The Baltimore Phenomenon
The Baltimore Phenomenon is the tendency for a city to be omitted from maps due to space constraints while much smaller cities are included on the same map simply because space is available to display them. This phenomenon gets its name from Baltimore, Maryland, which, despite its large population, is commonly omitted on maps of the United States because there is not enough space in the surrounding area of the map. Larger cities surrounding Baltimore take precedence. In contrast, much smaller cities in other geographic locations are included at the same scale because the level of competition for map space may not exist in that particular area.
Read more about this topic: Cartographic Generalization
Famous quotes containing the words baltimore and/or phenomenon:
“There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“If you could choose your parents,... we would rather have a mother who felt a sense of guilt—at any rate who felt responsible, and felt that if things went wrong it was probably her fault—we’d rather have that than a mother who immediately turned to an outside thing to explain everything, and said it was due to the thunderstorm last night or some quite outside phenomenon and didn’t take responsibility for anything.”
—D.W. Winnicott (20th century)