They all compromise on something to enhance something else. You simply can't map the surface of a 3d shere (approximation of the earths globe) onto a 2d flat surface.
And so we have projections galore. And anyway was (and is) always free to use whatever fits best.
goodcanadian
Decades ago, when I was a child, I viewed the Mercator projection as old fashioned and stupid. In fact, I rarely saw it. Most maps were Robinson's projection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection). It baffles me that anyone still uses Mercator projection for any serious purpose.
RamblingCTO
The comments overwhelmingly say: mercator isn't really in use. So what is this weird "decolonization" push then? Virtue signalling? I see it a lot from US-based people nowadays. Seems like a weird fetish as a European.
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JuniperMesos
I never had the impression that the Mercator projection, or indeed any particular world map projection out of the dozens in common use, had any kind of official status that needed to be removed. It seems obvious to me that different map projections have different tradeoffs, and that any particular publisher of a world map can and does use whichever one makes sense for the information they're trying to convey.
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bawolff
I feel like people are making more of a fuss about this then it is. The UNGA isn't a body that controls what maps its member states use. They can make the recommendation of course, but it has yet to be seen if anyone follows it.
Note of course this includes Scotland!
The traditional English are basically a dot.
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amadeuspagel
> Mercator is the most-widely used projection (Google Maps uses it, for one), but it was created in 1569 during the age of exploration. It's mostly good for sea navigation. Any straight line drawn on the map represents a constant compass bearing.
It's also good for knowing how much daylight you get somewhere or whether someone there is likely to be awake right now.
JdeBP
I read the article thinking that it was not going to mention Dymaxion. Articles like this rarely do. The BBC has an article on the U.N. resolution (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly5r60v4mro), and it does not.
And then right at the bottom it went and mentioned Dymaxion.
Dymaxion is one of the few projections that actually shows Antarctica with something resembling its actual shape. Interestingly, to counter the people who say that the best thing to learn from is an actual globe, a couple of children's globes of the world that I had as a child had large metal caps around the axle that obscured most of Antarctica.
Any decent atlas uses a variety of projections, of course. The tatty, second-hand, older-than-I-am atlas that I had at school was already on to Interrupted Mollweide's Homolographic by page 3. (-:
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simonw
I vibe-coded up an animated transition between Mercator and Equal Earth (using D3) the other day, if anyone's interested in that comparison: https://tools.simonwillison.net/equal-earth
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ketzu
I wonder how many people can reliably identify a Mercator projection when they see a map. My personal belief is that many people think map they have seen are Mercator projections when they are not and that "Mercator" is for most a synonym with "the normal world map I am used to", even though it (likely?) isn't.
Based on some quick search the atlas I used in school in Germany mostly used winkel-tripel projection (or the eckert IV). Does my memory remember the map accurate enough to determine that now? Hell no.
flohofwoe
I would really like to know which parts of the world use Mercator projection on their standard school wall maps.
At least in Germany (and both former East and West) it certainly isn't in use since at least the 1950s (and probably much earlier), but instead a projection type that maps land masses closer to their actual relative sizes. Mercator is extremely rare and only used in very specialized professional maps (e.g. for navigation), but certainly not as the popular map projection in education.
Also don't schools use physical globes anymore?
This whole drama sounds like it's about a century late to the party tbh.
jillesvangurp
Google maps solves this neatly by just projecting the world map on a sphere when you zoom out. On desktop at least. It seems on mobile they use a 2D Mercator projection. But they just don't allow you to zoom out all the way, which is a bit weird. At least on my Pixel phone.
masswerk
Goode homolosine projection, which enjoyed some popularity in the "Space Age", deserves a mention.
A version of it including political borders my desktop wallpaper for a long time, until I decided to not change default wallpaper on my new devices anymore.
fedeb95
In order to understand why this is pushed, consider that maps through history rarely have been only a tool for the technician. Maps usually conveyed a lot of social information, take a look at medieval ones to understand the point.
This explains why the UN is making such an otherwise stupid resolution from a mathematical point of view.
decimalenough
It's kind of funny how the colonial convenience of having the 0 longitude line pass through Greenwich, UK ends up making Africa the most prominent place on the world map, since the centerpoint (0,0) is just off the African coast. This was true with Mercator as well, but Equal Earth emphasizes just how huge the African continent actually is.
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kspacewalk2
Robinson projection is a good enough, boring compromise, if the UN was interested in that.
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fedeb95
We are in 2026: why not a rotating globe?
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saaaaaam
It’s West Wing coming true again. “Give me $200 and it’s done!”
For quite a few years, and because I don't have a globe, I've turned to MapFight [0] to get a good idea of size/area comparisons for countries, significant geographic features and for historical lands/empires.
As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose.
It's totally reasonable and rational for the African association of cartographer to push for this change - it makes their continent look bigger. At the margin, their children can look at the map and feel more significant.
On the flip side, this particular map makes Europe look smaller. So it means that at the margin, European children will look at the map and feel less significant.
It doesn't shock me that the US voted against it. I am surprised that others voted for it, and diminished themselves.
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rkagerer
It's great they want to find a projection that better represents the real geography, but at the end of the day you're still trying to unwrap a sphere onto a rectangle. Personally I feel the schools mentioned here would get better mileage out of buying (more) old fashioned globes, and encouraging the kids to learn geography that way.
andsoitis
A more interesting change would be to flip maps “upside down”.
The “north is up” convention isn’t a real thing.
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scotty79
Since we are moving away from print and towards screens, shouldn't we be just using actual globes?
80% of the human population lives in the northern hemisphere, but closer to the equator.
LeFantome
Time to rename Mercator the “Map of America”.
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AlexandrB
What's the material difference between this and Trump's "my button is bigger"[1] nonsense or the renaming of various bodies of water? I know the UN claims that "Correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation." but it's purely symbolic and changes nothing geopolitically.
My personal favourite equal-area projection is something like Boggs eumorphic[2] because it doesn't distort the east and westmost polar regions quite as badly. The value of a geographic projection is in its utility for the task at hand, not whether it flatters the correct countries.
"And since we often, without thinking, use size as a proxy for importance or power, this subtly reinforces a sense of northern superiority over the global south."
We also use position as a proxy for importance or power, so perhaps they should flip the map over as well. /s
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shevy-java
> The UN endorsed a resolution to promote maps that accurately reflect the true size of continents, dethroning the 500-year-old Mercator projection in the process.
That project was always silly really.
That the USA is turning into the number #1 rogue country is also problematic. Trump is damaging everything here.
modzu
have we renamed the world america yet?
frmersdog
Oh, this is just getting started when it comes to upsetting traditionalists. I'd wager that the majority of map-reading happens on a screen these days, using software maps that can be rotated without changing the relative orientation of the labels.
...So why is it "Sub-Saharan Africa"? Why not "Super-Saharan Africa"? "Dexterous-Saharan Africa"? "Sinister-Saharan Africa?" It's all just convention (that just happens to favor Eurocentric notions). "Free your mind." -Morpheus
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alehlopeh
Calling it Equal Earth was a bad move. The word “equal” has tons of baggage. Why not call it something less incendiary like Actual Earth or something? What ever happened to being pragmatic?
Weird title. Cargography constantly challenged itself. Look at some of the possible projections at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projections
They all compromise on something to enhance something else. You simply can't map the surface of a 3d shere (approximation of the earths globe) onto a 2d flat surface.
And so we have projections galore. And anyway was (and is) always free to use whatever fits best.
Decades ago, when I was a child, I viewed the Mercator projection as old fashioned and stupid. In fact, I rarely saw it. Most maps were Robinson's projection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection). It baffles me that anyone still uses Mercator projection for any serious purpose.
The comments overwhelmingly say: mercator isn't really in use. So what is this weird "decolonization" push then? Virtue signalling? I see it a lot from US-based people nowadays. Seems like a weird fetish as a European.
I never had the impression that the Mercator projection, or indeed any particular world map projection out of the dozens in common use, had any kind of official status that needed to be removed. It seems obvious to me that different map projections have different tradeoffs, and that any particular publisher of a world map can and does use whichever one makes sense for the information they're trying to convey.
I feel like people are making more of a fuss about this then it is. The UNGA isn't a body that controls what maps its member states use. They can make the recommendation of course, but it has yet to be seen if anyone follows it.
Ya people have no idea how big Africa truly is
Here is the UK in Africa: https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTAyODQ3Nzg.NTkyNDI2Nw*...
Note of course this includes Scotland! The traditional English are basically a dot.
> Mercator is the most-widely used projection (Google Maps uses it, for one), but it was created in 1569 during the age of exploration. It's mostly good for sea navigation. Any straight line drawn on the map represents a constant compass bearing.
It's also good for knowing how much daylight you get somewhere or whether someone there is likely to be awake right now.
I read the article thinking that it was not going to mention Dymaxion. Articles like this rarely do. The BBC has an article on the U.N. resolution (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly5r60v4mro), and it does not.
And then right at the bottom it went and mentioned Dymaxion.
Dymaxion is one of the few projections that actually shows Antarctica with something resembling its actual shape. Interestingly, to counter the people who say that the best thing to learn from is an actual globe, a couple of children's globes of the world that I had as a child had large metal caps around the axle that obscured most of Antarctica.
Any decent atlas uses a variety of projections, of course. The tatty, second-hand, older-than-I-am atlas that I had at school was already on to Interrupted Mollweide's Homolographic by page 3. (-:
I vibe-coded up an animated transition between Mercator and Equal Earth (using D3) the other day, if anyone's interested in that comparison: https://tools.simonwillison.net/equal-earth
I wonder how many people can reliably identify a Mercator projection when they see a map. My personal belief is that many people think map they have seen are Mercator projections when they are not and that "Mercator" is for most a synonym with "the normal world map I am used to", even though it (likely?) isn't.
Based on some quick search the atlas I used in school in Germany mostly used winkel-tripel projection (or the eckert IV). Does my memory remember the map accurate enough to determine that now? Hell no.
I would really like to know which parts of the world use Mercator projection on their standard school wall maps.
At least in Germany (and both former East and West) it certainly isn't in use since at least the 1950s (and probably much earlier), but instead a projection type that maps land masses closer to their actual relative sizes. Mercator is extremely rare and only used in very specialized professional maps (e.g. for navigation), but certainly not as the popular map projection in education.
Also don't schools use physical globes anymore?
This whole drama sounds like it's about a century late to the party tbh.
Google maps solves this neatly by just projecting the world map on a sphere when you zoom out. On desktop at least. It seems on mobile they use a 2D Mercator projection. But they just don't allow you to zoom out all the way, which is a bit weird. At least on my Pixel phone.
Goode homolosine projection, which enjoyed some popularity in the "Space Age", deserves a mention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goode_homolosine_projection
I came across AuthaGraph projection some time ago and got hooked to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuthaGraph_projection
A version of it including political borders my desktop wallpaper for a long time, until I decided to not change default wallpaper on my new devices anymore.
In order to understand why this is pushed, consider that maps through history rarely have been only a tool for the technician. Maps usually conveyed a lot of social information, take a look at medieval ones to understand the point.
This explains why the UN is making such an otherwise stupid resolution from a mathematical point of view.
It's kind of funny how the colonial convenience of having the 0 longitude line pass through Greenwich, UK ends up making Africa the most prominent place on the world map, since the centerpoint (0,0) is just off the African coast. This was true with Mercator as well, but Equal Earth emphasizes just how huge the African continent actually is.
Robinson projection is a good enough, boring compromise, if the UN was interested in that.
We are in 2026: why not a rotating globe?
It’s West Wing coming true again. “Give me $200 and it’s done!”
https://youtu.be/QMlp8BeBJgg
For quite a few years, and because I don't have a globe, I've turned to MapFight [0] to get a good idea of size/area comparisons for countries, significant geographic features and for historical lands/empires.
[0] https://www.mapfight.xyz/
As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose.
It's totally reasonable and rational for the African association of cartographer to push for this change - it makes their continent look bigger. At the margin, their children can look at the map and feel more significant.
On the flip side, this particular map makes Europe look smaller. So it means that at the margin, European children will look at the map and feel less significant.
It doesn't shock me that the US voted against it. I am surprised that others voted for it, and diminished themselves.
It's great they want to find a projection that better represents the real geography, but at the end of the day you're still trying to unwrap a sphere onto a rectangle. Personally I feel the schools mentioned here would get better mileage out of buying (more) old fashioned globes, and encouraging the kids to learn geography that way.
A more interesting change would be to flip maps “upside down”.
The “north is up” convention isn’t a real thing.
Since we are moving away from print and towards screens, shouldn't we be just using actual globes?
Now Africa looks even more enticing
Mercator is fine. Or if you want something flat use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boggs_eumorphic_projection.
Or buy a globe FFS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections
80% of the human population lives in the northern hemisphere, but closer to the equator.
Time to rename Mercator the “Map of America”.
What's the material difference between this and Trump's "my button is bigger"[1] nonsense or the renaming of various bodies of water? I know the UN claims that "Correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation." but it's purely symbolic and changes nothing geopolitically.
My personal favourite equal-area projection is something like Boggs eumorphic[2] because it doesn't distort the east and westmost polar regions quite as badly. The value of a geographic projection is in its utility for the task at hand, not whether it flatters the correct countries.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42549687
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boggs_eumorphic_projection
Now rotate it 90 degrees like T and O map.
Obligatory xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/977/
"And since we often, without thinking, use size as a proxy for importance or power, this subtly reinforces a sense of northern superiority over the global south."
We also use position as a proxy for importance or power, so perhaps they should flip the map over as well. /s
> The UN endorsed a resolution to promote maps that accurately reflect the true size of continents, dethroning the 500-year-old Mercator projection in the process.
That project was always silly really.
That the USA is turning into the number #1 rogue country is also problematic. Trump is damaging everything here.
have we renamed the world america yet?
Oh, this is just getting started when it comes to upsetting traditionalists. I'd wager that the majority of map-reading happens on a screen these days, using software maps that can be rotated without changing the relative orientation of the labels.
...So why is it "Sub-Saharan Africa"? Why not "Super-Saharan Africa"? "Dexterous-Saharan Africa"? "Sinister-Saharan Africa?" It's all just convention (that just happens to favor Eurocentric notions). "Free your mind." -Morpheus
Calling it Equal Earth was a bad move. The word “equal” has tons of baggage. Why not call it something less incendiary like Actual Earth or something? What ever happened to being pragmatic?