Folks at the Boston-based design firm Fathom had a unique idea: what would maps look like if you stripped away all the defining features of a state, or of a country, leaving behind nothing but the roads?
Even a regular road map retains the outline of a place, its peaks and valleys, mountains and rivers, the names we give the defining features. But what if we take all that away and just leave the connective tissue, the pavement, behind?
What emerges is at once recognizable and hauntingly nebulous — perhaps especially so here in Louisiana, where the very notion of permanence is forever under assault. Nexuses coalesce in Monroe, in Shreveport, in Baton Rouge, in Lafayette, in New Orleans, and the outlines of rivers and lakes emerge. Gossamer tendrils reach out into the not-Gulf... showing an absence, an erosion of realities, of lands and communities, that some might argue is now more true than what our other, everyday maps tell us of ourselves and our shared spaces.
You can buy a print of Fathom's Louisiana "All Streets" maps, as well as maps of every other state and many countries, on their website.
Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam.