Some maps help us find our way; others restrict where we go and what we
do. These maps control behavior, regulating activities from flying to
fishing, prohibiting students from one part of town from being schooled
on the other, and banishing certain individuals and industries to the
periphery. This restrictive cartography has boomed in recent decades as
governments seek regulate activities as diverse as hiking, building a
residence, opening a store, locating a chemical plant, or painting your
house anything but regulation colors. It is this aspect of mapping--its
power to prohibit--that celebrated geographer Mark Monmonier tackles in
No Dig, No Fly, No Go.
Rooted in ancient Egypt's need to reestablish property boundaries
following the annual retreat of the Nile's floodwaters, restrictive
mapping has been indispensable in settling the American West, claiming
slices of Antarctica, protecting fragile ocean fisheries, and keeping
sex offenders away from playgrounds. But it has also been used for
opprobrium: during one of the darkest moments in American history,
cartographic exclusion orders helped send thousands of Japanese
Americans to remote detention camps. Tracing the power of prohibitive
mapping at multiple levels--from regional to international--and multiple
dimensions--from property to cyberspace--Monmonier demonstrates how much
boundaries influence our experience--from homeownership and voting to
taxation and airline travel. A worthy successor to his critically
acclaimed How to Lie with Maps, the book is replete with all of the
hallmarks of a Monmonier classic, including the wry observations and
witty humor.
In the end, Monmonier looks far beyond the lines on the page to observe
that mapped boundaries, however persuasive their appearance, are not
always as permanent and impermeable as their cartographic lines might
suggest. Written for anyone who votes, owns a home, or aspires to be an
informed citizen, No Dig, No Fly. No Go will change the way we look at
maps forever.
