Mental Map: Steinberg's Manhattan

http://cityhomestead.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/mapping-oakland/

The following is a mental map drawn by Saul Steinberg, a Romanian born cartoonist, for The New Yorker.  In this picture, Steinberg shows an exaggerated mental map of the United States from Manhattan westward to the Pacific Ocean.  This map shows that the perception of space is relatively detailed in terms of the buildings and street names that are depicted close to Manhattan.  But, once we move past the Hudson river we notice that the map becomes EXTREMELY generalized and the entire west is depicted as a rectangle!  As well, the West is seen to have no variation and consists of only a few plateaus and rock formations.  

Mental maps can abstract both space and time.  Often times, we are only able to mentally map the areas that we come into contact with daily.  The repetition of walking past the same places allows us to map out the space in which we live.  For example, as someone who has lived in the south for my entire life,  the Gulf Coast is mapped out in my mind relatively accurately both spatially and characteristically.  But, if I were to even attempt to map the western portion of the U.S., it might as well become a rectangle like that of Steinberg's!  Since I do not have daily contact with this section of the U.S., it doesn't hold importance relative to other areas that I come in contact with constantly.