribution to electronic boundary technology.

As these examples suggest, this book explores the momentum and impact of prohibitive cartography across a range of scales and phenomena. Chapter 2, which focuses on property boundaries and real estate law, looks at land survey systems and land registration practices, while chapter 3, which deals with national sovereignty, limns the marking and adjustment of international borders, the questionable effectiveness of walls and security fences, and the rhetorical role of boundary maps in asserting spurious claims and fictional sovereignty. Chapter 4 turns to colonial ambitions and geopolitics and appraises the boundaries imposed by imperial powers on Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Chapter 5 looks at off shore and maritime boundaries, while chapter 6 examines the implications in the United States of state, county, municipal, special-district, and tribal boundaries. Law and litigation frame chapters 7 and 8, which treat gerrymandering and redlining, often condemned as subtle (or not so subtle) forms of apartheid. Legal restrictions also figure prominently in chapter 9, which examines zoning and environmental protection, and in chapter 10, which explores the use of maps to regulate behavior deemed offensive or socially harmful. Chapter 11 examines the map's role in protecting air travelers, underground infrastructure, and ethnic minorities like the Kurds in northern Iraq, and chapter 12 looks at looks at satellite tracking, the latest and perhaps most ominous manifestation of prohibitive cartography.

Tailored to lay readers, the book offers valuable insights to anyone who votes, owns a home (or plans to), reads newspapers or their electronic counterparts, peruses atlases, or aspires to be an informed citizen. A second audience consists of geospatial professionals who seek a broader view of their work. And because maps can be enjoyed as well as questioned, the book should appeal to anyone fascinated by maps as legal documents, scientific statements, tools of public administration, or works of art. To appreciate maps, one must understand the symbolic clout of cartographic boundaries.

Chapter Two

KEEP OFF!

In the murky world of law school textbooks, land ownership is a property right, which the owner can use or sell and which government can tax. Ownership also implies the right to exclude others from a particular territory, marked perhaps with a barrier or prominent perimeter. Unlike dogs and cats, whose superior sense of smell makes marking territory as easy as, well, you know, humans must rely on walls and chain-link fences, which are more expensive to make but don't need refreshing after a heavy rain. Because walls have aesthetic drawbacks, civil society appreciates boundary surveys, which use words and numbers to describe where a landowner could, if necessary, erect a fence. And because buyers, sellers, and public officials need to visualize the boundary survey, property maps helped create the notion of land ownership and became a distinctive feature of Western cartography.

Although the survey alone might be sufficient to register a title deed at the local courthouse, a property map stamped by a licensed surveyor can reassure a prospective buyer that the house, pool, and other "improvements" lie safely within the parcel's perimeter. Be wary, though, of what the map doesn't show. Because rights-of-way, easements, and "encroachments" from neighboring parcels might hinder use of the property years ahead, it's always wise to ask about these infringements as well as encroachments onto neighboring parcels. Only a fool buys property, especially rural property, without consulting a real estate attorney who knows the area sufficiently well to ask incisive questions.

Purchasing a home in a residential subdivision is comparatively straightforward. The buyer's lawyer explains the sales contract and mortgage agreement after confirming that a title insurance firm has searched for liens and other encumbrances and is willing to guarantee "clear title" to the property. The survey can be relatively straightforward if a subdivision map registered at the local courthouse identifies the parcel with a unique lot number or, in a larger subdivision, by block and lot numbers. It's easy to lay out streets on paper and partition a tract into rectangular lots enclosed by straight-line boundaries with stated lengths. If there are no new improvements, an updated survey and map are comparatively inexpensive, but the surveyor will charge extra for marking the lot's corner points and noting possible encroachments. It's worth a few hundred dollars to verify that a neighbor's fence or deck is not over the line.

This chapter examines the role of maps in land registration and real estate law. It looks first at key differences between the unsystematic surveys used since colonial times in the eastern United States and the more structured, rectangular systems employed farther west. In addition to affecting the work of surveyors past and present, official survey systems leave distinctive imprints on roads, political boundaries, and settlement patterns. The chapter also explores the adverse effects of vague boundary descriptions and lost landmarks; the need for property maps to show rights-of-way, easements, and encroachments; and the technical complexities of riverine boundaries.

Metes and Bounds

Because colonies import their civil codes from the mother country, it's hardly surprising that the eastern states inherited the metes and bounds system of land description from the English, who acquired it from the Babylonians and the Egyptians by way of the Romans. The two-part name indicates a dual approach to boundary description: metes, pronounced "meets" and derived from the Latin word for measure, refers to the measured distances and angles used to describe straight-line portions of a property boundary, while bounds reflects a preference for physical features like roads, streams, and stone walls. As recorded verbally in the title deed, a property boundary starts at a specific "point of beginning" and runs clockwise or counterclockwise around the perimeter as a series of segments, or "calls," which connect at "corners." The calls may be either metes or bounds, with the adjoining landowner often named for added clarity. Unfortunately for later owners, physical features can deteriorate, migrate down slope, or be relocated, while the land of an "adjoiner" can be sold, subdivided, or willed to an heir with a different surname.

Metes and bounds is a misnomer insofar as a boundary description can consist of all metes or all bounds. The latter is potentially troublesome and hardly uncommon insofar as a title deed can be drawn up by a lawyer alone, without a surveyor's services, as Alfred Mulford pointed out in Boundaries and Landmarks: A Practical Manual, published in 1912. Mulford showed how to find original boundaries with descriptions like:

Beginning at the Northwest corner of the property to be conveyed where it adjoins the Highway leading from Redfield to Minot's Landing and running thence in an Easterly direction along the land of Clifford Hopson until it comes to the land of David Raup, thence, in a Southerly direction along the land of said David Raup to a large stone at the Southeast corner of the land being conveyed where it joins the land of David Raup and land now or late of Olcott Gates, thence in a Westerly direction along the land now or late of Olcott Gates to the East side of the aforesaid Highway, thence in a Northerly direction along the Easterly side of the aforesaid Highway to the point or place of beginning, Containing within the said bound Thirty-five acres of land be the same more or less.

According to Mulford, even if a surveyor had estimated the acreage with care, a lawyer leery of volunteering too much detail might omit measured distances and directions "for legal reasons." While finding the "large stone" can prove troublesome a century or two later if the deeds of adjoiners Raup and Gates were similarly imprecise, today's surveyor must often contend with a subsequent realignment of the "aforesaid Highway" to promote safety or improve drainage.

Landmarks are the best evidence, observed Mulford, whose experience as a land surveyor on Long Island convinced him that trees and other seemingly ephemeral boundary markers seldom disappear completely and that legal descriptions and surveyor's notes, if not followed slavishly, can be useful in finding them. To illustrate what to look for, he included sketches of typical markers and their locations. For example, a boundary stone usually marks the junction of two straight-line calls at a corner point, situated at the center of the stone or indicated more precisely by either a suggestively sharp point or the intersection of two flat faces (fig. 2.1). Rather than anoint all conveniently situated rocks as boundary monuments, the conscientious surveyor looks for stones that "have every appearance of having been placed artificially." No less conspicuous is the tree marked with notches or a stone jammed into its base to indicate a corner (fig. 2.2). Notches on opposite sides several feet off the ground might indicate a "line tree," between corners, but as Mulford warned, "a small boy with a hatchet can mark up more trees in one Saturday afternoon than a dozen surveyors can in a year." Another feature to look for was the "lopped tree," bent or broken as a sapling to align with the boundary. Although he claimed that "such a sapling did not die nor did it ever become erect again,"? the nearly severed trunk in Mulford's sketch (fig. 2.3) forecasts death, rot, and ultimate disappearance.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from NO DIG, NO FLY, NO GOby Mark Monmonier Copyright © 2010 by Mark Monmonier. Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0226534685
• ISBN 13: 9780226534688
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar