Dear Place of the Week enthusiasts:

I’m writing you today with some sad news about the Place of the Week column. Ben Keene, Oxford’s geography editor and the founder of Ben’s Place of the Week, has left Oxford. For the last three years, Ben has done a superb job combing the globe in order to bring a particularly delightful, unusual, or timely locale to our attention, often with a humorous and graceful touch. I’m sure you share in my feeling that Ben’s love of geography has been contagious, and that the world now seems just that much smaller and friendlier to us all. The Place of the Week is now on hiatus and I will let you all know if we have the opportunity to start it up again in the future.

Safe travels,

Casper Grathwohl
Publisher

Today the world turned its eyes to Washington, DC where the United States inaugurated its 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama. And while most of our executives have been sworn in here on the banks of the Potomac, our first head of state actually took office a stone’s throw from another river: the Hudson. On April 30, 1789, George Washington took his oath of office in front of a crowd assembled on Wall Street in lower Manhattan. After a long trip from his home in Virginia, he was rowed to New York and walked to Federal Hall, the site of his inauguration and the birthplace of American government. At the time, the city’s inhabitants numbered roughly 30,000, and its homes and businesses did not extend much further than the modern location of Canal Street. Just ten years later, the population of the country’s first capital had swelled to more than 60,000 residents.

Crack open just about any atlas and you’ll find at least one map of distribution: people, wildlife, minerals, places of worship, the density of all of these things can be plotted on the globe. And while observing small changes from year to year in these categories can be interesting and informative, I found the 2008 report published by the Statistical Department of the International Federation of Robotics particularly fascinating. Their Executive summary estimates a “total worldwide stock of operational industrial robots between a minimum of 994,000 units and a possible maximum of 1,200,000.” And they expect this already-impressive number to grow in the years ahead. So where are these robots you ask? Generally speaking, the answer is Asia, a regional production center for a wide range of manufactured goods. But the highest concentration is in Japan. Fully one-third of the total—a whopping 353,300 machines can be found here. In fact, the island nation has approximately 300 robots for every 10,000 people employed in manufacturing.

Talkeetna, Alaska

Coordinates: 62 20 N 150 6 W

Population: 848 (2007 est.)

For those of us in the lower 48, the champagne toasts may already have faded from memory, but to Alaskans, the party’s not over yet. Why, you ask? Well, 2009 marks the fiftieth anniversary of statehood for the Last Frontier. Various events have and will take place across Alaska this year, but I’m wondering if anything special is being planned in the little town of Talkeetna. Located due North of Anchorage at the confluence of the Chulitna, Susitna, and Talkeetna Rivers, this settlement precedes Alaska’s official entry into the Union by about 40 years. And, as I’ve recently learned, they also hold a Moose Dropping Festival each summer which apparently culminates in a Moose Drop Dropping. Strange as it may seem, I didn’t make this up, and offer a quote from the Chamber of Commerce as evidence: “Shellacked and numbered moose poop is hauled up in the air in a net and then dropped on a bullseye. Raffle numbers correspond to numbers on moose poop. Winners include the closest and farthest from the bullseye. Sounds like not-much-fun but it is a highlight of the day!” Anyone looking for a heap of a good time in July?

A founding member of the Geological Society of London, George Bellas Greenough also held the highest office in the Royal Geographical Society for two years in the mid-nineteenth century. In his presidential address to the professional body in May 1840, he offered his thoughts on the indispensability of maps. Given my own fondness for atlases, I’m posting an excerpt from his speech today:

Of all the contrivances hitherto devised for the benefit of geography, this [the map] is the most effective. In the extent and variety of its resources, in rapidity of utterance, in the copiousness and completeness of the information it communicates, in precision, conciseness, perspicuity, in the hold it has upon the memory, in vividness of imagery and power of expression, in convenience of reference, in portability, in the happy combination of so many and such useful qualities, a map has no rival. Everything we say or do has reference to place: and wherever place is concerned a map deserves welcome. There is scarcely one department of knowledge; physical or moral, beyond the sphere of its usefulness.

Honestly, I couldn’t agree more.

A couple of years ago I posted about the red crabs on Christmas Island. Seeing as my mind is cluttered with thoughts of cookies and carols and presents I haven’t bought yet, I figured I would poke around for some other place names that relate to the approaching holiday. The first one I encountered was Christmas Creek, in the state of Western Australia, just north of the Great Sandy Desert. Next I found Christmas Cove—so named because John Smith allegedly anchored here in the seventeenth century. Getting a bit more creative, I stumbled across Navidad, a town on the Chilean coast not far from Santiago, the capital. Sure these discoveries were fun, but what excited me most, was the existence of three other places scattered around the globe: Comet, Australia; Dasher, Georgia (US); and Rudolfshiem, Austria. Kinda makes you wonder where Prancer and Vixen are from, doesn’t it? Fittingly, it has just begun to snow here in Midtown Manhattan.

Khurais, Saudi Arabia

Coordinates: 25 6 N 48 2 E

Estimated volume of oil: 27 billion barrels

The largest exporter of oil with over 20 percent of the world’s reserves, Saudi Arabia occupies roughly three quarters of the peninsula of arid land between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. As of 2007, this desert kingdom was producing approximately 11 million barrels of petroleum daily—an amount that could soon increase if all goes according to plan. Anticipating rising demand from Asia and wanting to exert more control over the market price for oil, the Saudis have lately intensified their efforts to tap into new fields. Khurais, east of Riyadh and roughly 150 miles from the Gulf of Bahrain, is one such project. Getting Khurais online does have its challenges however. In order to bring the light crude to the surface, tens of millions of gallons of seawater will have to be injected beneath the red sand dunes here. Nonetheless, experts predict that when finished, this massive cache will expand the nation’s production capacity by 1.2 million barrels a day.

Venice, Italy

Coordinates: 45 27 N 12 21 E

Population: 69,361 (2008 est.)

Historically speaking, humanity has been quite successful at shaping the environment to suit our wants and needs. We’ve blasted through mountains, irrigated deserts, and altered the course of rivers. But sometimes sheer willpower and engineering aren’t enough. Venice, Italy is a case in point. Founded by Romans this city has grown to cover more than 100 islands in the Venetian Lagoon. The trouble is these small landmasses are low-lying and susceptible to flooding. Over the centuries, rising sea levels as well as water extraction from the mainland have caused the Queen of the Adriatic to gradually sink; yesterday news sources reported that Venetians were contending with water levels that rival previous records. Years ago however, city officials recognized that their problem would only become more serious, and in 2003 began a costly undertaking to protect their architectural heritage with 78 massive floodgates. Personally, I wonder about the long term consequences mobile barriers will have on the Mediterranean’s largest wetland area.

Batman, Turkey

Coordinates: 37 55 N 41 5 E

Population: 246,700 (2005 est.)

I suppose in a world that seems obsessed with publicity and brand identity, it was bound to happen eventually. Apparently, in one of the stranger bits of news I’ve come across in the past few weeks, numerous sources reported that the mayor of Batman is actively considering filing suit against both Warner Brothers and director Christopher Nolan for using the name of the Turkish city without his consent. Central to the mayor’s argument is the fact that this city in the predominantly Kurdish part of southeastern Turkey was founded well before the creation of the crime-fighting Caped Crusader in 1939. Now, I have my doubts that this will amount to anything for the capital of Batman Province and the site of the country’s first oil refinery, but it has already led to plenty of jokes about other places that share names with movies and/or comic book characters. Maybe it’s just me, but I like to think that a little good-natured humor can help us learn geography too.

Kosovo

Coordinates: 42 30 N 21 0 E

Population: Around 2 Million

Welcome to Geography Awareness week, the perfect time to announce another Place of the Year. In all honesty, I struggled with my decision this time, and sought the advice of several mapmakers and geographers. Looking back on 2008—well, most of it anyway—I found it difficult to settle on a single location because I didn’t want to make my selection based solely on its ability to stay in the headlines. Should I pick Naypyidaw because of what happened in Burma? One of my colleagues proposed Honolulu, the birthplace of the first African American president of the United States. But perhaps Darfur, Wall Street, or the pirate-plagued Gulf of Aden would be more interesting? Above all, what I really needed was a place where changes had occurred that would be observable on a map.

In the end, I chose Kosovo for a few different reasons. First of all, by declaring their independence from Serbia, the roughly two million Kosovars occupying this small part of southeastern Europe have forced cartographers to contend with their new (albeit still contested) status as a sovereign state. Secondly, as I mentioned in my original post back in February and as recent events in the Caucasus emphasized, Kosovo serves as a current reminder that our map of the world continues to evolve. Geography is by no means static.

To me, Kosovo deserves the distinction of Place of the Year because it represents several types of shifting geographies: social (Will the ethnic Serbs living in northern Kosovo find acceptance in this new country?), political (Can the government of President Fatmir Sejdiu successfully—and peaceably—chart a course to eventual admission into the EU?) and historical (Will the new boundaries hold or again be altered by events in the future?). Finally, I took physical location into account; Kosovo isn’t far from the heart of Europe.

Other examples of separatist movements and border disputes abound around the globe, and pose nearly as many challenges for atlas publishers as they do for policy-makers and politicians. Last year I remarked that global warming will likely keep mapmakers busy by altering the extent of sea ice or exposing new landmasses long hidden beneath glaciers. Yet as the socio-cultural complexities of areas such as the Balkans demonstrate, the environment isn’t the only force with the power to reshape our planet. So what are the cartographic appearances or disappearances you think we’ll be talking about in 2009?