THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TRADITIONAL AND NONTRADITIONAL SPATIAL IMAGES

A review of the Soviet and foreign literature on nontraditional cartographic images (cartograms) sets the stage for a critique of the position that they are only distorted versions of conventional maps. The author argues that nontraditional images are a legitimate form of cartographic presentation, employing a special non-spatial (topologic) system of measurement. As such, they are uniquely suited for the portrayal of certain kinds of information (i.e., socioeconomic) where elucidation of quantitative relations among features is more important than their faithful geometric representation. Procedures for transforming traditional images into nontraditional ones are described. Translated from: Izvestiy a AN SSSR, seriya geograficheskaya, 1984, No. 5, pp. 121-133.