Peter Occil

A wish for a new atlas

Thanks to the OpenStreetMap project and its vast geographical database, as well as advances in mapmaking software, the following should be doable nowadays with open-source software and freely-licensed data, but I haven’t seen it yet:

An atlas of the world covering all land masses in the scale 1:4,000,000. The maps in the atlas should be political maps, showing:

• The boundaries and areas of countries and states (and their equivalents).
• For some countries, the boundaries and areas of counties (and their equivalents).
• Major cities and important towns, grouped by population.
• Important rivers and bodies of water labeled.
• Important mountain peaks, volcanoes, and depressions labeled.
• Relief shading.
• Natural features (e.g., plains, mountain ranges, islands) labeled.

The maps should not be in Mercator projection, and the size of each page should be letter size or A4. Essentially, the maps should feel similar to the classic Quick Reference World Atlas that Rand McNally Publishing used to publish.

An atlas like this would be a handy reference for homes or classrooms.

How many maps would be required to achieve this goal for the scale 1:4 million? 1:6 million? 1:8 million? 1:10 million?

License

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