Travel Connectivity

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Update, 1 Feb 2009: Carrie analyzes the map at See What I Mean: Information Visualization.

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The world is shrinking. Cheap flights, large scale commercial shipping and expanding road networks all mean that we are better connected to everywhere else than ever before. But global travel and international trade and just two of the forces that have reshaped our world. A new map of Travel Time to Major Cities - developed by the European Commission and the World Bank - captures this connectivity and the concentration of economic activity and also highlights that there is little wilderness left. The map shows how accessible some parts of the world have become whilst other regions have remained isolated. Accessibility - whether it is to markets, schools, hospitals or water - is a precondition for the satisfaction of almost any economic need. Furthermore, accessibility is relevant at all levels, from local development to global trade and this map fills an important gap in our understanding of the spatial patterns of economic, physical and social connectivity.

Travel time to major cities: A global map of Accessibility (European Commission - Global Environment Monitoring) -- via Thomas P.M. Barnett

One of the most astonishing things I learned is how little wilderness is really left - only about 10% of the planet's surface is more than 48 hours travel time from a major city.

Bambi in the New South

Raleigh, NC, where I was born and raised, was emphatically not a "big city" in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up, but by the time I left, in the mid-1990s, it basically was.

The RTP area of NC has grown dramatically since 1966, when I moved in, and unbroken strands of development connect Raleigh, Cary, Durham, and Chapel Hill along with a host of smaller communities, as well as the actual/aforementioned Research Triangle Park [Google Map link].



Results? Many. Here's one:

Step 1: Development reduces deer habitat, pushing deer and people closer together.

Step 2: State Capitol Police meet an apparently abandoned fawn in the woods near downtown and befriend him - or rather, they seem to befriend each other:

Muller, who often drives from his home in Selma on his days off to visit the deer, runs sprints with Bucky. Muller's wife plays hide and seek with the deer around a tree. "In a screwed-up world, this is one thing that is pure," Muller said. "I go home happy every day."

Fawn captures officers hearts ([Raleigh, NC] News and Observer, 5 Dec 2008)

Related:

• Video: Officer Wayne Muller and Bucky the Deer
• Google map of Research Triangle cities, towns and villages

In the days we sweat it out in the halls of the New York Armory Show

E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg has a hobby renovating houses and is working on a profitable sideline as a real-estate developer:

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band had just finished playing a sold-out show at Earls Court in London, and Max Weinberg, the band's longtime drummer, was thinking about countertops.

Specifically, Kirkstone countertops. Mr. Weinberg wanted the pale green stone for the kitchen in the house he was building back in New Jersey. He knew the stone came from England, and he noted a kitchen-supply store they passed on the way back from the concert. The next day, the store's manager told him that it didn't stock the material but suggested he try the Kirkstone showroom nearby. Mr. Weinberg paid a visit and had the stone shipped across the Atlantic.

Born To Renovate (Wall Street Journal, 11 April 2008)

We all grow older and grow up, I reckon.