Maps have always been essential. And contested. Today, they shape decisions both serious and trivial, from mapping gene activity, crime risks and rising housing prices, to directing a pedestrian towards the most exotic cup of coffee or the most pleasant route to work.

In less than a decade, our relationship to maps has been completely transformed — as have the ways maps are made (and the people who can now make them). If once a map seemed only about getting one from A to B, now, the new worlds made imaginable by contemporary cartography are ever-expanding. Maps help us make sense of the seemingly mundane (highlighting bus route frequency, illustrating urban density) and the controversial (a map of private transit that shaped the discourse of a city, a map that exaggerates, for effect, the impact of sea level rise).

Rebecca Solnit has written that a map is “…in its essence and intent an arbitrary selection of information.” For Urban Cartography, the exhibition I’ve curated at the urban planning and policy think tank SPUR, I felt compelled to use that arbitrariness as criteria – there is simply too much that’s new. I’ll focus here on variations on the theme of the city map, with a particular focus on the iterative process of mapmaking: the discovery of what’s been eliminated, reduced, emphasized and/or removed. Also of interest is how maps of the city have become personal maps, dotted with events and experiences that explain, connect and even predict our choices.

Google Maps celebrates its 10th anniversary next February. In large part due to its emergence, maps have reached a previously unimaginable point of ubiquity. The appearance of these transformative technologies, together with the proliferation of the handheld supercomputers (aka smartphones) that support them have given us dramatic new perceptions of the world(s) we inhabit. To be sure, more traditional methods of cartography (i.e., paper) remain and thrive. But at the same time, the new worlds made imaginable by contemporary cartography are ever-expanding.

Maps increasingly represent diverse and subjective realities.

In the past, maps were more authoritative, the closely guarded documents that were the purview of kings, generals and heads of state. These people had power because they had the map. Today, regular people with modest skills can make maps to represent the city that they live in. New forms of cartography allow people, in effect, to make themselves the center of their universe, creating a map specific to their desired and necessary uses.