Showing posts with label Maps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maps. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
The HOTguide for Alcúdia and Pollensa 2014
Thursday, March 27, 2014
So Very Little: Mapping tourism
POOT is an urban planning mechanism. Its purpose is to lay down rules as to the density of touristic development. Essentially, it operates according to a quota system; only so much land in given municipalities can be dedicated to such development. The POOT zones are the ones with tourism concentration, and when one looks at this particular map, something strikes you. Because it is so stripped-down, the amount of purple looks inconsequential. We know about the concentrations of tourism, but in the overall land scheme, they amount to only a very small part of Mallorca.
The residential zones, those not covered by POOT because there is little or no touristic development other than, for example, agrotourism, country fincas for rent and so on, are distributed right across the island with the exception of chunks of the Tramuntana region. They are the town centres. The grey that represents them is to be found in largest amount where you would expect it to be found - Palma and Marratxí.
What is not shown on this basic map are other areas covered by the land plan. They include areas of a high level of protection, natural areas of special interest, rural areas of wooded landscape interest, areas of farming interest, and rustic land under the general forestry regime. There are others, each with their own acronym; areas for this, areas for that.
The POOT purple is only to be found in coastal areas. All of the municipalities which have coast have some POOT, with the exception of six along the west coast - Estellencs, Banyalbufar, Valldemossa, Deiá, Fornalutx and Escorca. Of these, it might be surprising to learn that Deiá has no purple; Deiá does, after all, have tourism. It does, but it isn't a touristic zone. Its land use is determined in other ways, which exclude development that would make it a touristic zone in the same way as Port de Sóller is.
Of the coastal municipalities, there is one striking example of just how little land, comparatively speaking, is dedicated to tourism development, and that is Llucmajor. By land area, it is Mallorca's largest municipality, 120 square kilometres or so bigger than Palma, 60 square kilometres bigger than the second largest, Manacor, and over twice the size of Calvia. Being home to Arenal, Llucmajor might conceivably have acquired a negative image, but when does anyone hear anything untoward about Sa Torre or Cala Pi? Arenal can be spoken of in the same breath as Magalluf, but then Magalluf is part of a virtually unbroken coastal conurbation within one municipality.
Calvia is, in a sense, an anomaly. The density of its tourism development, its POOT ratio, far exceeds that of any other municipality. And it is its disproportionate level of tourism development which, one suspects, is a principal reason for charges that Mallorca sold its soul to the devil of tourism. One is well aware of the coastal abominations that have been committed in different touristic zones and also aware of accusations of over-commercialism, over-construction and indeed over-reliance on tourism, yet, with the exception of Calvia (even Palma's POOT is relatively confined), the map paints a picture that doesn't quite measure up to this charge list. Only Alcúdia and Capdepera, roughly the same land size and both with relatively large amounts of POOT, might - in comparative terms - be placed in a similar category as Calvia.
This POOT land is what breathes economic life into Mallorca; a very small amount of land relative to its contribution. The POOT land may have changed local culture and landscape in the coastal areas, but elsewhere? 60% of Mallorca's land is for agriculture and contributes only 1% of gross added value. Much more of the land is protected by those various other acronyms. Can POOT and tourism be held so accountable? If culture elsewhere has been changed, then it has been changed through a process of modernisation, for which tourism is only partly or incidentally responsible. We are familiar with the map of Mallorca, but we are perhaps less familiar with what the map actually tells us.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Roads To Nowhere
I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but one way I find to fritter away many a long hour or day is by designing road maps. You might ask why, especially now that Google has turned itself into the Great Cyber Cartographer. One reason is that not even Google gets things right. Another is that local authorities on Mallorca also don't get things right. Google meets Mallorcan all-round efficiency meets map-making, and the result is roads and streets that don't exist, that don't actually go where it is suggested that they do or, and this is the best of the lot, where the street names have been altered for no obvious reason.
Changing the names of streets is not so uncommon on Mallorca. It has been something driven by political flavour of the month, for example a Catalan rather than a Castellano name or vice versa being demanded or the law of historic memory requiring the banishment of all association with Franco from the streets of Spain. This type of change is perhaps understandable. What isn't is where a street that was previously known by one name adopts a different name and gives its original name to another street that is a mere couple of streets away. Trust me, this has happened.
Then there are streets or roads which have never become streets or roads. Perhaps they will at some point in the future. They exist in theory or even vaguely in practice. There is one example, in Puerto Alcúdia, where the street even has a street sign, even if there is no street as such. Another source of confusion are roads or streets which, once upon a time, were whole streets or roads before they were built on top of and so became non-roads. Again, Puerto Alcúdia has a couple of good examples. The Sea Club Apartments sit on two such non-roads and have done for years. Yet, take a look at many a map, and the impression is given that they are whole roads.
There is something eery about roads that were once roads or roads that don't really exist and even roads that most certainly do exist but which are unused or are unfinished. A great stretch of main-road tarmac disappearing into the horizon with road signs announcing the road number or junction is especially eery if it shows no sign of vehicular life. It has a feeling of the apocalypse and abandonment.
And abandoned is what has happened to some main roads and motorways in Spain. In Mallorca, we moan about the abandonment of the work on the Manacor to Artà railway, but we would moan even more had the track been laid but had not been put to any use. On the mainland, there are roads that have been laid. They have been marked. They have had signs put up. But no one uses them.
A prime example is the MP203. It was intended to relieve congestion on the existing route from Barcelona to Alcalá de Henares and Madrid. It is now six years since work ceased. We are used to construction being paralysed in Mallorca; the Palacio de Congresos is one example. But work on the MP203 didn't stop because public money ran out - it was a private venture from the outset, as it was due to be a toll road - and it didn't stop for environmental reasons or because the constructor went bust. It stopped because there were obstacles in the way, such as the track for the high-speed railway. About three-quarters of the road was built, but it ends not by connecting to another road but by petering out into sand.
Another road, the A14, has actually been finished, but no one uses it. Built at a cost of 36 million euros, the reason why no one uses it is because it takes too long to get to it or from it. The road, as one blogger has put it, doesn't serve anything or anyone. So why was it built and why was land expropriated? Just so it can be used as an illegal race track, which it is?
There are other examples of so-called phantom main roads. Lack of money is certainly a reason why some are unfinished or unused, but the A14 is probably not the only road that was unnecessary. Perhaps, therefore, an idea presents itself for a different type of map to be created; one that shows all the roads and streets which are unused, unfinished, don't exist or which go nowhere.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Changing the names of streets is not so uncommon on Mallorca. It has been something driven by political flavour of the month, for example a Catalan rather than a Castellano name or vice versa being demanded or the law of historic memory requiring the banishment of all association with Franco from the streets of Spain. This type of change is perhaps understandable. What isn't is where a street that was previously known by one name adopts a different name and gives its original name to another street that is a mere couple of streets away. Trust me, this has happened.
Then there are streets or roads which have never become streets or roads. Perhaps they will at some point in the future. They exist in theory or even vaguely in practice. There is one example, in Puerto Alcúdia, where the street even has a street sign, even if there is no street as such. Another source of confusion are roads or streets which, once upon a time, were whole streets or roads before they were built on top of and so became non-roads. Again, Puerto Alcúdia has a couple of good examples. The Sea Club Apartments sit on two such non-roads and have done for years. Yet, take a look at many a map, and the impression is given that they are whole roads.
There is something eery about roads that were once roads or roads that don't really exist and even roads that most certainly do exist but which are unused or are unfinished. A great stretch of main-road tarmac disappearing into the horizon with road signs announcing the road number or junction is especially eery if it shows no sign of vehicular life. It has a feeling of the apocalypse and abandonment.
And abandoned is what has happened to some main roads and motorways in Spain. In Mallorca, we moan about the abandonment of the work on the Manacor to Artà railway, but we would moan even more had the track been laid but had not been put to any use. On the mainland, there are roads that have been laid. They have been marked. They have had signs put up. But no one uses them.
A prime example is the MP203. It was intended to relieve congestion on the existing route from Barcelona to Alcalá de Henares and Madrid. It is now six years since work ceased. We are used to construction being paralysed in Mallorca; the Palacio de Congresos is one example. But work on the MP203 didn't stop because public money ran out - it was a private venture from the outset, as it was due to be a toll road - and it didn't stop for environmental reasons or because the constructor went bust. It stopped because there were obstacles in the way, such as the track for the high-speed railway. About three-quarters of the road was built, but it ends not by connecting to another road but by petering out into sand.
Another road, the A14, has actually been finished, but no one uses it. Built at a cost of 36 million euros, the reason why no one uses it is because it takes too long to get to it or from it. The road, as one blogger has put it, doesn't serve anything or anyone. So why was it built and why was land expropriated? Just so it can be used as an illegal race track, which it is?
There are other examples of so-called phantom main roads. Lack of money is certainly a reason why some are unfinished or unused, but the A14 is probably not the only road that was unnecessary. Perhaps, therefore, an idea presents itself for a different type of map to be created; one that shows all the roads and streets which are unused, unfinished, don't exist or which go nowhere.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Mapping Mallorca's Imagination
Cartographic precociousness has left its impression on me. When a child, I drew a map of our village. It hadn't occurred to me at the time - it wouldn't have, as I wasn't cognizant of such politico-arcanum - that I had created a socio-geographic representation. The higher land of the village, to its southerly side, was more than just topographically elevated. It was the domain of the grand, the villa, the church, the upper-class landowning caste.
This affluent scarp on the Surrey landscape towered over the commercial centre of the village, the High Street in other words, and the modern estate of engineers and teachers, an agglomeration of the aspirational lower to middle class with its pretensions to the acquisitiveness of late 1950s and early 1960s new consumerism.
To the northerly end, and on the wrong side of the tracks, thanks to the Aldershot to Waterloo line that sliced through the village, was the council estate, a post-war south London spillover and a place of cars jacked up on bricks and the occasional gypsy encampment.
My map showed all this. Importantly, it wasn't simply a representation, it was a social document, one that was the basis for stories, most of them outrageous fibs of course, that I invented for the people of my village.
Maps, as maps used to be, were acts of faith. You trusted in their accuracy, as you had no way of verifying them. You could see a map, but you couldn't see the truth of it for yourself. Maps were virtual reality before the term was invented. More than this, because maps were shorn of intimacy, they were templates for invention and imagination. They hid stories and histories.
The map, therefore, has served a dual purpose, that of practicality and that of interpretation. The imagination that was released by maps has, however, become dulled. A trend towards three-dimensionalism hastened the emergence of technologies such as exist today, the most extreme removal of imagination being the obscenity of Google Street View.
Such intimacy, such real reality makes archaic some of the most fabulous creations of the cartographer. It would be impossible for Beck to diagrammatically show the London Underground nowadays. He would be considered an idiot. Yet he achieved what should have been an impossibility - functionalism made from the abstract. And in so doing, his map added power to one of London's most enduring stories, that of the mystery of its old tube stations and lines.
Technology has not, however, replaced the map. It has digitalised it, put it onto mobile phones, zoomed into it and out of it, but the map remains, even in its basic, non-intimate state.
The tourist coming to Mallorca is confronted with map after map after map. It is the single most useful piece of information the tourist can have. Some may indeed app a map, but most don't. They seek the utility of something that never folds properly and that flaps in a breeze. Utility is the key, so much so that a tour operator rep once told me that he and colleagues used to have to clean up transfer coaches on which adverts that had surrounded maps handed out to the newly arrived had been discarded. The tourists would tear the ads off and keep the map. Why? Who knows.
For tourists who don't vandalise their maps, utility is served by being able to locate Bar Brit and its steak and chips and Sky TV on the corner of Calle Ikis and Calle E-griega. An advert without a means of locating an establishment for the unknowledgeable tourist isn't a great deal of use, yet many businesses persist in using media that fail to impart such knowledge.
The local maps, of the resorts and towns, and the maps of Mallorca are almost exclusively only used in a functional way. The other purpose of the map, the interpretation, is rarely deployed you would think. Yet take a look at a map of Mallorca and you see all manner of strangeness. The name places themselves are strange. They should conjure up enquiry, but how many do actually enquire? What is it with, say, Biniali or Bunyola or the innuendo of Búger? What are their stories?
Maps should map the imagination. A map of Mallorca should be a map of Mallorca's imagination.
You may remember a time when maps would be put up on walls and pins would be placed on them to denote this or that. You can still stick a pin in a map. Shut your eyes, and when you've stuck the pin in, off you go. To wherever it might be and to whatever story the place on your map is hiding.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
This affluent scarp on the Surrey landscape towered over the commercial centre of the village, the High Street in other words, and the modern estate of engineers and teachers, an agglomeration of the aspirational lower to middle class with its pretensions to the acquisitiveness of late 1950s and early 1960s new consumerism.
To the northerly end, and on the wrong side of the tracks, thanks to the Aldershot to Waterloo line that sliced through the village, was the council estate, a post-war south London spillover and a place of cars jacked up on bricks and the occasional gypsy encampment.
My map showed all this. Importantly, it wasn't simply a representation, it was a social document, one that was the basis for stories, most of them outrageous fibs of course, that I invented for the people of my village.
Maps, as maps used to be, were acts of faith. You trusted in their accuracy, as you had no way of verifying them. You could see a map, but you couldn't see the truth of it for yourself. Maps were virtual reality before the term was invented. More than this, because maps were shorn of intimacy, they were templates for invention and imagination. They hid stories and histories.
The map, therefore, has served a dual purpose, that of practicality and that of interpretation. The imagination that was released by maps has, however, become dulled. A trend towards three-dimensionalism hastened the emergence of technologies such as exist today, the most extreme removal of imagination being the obscenity of Google Street View.
Such intimacy, such real reality makes archaic some of the most fabulous creations of the cartographer. It would be impossible for Beck to diagrammatically show the London Underground nowadays. He would be considered an idiot. Yet he achieved what should have been an impossibility - functionalism made from the abstract. And in so doing, his map added power to one of London's most enduring stories, that of the mystery of its old tube stations and lines.
Technology has not, however, replaced the map. It has digitalised it, put it onto mobile phones, zoomed into it and out of it, but the map remains, even in its basic, non-intimate state.
The tourist coming to Mallorca is confronted with map after map after map. It is the single most useful piece of information the tourist can have. Some may indeed app a map, but most don't. They seek the utility of something that never folds properly and that flaps in a breeze. Utility is the key, so much so that a tour operator rep once told me that he and colleagues used to have to clean up transfer coaches on which adverts that had surrounded maps handed out to the newly arrived had been discarded. The tourists would tear the ads off and keep the map. Why? Who knows.
For tourists who don't vandalise their maps, utility is served by being able to locate Bar Brit and its steak and chips and Sky TV on the corner of Calle Ikis and Calle E-griega. An advert without a means of locating an establishment for the unknowledgeable tourist isn't a great deal of use, yet many businesses persist in using media that fail to impart such knowledge.
The local maps, of the resorts and towns, and the maps of Mallorca are almost exclusively only used in a functional way. The other purpose of the map, the interpretation, is rarely deployed you would think. Yet take a look at a map of Mallorca and you see all manner of strangeness. The name places themselves are strange. They should conjure up enquiry, but how many do actually enquire? What is it with, say, Biniali or Bunyola or the innuendo of Búger? What are their stories?
Maps should map the imagination. A map of Mallorca should be a map of Mallorca's imagination.
You may remember a time when maps would be put up on walls and pins would be placed on them to denote this or that. You can still stick a pin in a map. Shut your eyes, and when you've stuck the pin in, off you go. To wherever it might be and to whatever story the place on your map is hiding.
Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
A Long, Long Way From Where I Am Supposed To Be
I like these little tourist stories folk are sending in. Here's another one from Charles:
'Dog walking late yesterday afternoon, a youngish couple in the ubiquitous hire-car (you know the type, no hub caps, blazing headlights complete with two ill-behaved children in the rear). "Hey mate, you English?" "Yes", I replied. "Where are we?" "Well, you are now heading for Formentor and if you wish to continue, carry on to the Cap and on a clear day you'll see Menorca, fantastic and spectacular views," I replied. "Nah" said one of the brats, "that sounds boring." Bending down a bit more to speak to the driver I noticed one of those Sat-Nav things on the window, a compulsory gizmo that seems to be a must-have for every driving tourist nowadays. "Surely that thing shows your whereabouts?" I asked. "Would do mate but the effing battery is dead."
'Now bear in mind that this oaf has pulled up fifty metres or so on the Formentor road from the roundabout by the Port Football Club and has zilch chance of reversing. I too am risking life and limb with a quivering canine lump by my side, as the traffic squeezes past my protruding arse. "Look, the most sensible thing you can do is drive up to the top, pull of the road, and look at your map," I said. Wait for it...
' "Map, what map? Tossed that into the bin a couple of days ago." Bloody hell, this guy is heading back to Can Pic to a hotel he has forgotten the name of and had no recollection of how he got here or where he was heading! Anyway I gave him directions to Alcudia, but he had never heard of that place either!
And the season has started...'
Apart from the rich vein of humour and discussion that can be extracted from the local hire-car industry (and one day I may well), here is enough stuff with which to conduct an entire seminar - indeed a whole semester's worth of seminars - regarding tourist behaviour. But for now, I shall limit myself to two matters of importance - maps and mates.
Firstly to maps. Not only whole rainforests, my friends, but the entire Finnish pulp industry are co-opted to produce local maps. Walk into a hotel lobby and the machete of a rainforest is required to cut through the growth of maps to be encountered. Tour operators have diversified their business - they are now publishers of maps. Everywhere, maps and more maps. So many maps, and so many thrown into the bin. Someone who once worked for a major UK tour operator told me of the job that it was to collect the discarded maps on the transfer coach from the airport.
And yet a map is almost a pre-requisite for the visitor, you might have thought. But maybe they don't teach maps any longer. Maybe that's the reason. "What's this?" "A map." "Dunno about that." When I was at school there were two things you learned in geography - maps and oxbow lakes, the former singularly useful, the latter singularly useless, unless there happens to be an oxbow lake on a map, which in the case of Mallorca there is alas but not one example.
And secondly, mates, as in the use of "mate". Everyone is a mate, so much so that it comes as a surprise, a shock even, when one is not a mate. This morning I was heading towards the Vanity Golf hotel in Puerto Alcúdia. From the beach came a group - males of bellydom and a Kylie or two with baby-buggies. One of the chaps spoke. "Excuse me, sir." Sir!? Sir, sir!? So universal has mate become, that I had quite forgotten about sir. I was hugely impressed. The only time I have been addressed as sir in Mallorca has been by Spaniards; the British never, until today. I shall reciprocate. From now on, I shall only use sir or "my good man", and all bar owners will be referred to as "landlord". Anyway, the gentleman (see, not bad this formal language) enquired as to the location of the nearest bank. You need a map, my good man, I thought, wishing only to send him off in his search for a local finance house replete with a geographical representation of where such an establishment might be found. But I didn't. For next to us was ... a bank.
QUIZ
Chain - Mark Wingett, who played DC Carver in The Bill, was Jimmy's mate in Quadrophenia. And how do you get from Quadrophenia to King Crimson?Yesterday's title - Peter Gabriel, "Games Without Frontiers". (See this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz-qeJOo7cs). Today's title - who? Think Sunderland FC.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
'Dog walking late yesterday afternoon, a youngish couple in the ubiquitous hire-car (you know the type, no hub caps, blazing headlights complete with two ill-behaved children in the rear). "Hey mate, you English?" "Yes", I replied. "Where are we?" "Well, you are now heading for Formentor and if you wish to continue, carry on to the Cap and on a clear day you'll see Menorca, fantastic and spectacular views," I replied. "Nah" said one of the brats, "that sounds boring." Bending down a bit more to speak to the driver I noticed one of those Sat-Nav things on the window, a compulsory gizmo that seems to be a must-have for every driving tourist nowadays. "Surely that thing shows your whereabouts?" I asked. "Would do mate but the effing battery is dead."
'Now bear in mind that this oaf has pulled up fifty metres or so on the Formentor road from the roundabout by the Port Football Club and has zilch chance of reversing. I too am risking life and limb with a quivering canine lump by my side, as the traffic squeezes past my protruding arse. "Look, the most sensible thing you can do is drive up to the top, pull of the road, and look at your map," I said. Wait for it...
' "Map, what map? Tossed that into the bin a couple of days ago." Bloody hell, this guy is heading back to Can Pic to a hotel he has forgotten the name of and had no recollection of how he got here or where he was heading! Anyway I gave him directions to Alcudia, but he had never heard of that place either!
And the season has started...'
Apart from the rich vein of humour and discussion that can be extracted from the local hire-car industry (and one day I may well), here is enough stuff with which to conduct an entire seminar - indeed a whole semester's worth of seminars - regarding tourist behaviour. But for now, I shall limit myself to two matters of importance - maps and mates.
Firstly to maps. Not only whole rainforests, my friends, but the entire Finnish pulp industry are co-opted to produce local maps. Walk into a hotel lobby and the machete of a rainforest is required to cut through the growth of maps to be encountered. Tour operators have diversified their business - they are now publishers of maps. Everywhere, maps and more maps. So many maps, and so many thrown into the bin. Someone who once worked for a major UK tour operator told me of the job that it was to collect the discarded maps on the transfer coach from the airport.
And yet a map is almost a pre-requisite for the visitor, you might have thought. But maybe they don't teach maps any longer. Maybe that's the reason. "What's this?" "A map." "Dunno about that." When I was at school there were two things you learned in geography - maps and oxbow lakes, the former singularly useful, the latter singularly useless, unless there happens to be an oxbow lake on a map, which in the case of Mallorca there is alas but not one example.
And secondly, mates, as in the use of "mate". Everyone is a mate, so much so that it comes as a surprise, a shock even, when one is not a mate. This morning I was heading towards the Vanity Golf hotel in Puerto Alcúdia. From the beach came a group - males of bellydom and a Kylie or two with baby-buggies. One of the chaps spoke. "Excuse me, sir." Sir!? Sir, sir!? So universal has mate become, that I had quite forgotten about sir. I was hugely impressed. The only time I have been addressed as sir in Mallorca has been by Spaniards; the British never, until today. I shall reciprocate. From now on, I shall only use sir or "my good man", and all bar owners will be referred to as "landlord". Anyway, the gentleman (see, not bad this formal language) enquired as to the location of the nearest bank. You need a map, my good man, I thought, wishing only to send him off in his search for a local finance house replete with a geographical representation of where such an establishment might be found. But I didn't. For next to us was ... a bank.
QUIZ
Chain - Mark Wingett, who played DC Carver in The Bill, was Jimmy's mate in Quadrophenia. And how do you get from Quadrophenia to King Crimson?Yesterday's title - Peter Gabriel, "Games Without Frontiers". (See this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz-qeJOo7cs). Today's title - who? Think Sunderland FC.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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