In Beyond the Map: Unruly Enclaves, Ghostly Places, Emerging Lands and Our Search for New Utopias author Alastair Bonnett looked not only at tiny disputed islands and cartographic oddities but also mysterious urban areas that are as much a part of physical geography as well as cerebral in nature. He divided the book into five sections, entitled Unruly Islands, Enclaves and Uncertain Nations, Utopian Places, Ghostly Places, and Hidden Places. A sign of a good read when it comes to any book on geography or maps is the number of notes I take, and I spent a good time looking for these places on Google Maps or otherwise researching them further. I enjoyed the chapters on the disputed Channel Islands known as Les Minquiers, the United States Minor Outlying Islands, and the Spratly Islands, which PR China is currently expanding with landfill to create military bases. I had a chuckle over the author’s remark about the Spratlys:
“Today the Spratly Islands are being bulked out, squared off, covered in concrete and turned into offensive military bases. This once-unspoiled tropical paradise has been transmuted into an army of geographical Frankensteins.”
Unfortunately with 41 chapters over 281 pages, no area was discussed at length and just when I was really getting to know an area I’d turn the page and discover that the chapter was over.
I enjoyed the section on enclaves and uncertain nations, where Bonnett discovered the Ladin community of the Italian Dolomites in the chapter on the Ladin Valleys. The language spoken here is a relative of Romansch and is severely endangered:
“Keeping Ladin going is ever more an act of will, a conscious effort. It has slid from being an ordinary thing, shouted out by kids running from the school gates, into becoming the preserve of well-intentioned activists and committees. It’s not going to disappear completely any time soon, but it is on the way to becoming a museum piece.”
Bonnett also gave a succinct history of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, and a history of the Western Sahara which was included in the chapter on the Saharan Sand Wall.
While the entire book was a breeze to read I didn’t enjoy the section on Utopian Places as much as the others. Bonnett included here such “places” as cybercommunities, and devoted a chapter to urban foraging for berries and mushrooms.
The ghostly places were not haunted cemeteries or abandoned islands of quarantine, but rather locations such as the colossal Shinjuku train station in Tokyo where many a tourist and even local gets lost; the futuristic yet unused skywalks of Newcastle; the tsunami stones in Japan; and, by far the eeriest story within the section, the movie set for Dau. I had never heard of this Russian film yet the director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy seems like the most obsessive control freak cinema has ever known. Now I am all the more keen on seeing his movie.
Hidden Places was the longest section, and I enjoyed its chapters on the garbage city within Cairo; so-called “trap streets” which are cartographic copyright traps or totally fake streets on maps to trap counterfeiters; the uncharted interior of DR Congo; Doggerland; and, while not a place the chapter entitled Spikescape told about the ways urban areas have been transformed by making them inaccessible, more uncomfortable or difficult to use. Bonnett gives examples such as laying down a carpet of spikes to inhibit pedestrians from walking in certain areas. I see such spiky carpets at level crossings of train tracks and at short staircases that lead from the platform to the railbed. Other such methods of impeding or restricting the use of public space is by removing certain features, such as garbage cans. During my entire time in the UK, whether passing through London or in Scotland, I rarely saw a garbage can. It was no secret why, as authorities want to deter people from placing certain things in them, such as bombs. Other metaphorical spikes are knobs placed onto ledges to deter people from sitting on them or skateboarding across, or spikes atop light fixtures or balconies to deter pigeons from roosting.