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Today, the United Nations voted to adopt a new world map that reflects countries’ true relative sizes (programming.dev)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
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https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/04/world/un-vote-new-world-map-intl-scli

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[–] 2 points 2 months ago (5 children)

I, for one, thought Africa had a smaller footprint that it has because of the maps in school and it made me think that it was less signifiant than it is. It doesn't make sense, because a country could be very little but have billions of people in it for example. Nonetheless, I get the feeling. If I was from a country that suffered from colonialism and whatnot, I'd want a better projection of it on 2d maps. Simply because I know a chunk of people would better see my nation's place in the world.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

    A country's, or a continent's, signifigance has nothing to do with it's size, though.

    I mean, if we wanted to make the nations of Africa or Greenland feel better, does it follow that we could make them appear bigger on the map than they actually are? Just move the mercator around such that Africa is along the top or bottom edge of the map where things are larger?

    I am absolutely not saying that people having a better understanding of Africa is bad. I just don't think that this is really how that happens.

    I remember thinking that Russia seemed pretty big on the map, and yet still, I've never had to take Russian culture as a class in high school.

    [edit] I'll add one thing, though. This decision has clearly pissed the US government off, which is based and incredibly funny. I'll support it to that end.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

    Depends what type of significance. Of course it's more significant when it's larger in size if you value things like farmland, natural resources, fishing, transportation, infrastructure, timezones, language, etc.

    If you think the US is similar in size to Africa, like I thought, and you compare the 51 states to the 54 countries, you might think each African country is similar in area to a state in the USA and extrapolate to other beliefs accordingly. Maybe you think there is a greater cultural cohesion in the entire continent because people are closer to each other and so on. Turns out, there is more than 1.5 billion people in Africa. That is way more than in the US, but the size is really skewed in the Mercator.

    I don't understand your point about wanting to make Greenland feel better. The Equal Earth Projection is more accurate when looking at land area, so it's not a question of making people feel better about the size of their country, more of a question of not having the Mercator projection contributing to people thinking less of our country, amongst other things, like just being more factual.

    And like the other commenter said, Russia doesn't really have this problem anyway, it's very large in all our popular projections.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Turns out, there is more than 1.5 billion people in Africa.

    But these are facts I can learn independently of its, you know, appearance on a map. And outside of this being a notable news story, I don't really see it prompting any such questions.

    so it's not a question of making people feel better about the size of their country

    It is, though. That's actually the only purpose this serves.

    I think you might read that as dismissive, but I see some value in making people feel better. Certainly in making the US feel worse.

    I don't, however, think that this will meaningfully improve anything.

    Russia doesn't really have this problem anyway, it's very large in all our popular projections.

    It's area should still be incorrect, though, yes? Which would mean we have incorrect ideas about its natural resources, its farmland, its cultural cohesion?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    Oh yeah, we agree then. It won't do much (but I think the USA voting no is telling on themselves), and yes, the area of Russia is incorrect and we might have the wrong ideas about it. I didn't know it had that much "height" for example.

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