Lab 3 - Neogeography

View Singapore's East Coast Bike Tour in a larger map



Singapore is a highly urbanized nation. Yet, it is also a beautiful tropical island with numerous parks and gardens. The most beautiful parks in Singapore are East Coast Park and Pasir Ris Park. Embedded above is a cycling route beginning with East Coast Park and ending at Pasir Ris Park I’ve used during my stay in Singapore.

Pitfalls of Neogeography

One for the most obvious pitfalls of neogeography is that anyone can make the map. Most of these “mappers” are generally not trained in mapping. Hence, it is often quite difficult to tell if the maps are accurate. However, this problem can be adverted by enabling neogeographers to draw their maps with an accurate map as its base, as used by Google's My Maps. This also enables users to easily check for errors on the mash-ups by comparing it to the base map.

Another consequence of neogeography is loss of privacy and security. In Singapore, there were incidents in which national servicemen released restricted information on camp activities and troop movements via the Internet through mash-ups. Privacy may also be a concern, especially when photos and videos uploaded are made available to everyone. Google have attempted to resolve this problem through blurring faces and car plate numbers on it’s street-view application. However, it is still unable to control the massive amount of information net users upload on its network. In my view, the best solution to this problem is through public education and self censorship.