Hello, cartographer here while a lot of the things she says are right as someone who makes maps for a living I will never use the Equal Earth projection for a world map. The point of a world map is to easily see all ~180 countries at a glance. The new map is objectively worse at it because it basically shrinks everywhere but the countries on the equator and then speeds out. So that mostly means Africa and Oceania and South America stay roughly the same size. That means North America, Europe, and Asia are all a lot smaller and less legible. That’s like 80% of the world’s population you just made less legible. While true land scale is important it doesn’t necessarily mean it provides the best map. This is then exacerbated when whatever map in question is shrunk down to be a figure in a textbook. So frankly I just see this as political posturing with very little substance.
Furthermore if we did change it there are better options like Winkle Triple.
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u/Narpity 21h ago
Hello, cartographer here while a lot of the things she says are right as someone who makes maps for a living I will never use the Equal Earth projection for a world map. The point of a world map is to easily see all ~180 countries at a glance. The new map is objectively worse at it because it basically shrinks everywhere but the countries on the equator and then speeds out. So that mostly means Africa and Oceania and South America stay roughly the same size. That means North America, Europe, and Asia are all a lot smaller and less legible. That’s like 80% of the world’s population you just made less legible. While true land scale is important it doesn’t necessarily mean it provides the best map. This is then exacerbated when whatever map in question is shrunk down to be a figure in a textbook. So frankly I just see this as political posturing with very little substance.
Furthermore if we did change it there are better options like Winkle Triple.