Memory Maps of Edinburgh

At last year's State of the Map - Scotland participants were asked to draw a map of central Edinburgh from memory. The map had to include Edinburgh Castle, Waverley Station, and Evolution House (the conference venue).

Alan Bragg used Map Warper to georectify the hand drawn maps of Edinburgh and then overlaid the results on top of an interactive Leaflet map. The resulting No-map Map of Edinburgh allows you to adjust the transparency of each of these memory maps of Edinburgh and compare the results with the OpenStreetMap map of Edinburgh.

The results seem to suggest that most of the people taking part in the experiment had a sense of Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile as being the geographical center of Edinburgh. It also appears to me that most of the participants then used major roads as a guide or frame to help place other details on their maps.

The No-map Map only has six hand-drawn maps of Edinburgh. However it is a really interesting little experiment. Carried out on a larger scale this could be a really interesting way to explore how people mentally map geographical spaces.