City Inserts in atlases and official state maps

[hobsini2]

One thing i like to look at when the new atlases come out is if say Rand McNally has added a city insert map that previously had not been in older publications.
The purpose of this topic is What city insert maps (and be serious please) would you like to see either in the atlases or official state maps? And what official state maps have good/bad choices of city inserts?

Here are some ideas from me as to what i would constitute need for a city insert.
1. Pop over say 25,000
2. Major tourist area.
3. A large number of highway junctions whether Interstate, US or State in the city area.
4. Major college or university (Division I)

Ones I would like to see happen.
Rand Mc Nally Atlas:
Gadsden AL, Anniston AL, Dothan AL, Auburn/Opelika AL, Casa Grande AZ, Conway AR, Redding CA, Chico CA, Yuba City CA, Eureka/Arcata CA, Tracy CA, Santa Cruz CA, Downtown of San Jose CA, Grand Jct CO, Danbury CT, Norwich CT, Gainesville FL, Ocala FL, St Augustine FL, Port Charlotte FL, Naples FL, Port St Lucie/Ft Pierce FL, extend Miami FL vicinity to inc Homestead FL, Downtown of Tampa FL, Panama City FL, Athens GA, Gainesville GA, Valdosta FL, Hilo HI, Nampa/Caldwell ID, Kankakee IL, Danville IL, Michigan City IN, Richmond IN, Columbus IN, Ames IA, Waterloo IA, extend Des Moines IA to inc Ankeny and Altoona IA, Dubuque IA, Mason City/Clear Lake IA, Dodge City KS, Paducah KY, Hopkinsville KY, Lake Charles LA, Alexandria LA, Houma LA, Salisbury MD, Ocean City MD, Lowell MA, Methuen/Lawrence MA, Sault Ste Marie MI, Battle Creek MI, Jackson MI, Port Huron MI/Sarnia ON, Mankato MN, Columbus/Starkville MS, Tupelo MS, Pascagoula MS, Kalispell MT, Bozeman MT, North Platte NE, extend Omaha NE to inc Gretna and Plattsmouth NE, Rochester NH, Portsmouth NH, extend Newark NJ or New York City NY to inc all of the I-287 loop, Toms River NJ, Asbury Park/Neptune City NJ, Roswell NM, Newburgh NY, Poughkeepsie NY, Watertown NY, Saratoga Springs NY, Kingston NY, Ithaca NY, Downtown of Buffalo NY, Hickory NC, Rocky Mount NC, Jacksonville NC, Downtown of Charlotte NC, Minot ND, Lima OH, Findlay OH, Mansfield OH, Sandusky OH, Downtown of Columbus OH, Lancaster OH, Enid OK, Stillwater OK, Medford OR, Klamath Falls OR, Bend OR, New Castle PA, Washington PA, Williamsport PA, Florence SC, Anderson SC, Clemson SC, Rock Hill SC, Jackson TN, Clarksville TN, Downtown of Memphis TN, Downtown of Nashville TN, Cleveland TN, Murfreesboro TN, Abilene TX, San Angelo TX, Temple TX, Killeen TX, Tyler TX, Longview TX, extend Beaumont TX area to inc Port Arthur TX, Victoria TX, Brownsville TX, Rutland VT, White River Jct VT/Lebanon NH, Blacksburg/Christianburg VA, Martinsville VA, Danville VA, Harrisonburg VA, Staunton VA, Winchester VA, Fredericksburg VA, Downtown of Norfolk VA, Longview WA, extend Portland OR area to I-5/I-205 North Jct, Richland/Pasco/Kennewick WA, Beckley WV, Wausau WI, Wisconsin Dells/Lake Delton WI, Fond du Lac WI, Manitowoc WI, Laramie WY, Sheridan WY, and Gillette WY

[nexus73]

Coos Bay/North Bend OR with a regional population of 35K, being the largest city on the Oregon coast, also deserves to be on the list.  Coos Bay is a bit over 16K, NB a bit under 10K and the rest of the folks live in urban unincorporated areas. 

Rick

[tdindy88]

I personally would love for Indiana to return its city insets on the official state map, which got omitted in the latest addition to put tourist information, a map of state parks and two sections promoting Indiana and Major Moves. I sure hope that's only temporary.

[empirestate]

I have always felt that Grand Junction, CO deserves an inset, if only to give some credence to the area west of the mountains.

Brownsville, TX, also seems to be continually overlooked.

But for some reason, Elkhart, IN makes it in, and in its own right even, not just as an ancillary to South Bend!

Long Island, and other outlying suburbs of NYC, have also long been under-represented. Insets of inner Long Island have been appearing lately, but much of the island remains mysterious to the map user. (Of course, at a certain point you might as well just map the whole eastern megalopolis at a consistent large scale, which so far only Michelin has seen fit to do, and only to a middling extent.)

[jwolfer]

I have always felt that Grand Junction, CO deserves an inset, if only to give some credence to the area west of the mountains.

Brownsville, TX, also seems to be continually overlooked.

But for some reason, Elkhart, IN makes it in, and in its own right even, not just as an ancillary to South Bend!

Long Island, and other outlying suburbs of NYC, have also long been under-represented. Insets of inner Long Island have been appearing lately, but much of the island remains mysterious to the map user. (Of course, at a certain point you might as well just map the whole eastern megalopolis at a consistent large scale, which so far only Michelin has seen fit to do, and only to a middling extent.)

When I was a kid back when gas stations made maps... I'm not old enough to remember them given out for free.  I used ot like the exxon map of New Jersey having a large scale map of Northeastern NJ from Bergen County down throught Monmouth County.  There was great detail of township lines, local roads etc.

[brownpelican]

New Orleans should have a page to itself like San Francisco, DFW and Houston.

[tdindy88]

Reasons that may not happen:

San Francisco Bay Area population: 7,150,739
Dallas-Fort Worth area population: 6,371,773
Houston area population: 5,946,800
New Orleans metro population: 1,235,650

Note that the first three are larger in population than Louisiana itself. Don't get me wrong though, I'd love to see expanded coverage on some metro areas. Indianapolis always gets juipted on atlas because they have to share space with Chicago every time, if their not on the same page as the state (looking at you AAA.) I would love to see any inset that includes more than the actual city itself. If nothing else, a half a page could work for New Orleans if you would like to expand to the North Shore area and perhaps Baton Rouge, but then you might as well expand the number of pages on the atlas to be more comprehensive of various cities.

[triplemultiplex]

Isn't it called an "Inset Map"?
"Insert map"; that sounds like a map sketched on a bar napkin for a possible booty call.

Before I'd mess around with insets for Rand Mac, I'd first do what it takes to get South Carolina, Louisiana, New Mexico and Mississippi on a two-page layout. 
Then there are several places where some cities could get bigger insets.  Take Ohio for example.  Add two more pages with Cleveland & Cincinnati on one page and then Columbus & the center city maps for all three on the other page.
Another good one is two pages of city insets between Tennessee and Texas.  Nashville and Memphis on one page; San Antonio and Austin on the other.
I'd give Hawaii its own page so the Atlanta map can get much larger.
Might as well give North Carolina two pages for insets so we can see Charlotte, Raleigh/Durham & Greensboro et. al. at a better scale.
Now there's more room for insets in these states.

WisDOT should consider adding an inset of The Dells to its state highway map.

[thenetwork]

I have always been disappointed with many map makers (AAA included) which were really skimpy in showing the Akron, Oh area.

A lot of the insets I have remembered have shown Akron's "border" area as I-76 Kenmore leg on the west, SR-59 East on the north, SR-91 on the east and US 224 on the south.

The Akron insets should have an area that borders SR-21 on the west, the Ohio Turnpike (from I-77 to SR 43) on the north, SR 43 on the east and the Akron-Canton airport to the south.

Better yet, they should have a Cleveland/Akron/Canton inset whose border would run from SR-83 on the west, Lake Erie on the north, SR-43/SR-306 on the east and US-30 on the south. Heck, a lot of the Michigan maps I see have an single inset which includes Ann Arbor, Detroit, Pontiac and Windsor -- Pretty much the same sized area, only it's more horizontal than vertical.

[deathtopumpkins]

Contrary to most opinions expressed here, I don't actually think inset maps serve much purpose. They're not detailed enough to actually use for street-by-street navigation, so they're really no more useful than the full-size map, often only showing a tiny bit more detail.

Rather than waste the extra space on dozens more inset maps, I'd prefer to simply have a larger scale for the main maps.

[corco]

Contrary to most opinions expressed here, I don't actually think inset maps serve much purpose. They're not detailed enough to actually use for street-by-street navigation, so they're really no more useful than the full-size map, often only showing a tiny bit more detail.

Rather than waste the extra space on dozens more inset maps, I'd prefer to simply have a larger scale for the main maps

Eh, if it shows a few main roads that aren't visible on a reasonably scaled regular map, I'd like to have it. I'm unlikely to get lost in Othello, Washington, but if I'm in the middle of Seattle and totally lost, it's nice to have a map with at least a few main roads clearly delineated so that if I run into one of those I'll know where I am. Because of that, there's major cost to showing the entire map at one scale- Othello would be more detailed, which is useless to me, and Seattle would be less detailed, which could be very bad.

If I'm driving in a major city I'm unfamiliar with, I'll navigate off insets. I'll stay within the scale extent of  inset as much as possible and then use my brain to remember where the nearest road shown on the inset is once I have to deviate from it.

[kphoger]

There are a few cities I wish had more area covered by the inset, by which I mean I sometimes want to see more detail in a location outside the scope of the inset.  Two specific ones that come to mind are Dallas/Fort Worth and Laredo.  More specifically, I really wish I could see detail all the way from Denton to Alvarado/Waxahachie.

[brownpelican]

Reasons that may not happen:

San Francisco Bay Area population: 7,150,739
Dallas-Fort Worth area population: 6,371,773
Houston area population: 5,946,800
New Orleans metro population: 1,235,650

Note that the first three are larger in population than Louisiana itself. Don't get me wrong though, I'd love to see expanded coverage on some metro areas. Indianapolis always gets juipted on atlas because they have to share space with Chicago every time, if their not on the same page as the state (looking at you AAA.) I would love to see any inset that includes more than the actual city itself. If nothing else, a half a page could work for New Orleans if you would like to expand to the North Shore area and perhaps Baton Rouge, but then you might as well expand the number of pages on the atlas to be more comprehensive of various cities.

It's not about population. Some locales are great tourist destinations and deserve larger maps. NOLA is one of them. Give it at least half a page (similar to San Diego), colorized and slightly zoomed in. The immediate Southshore (including N.O. East) should be the inset, with the rest of the page dedicated to a downtown inset and other smaller Louisiana cities....with the rest of the state's cities on the state page. It's just an idea.

Also, each state should have two pages in the atlas for more clarity.

[hobsini2]

Reasons that may not happen:

San Francisco Bay Area population: 7,150,739
Dallas-Fort Worth area population: 6,371,773
Houston area population: 5,946,800
New Orleans metro population: 1,235,650

Note that the first three are larger in population than Louisiana itself. Don't get me wrong though, I'd love to see expanded coverage on some metro areas. Indianapolis always gets juipted on atlas because they have to share space with Chicago every time, if their not on the same page as the state (looking at you AAA.) I would love to see any inset that includes more than the actual city itself. If nothing else, a half a page could work for New Orleans if you would like to expand to the North Shore area and perhaps Baton Rouge, but then you might as well expand the number of pages on the atlas to be more comprehensive of various cities.

It's not about population. Some locales are great tourist destinations and deserve larger maps. NOLA is one of them. Give it at least half a page (similar to San Diego), colorized and slightly zoomed in. The immediate Southshore (including N.O. East) should be the inset, with the rest of the page dedicated to a downtown inset and other smaller Louisiana cities....with the rest of the state's cities on the state page. It's just an idea.

Also, each state should have two pages in the atlas for more clarity.

My Main issue with RMcN's New Orleans map is that it does not go far enough west. I would include I-310 in it.

[hobsini2]

Isn't it called an "Inset Map"?
"Insert map"; that sounds like a map sketched on a bar napkin for a possible booty call.

Before I'd mess around with insets for Rand Mac, I'd first do what it takes to get South Carolina, Louisiana, New Mexico and Mississippi on a two-page layout. 
Then there are several places where some cities could get bigger insets.  Take Ohio for example.  Add two more pages with Cleveland & Cincinnati on one page and then Columbus & the center city maps for all three on the other page.
Another good one is two pages of city insets between Tennessee and Texas.  Nashville and Memphis on one page; San Antonio and Austin on the other.
I'd give Hawaii its own page so the Atlanta map can get much larger.
Might as well give North Carolina two pages for insets so we can see Charlotte, Raleigh/Durham & Greensboro et. al. at a better scale.
Now there's more room for insets in these states.

WisDOT should consider adding an inset of The Dells to its state highway map.

Yes I agree. I am surprised that WDOT does not include the Dells area, Lake Geneva/Elkhorn, or Door County. I had an AMOCO state map from 1980 or so that did have the Dells area map so i know it could be done.

[hobsini2]

I have always felt that Grand Junction, CO deserves an inset, if only to give some credence to the area west of the mountains.

Brownsville, TX, also seems to be continually overlooked.

But for some reason, Elkhart, IN makes it in, and in its own right even, not just as an ancillary to South Bend!

Long Island, and other outlying suburbs of NYC, have also long been under-represented. Insets of inner Long Island have been appearing lately, but much of the island remains mysterious to the map user. (Of course, at a certain point you might as well just map the whole eastern megalopolis at a consistent large scale, which so far only Michelin has seen fit to do, and only to a middling extent.)

I could see one to include the Hamptons but it would probably need its own page in the atlas.

[vtk]

Too many insets are pointless because the scale is too close to that of the main map.  If the inset is only at twice the scale of the main map, and only contains a few extra town-dots and unlabeled local roads, it's rather pathetic.  A good inset should be at least four times the main map scale.  Suburbs and nearby towns should be represented as colored areas, rather than point features.  Interchanges should be drawn with enough detail to determine what can be accessed from where, if possible; and if interchange detail is shown, forget the interchange symbol.  Onewayness of streets should be shown.  Road line styles should be based more on the capacity of the road than its route class.  All roads shown should be labeled; if different parts of a road have different names, then both/all names should be included, as well as whatever feature (be it a road, river, or political boundary) that defines the name change.  If many of these details can't be included for a concentrated area like the central business district, then another map at an even larger scale is necessary for that area.

Perhaps a good US atlas should have about a 3:1 ratio of pages devoted to cities vs states.  Such an atlas would probably be 300 pages, and I'd gladly pay more than $4.⁹⁵ for it.

[hobsini2]

If it were up to me, each state would have at least 1 page for the state map and at least 1 page for city maps with the exceptions of small states like DE NH RI and VT. Those states would have the state map and city maps on 1 page.
So for instance with Alabama, it would be 2 pages for the state map, 3 city maps (Tuscaloosa, Auburn, Dothan) at the bottom of the state map in the FL Panhandle, one in the top right corner of the state map (Florence), and 1 full page after to cover Birmingham, Mobile, Montgomery, Huntsville, Gadsden and Anniston.

But i do agree with VTK that the detail on those maps needs to be worth it with one exception. I am fine with squares symbolizing interchanges on the city area maps since most interchanges are full on/offs. A Downtown or Central District map should have exit ramp detail. And absolutely suburbs should be different color shades and not points. Specific neighborhoods like say Bridgeport in Chicago could be points since it is usually just a couple of blocks in area.

[kphoger]

Regarding interchanges:  Just use one symbol for full access and a different symbol for partial access, no need to specify exactly what access is missing except at the really-zoomed-in level (downtown secondary inset).

[Landshark]

Rand McNalley needs to add Everett, WA area (population 700,000+) and the Tri-Cities (population 250,000+).   They can remove Yakima if they need the extra space.  Tri-Cities passed Yakima as the dominate South Central Washington market over a decade ago.

[vtk]

I think you guys missed a nuance of my interchange symbol statement. If the interchange is drawn in detail, the symbol should be omitted.  I've seen maps that show at least partial (read: half-assed) ramp detail, and they throw a little square on some random point in or near the interchange.  Sometimes this partial detail is a byproduct of their data source, which may intend to represent highway centerlines, but follows specific ramp geometry too closely; such a data source becomes obvious in renderings of the East and West Split interchanges in Columbus.

[SP Cook]

4. Major college or university (Division I)

I'm going to nitpick that one.  Even if we interpret "Division I" to mean "I-A football" (and ignore that there are plenty of major colleges that don't play sports and many not major colleges that do), there are lots of places with such schools that have no need of any such map being compact campuses in small towns.  Such places as Blacksburg, Charlottesville, State College, Clemson, Gainsville, Tuscalossa, Auburn, Oxford, Starkville, College Station, Bloomington, Iowa City, Manhattan, Morgantown, Moscow/Pullman, and many more.

I am also going to note a new, at least in my area, phenemona of a college having a welcome center.   Marshall, WVU and VPI all have these, providing parking for visitors, maps, ans other services similar to highway ones.

[Kacie Jane]

Rand McNalley needs to add Everett, WA area (population 700,000+) and the Tri-Cities (population 250,000+).   They can remove Yakima if they need the extra space.  Tri-Cities passed Yakima as the dominate South Central Washington market over a decade ago.

Perhaps expand the one-page Seattle/Tacoma map to two pages, and stretch it from Olympia to Everett.

[hobsini2]

4. Major college or university (Division I)

I'm going to nitpick that one.  Even if we interpret "Division I" to mean "I-A football" (and ignore that there are plenty of major colleges that don't play sports and many not major colleges that do), there are lots of places with such schools that have no need of any such map being compact campuses in small towns.  Such places as Blacksburg, Charlottesville, State College, Clemson, Gainsville, Tuscalossa, Auburn, Oxford, Starkville, College Station, Bloomington, Iowa City, Manhattan, Morgantown, Moscow/Pullman, and many more.

I am also going to note a new, at least in my area, phenemona of a college having a welcome center.   Marshall, WVU and VPI all have these, providing parking for visitors, maps, ans other services similar to highway ones.
I was actually speaking of Division I as in university pop.

4. Major college or university (Division I)

I'm going to nitpick that one.  Even if we interpret "Division I" to mean "I-A football" (and ignore that there are plenty of major colleges that don't play sports and many not major colleges that do), there are lots of places with such schools that have no need of any such map being compact campuses in small towns.  Such places as Blacksburg, Charlottesville, State College, Clemson, Gainsville, Tuscalossa, Auburn, Oxford, Starkville, College Station, Bloomington, Iowa City, Manhattan, Morgantown, Moscow/Pullman, and many more.

I am also going to note a new, at least in my area, phenemona of a college having a welcome center.   Marshall, WVU and VPI all have these, providing parking for visitors, maps, ans other services similar to highway ones.

I was speaking of Division I in terms of the population of the university, regardless of sports. Secondly, Iowa City, Tuscaloosa, and Morgantown are poor examples to back up your statement. Each of the 3 i mentioned in my last sentence are top 7 pops in their own states.

[empirestate]

I'm going to nitpick that one.  Even if we interpret "Division I" to mean "I-A football" (and ignore that there are plenty of major colleges that don't play sports and many not major colleges that do), there are lots of places with such schools that have no need of any such map being compact campuses in small towns.  Such places as Blacksburg, Charlottesville, State College, Clemson, Gainsville, Tuscalossa, Auburn, Oxford, Starkville, College Station, Bloomington, Iowa City, Manhattan, Morgantown, Moscow/Pullman, and many more.

Of course, many if not most of the cities you've listed do already have insets in the major road atlases...would you expunge those?

I do agree that the mere presence of a major university doesn't fully seal the deal as to whether a particular town ought to merit an inset map, although it can definitely be a factor. There is, in my mind, a difference between a "college town" and a "university town". I haven't decided which term applies to which, but in one case, a town seems to have no sense of identity beyond that of the institution located there...such places as Clemson and maybe Morgantown fit that description. Others, however, are still influenced by the institution, perhaps predominantly so, but yet reflect in their cultural makeup as diverse a landscape as that institution, such that it seems to hold its own (possibly a false appearance, admittedly); i.e., the city is a macrocosm of the university. The city that first gave me this impression was Columbia, MO; Ann Arbor is probably also similar.

Still others, like Pittsburgh or Boston, aren't single-entity college towns, but have a culture and economy inextricably tied to the multiple institutions they host.

In short, as it pertains to the topic, deciding which cities are important enough to warrant insets maps can't ultimately be decided by one or a few criteria, but to some extent subjectively, and relative to the other candidates in the state in question.