It seems like every flea market or street fair includes at least one vendor selling stylized maps of cities these days. From neighborhood outlines to subway lines and landmarks, people just love stylized cartography. While famous metropolises are also the subjects of Jeffrey Linn’s maps, these aren’t quite your average lovingly embellished hometown or adopted borough. Instead, they’re underwater.
Los Angeles under approx. 120 feet of water and New York City, without place names, under 100 feet of water. All images by Jeffrey Linn.
Linn, who has a background in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and urban planning, uses publicly available elevation data from the USGS, along with a mix of other sources, to craft his water-world landscapes. As he points out on his website, where you can order your own “Bay of L.A.” or “Vancouver Archipelago,” sea-level rise doesn’t need to reach 80 or 100 feet to devastate human civilization. Architects, engineers, and artists are already exploring the meaning of increased storm surges and minor sea level rise. The changes seen on Linn’s maps can’t happen within out lifetime, but Linn hopes that the maps’ humor — New York City’s Liberty Island becomes just the Torch of Liberty — will make an impression.
London under approx. 120 feet of water and New York City, with place names, under 100 feet of water. All images by Jeffrey Linn.
Of course, we’ve recently seen other ways of visualizing our submerged future, and these maps serve as yet another representation of that message.