Ipswich-to-Everywhere October 2005

I have been fascinated for several years that some places that are geographically closer can take longer to get to than places that are actually further away. I believe that people's ambitions are often limited by perceived distance. I created a map showing the time it takes to get from Ipswich (my home town) to everywhere else in the country by road.

What does this show? The time taken to drive to coastal towns in the British Isles from Ipswich is found from MapQuest. Ipswich is shown in blue. Coastal towns are shown in red: the tail of each line is its actual location on the map, the head where it would be if the map were drawn according to travel time. The original compass bearing to Ipswich is maintained for every town.

There are some interesting patterns: fast and direct roads strongly affect apparent distance (the M4 effect for South Wales), and major routes such as the A1 influence other regions. Islands such as the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Man move much further away due to slow ferry journeys. Terrain also affects journey times — this is visible in the mountainous areas of Scotland. Without a bridge, towns on opposite shores of an estuary move apart (consider Dover).

Next steps I planned were to add more coastal towns as control points to warp the coastline. It is interesting to see how much the map of the British Isles can be warped while still retaining an essential recognisability. I also planned to investigate the dynamic qualities of such maps in relation to traffic congestion or train timetables.

This project is implemented in Java.

Exhibited at dorkbotlondon in February 2006.