OSM Americana gets a global makeover

Communities United States
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OpenStreetMap Americana has a new option to simulate a globe. To enable it, click the :globe_with_meridians: button in the upper-left corner of the map. This joins the option to simulate a relief map via the :mountain_snow: button. The first thing you’ll notice is that iconic gentle curve in the Canada–U.S. border.

Map of the contiguous United States on a simulation of a relief globe.
Map of the contiguous United States on a simulation of a relief globe.3456×1934 1.15 MB

You may be surprised to see OSM Americana draped over a curved, bumpy surface. After all, the project is best known for its thematic focus on ground transportation, replete with colorful route shields. If anything, the map should have several creases for when you’re done and need to fold it back up. But the project has always aimed to pay homage to other genres of print maps too. Many high-quality print transportation maps blend elements of topographic maps and city guide maps. I even have in my collection a “geological road map” of Arizona, perfect for those rock hounding road trips (though that’s a little too colorful for this map’s palette).

At low zoom levels, OSM Americana more closely resembles a general atlas like you’d find in an educational setting. At this scale, the roads don’t matter as much as the borders and large bodies of water and borders over large bodies of water. Many of us use the map to get a high-level understanding of geography. We’d like the map to be useful even in a classroom in Nebraska, where Mercator projection is essentially banned under state law.

We’re only taking the globe analogy so far. In integrating this MapLibre feature, I took no inspiration from the globe on my desk with its topsy-turvy place classification, or the “modern” globe I found at a local department store that struggles with the names, locations, and very concept of a lake. OSM globes are a cut above.

A white globe with gold accents depicts North America as three country borders with no other physical features, but labels for unseen lakes abound, many of them in the wrong locations. Most of the lakes are misnamed. For example, Lake Michigan is Michigan Lake and Lake Texoma is Texoma Lake.
A white globe with gold accents depicts North America as three country borders with no other physical features, but labels for unseen lakes abound, many of them in the wrong locations. Most of the lakes are misnamed. For example, Lake Michigan is Michigan Lake and Lake Texoma is Texoma Lake.4032×3024 1.62 MB

We can’t quite enable the globe by default, as it prevents you from seeing more than a hemisphere at a time, but someday MapLibre will implement more projections and we’ll jump at the chance to use them. We have lots of backlogged ideas for internationalizing the map and more accurately reproducing print map conventions. If you’d like to help us, please swing by our GitHub repository. Bring some print maps with you to share!

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OSM Americana, your local language companion