Transport makes cities: transit maps as major cognitive frames of metropolitan areas

Abstract

Abstract Understanding how individuals mentally perceive and navigate urban spaces is a significant subject in spatial cognition, and it is crucial for urban planning and design. Transit maps are central in these matters, as they present and represent information about public transport systems. They primarily include the positions of transit lines, transit stops and transfer stations, along with the connections that exist between them (Guo, 2011). Through a series of interviews with more than twenty Londoners including a “sketch mapping” phase (Lynch, 1960), Vertesi (2008) showed that the Tube Map depicting the London Underground transit system has distorted Londoners’ perception of their city, with residents now identifying the Tube Map as a plausible representation of what London is. Our research aims to further her pioneering work and shed light on the connection between people's mental representations of metropolitan areas and the schematic representations of their corresponding public transport networks. We present two studies that confirm an association between peoples’ representations of metropolitan areas and the schematic representations of their respective public transport networks. Our studies take into consideration cognitive biases and distortions revealed in the literature on spatial cognition to underlie the construction of mental representations of geographic spaces where public transport networks have since long put down roots in citizens’ culture and habits with a specific focus on Paris, London and Berlin metropolitan areas.