Not every map is the same, actually

I do not like the phrase, “Every map is the same.”

I grant, of course, that it is useful and salient shorthand. As streets.mn put it in 2020, “Of course, every map is going to be the same when our entire modern society has been built on top of a fundamentally racist and classist foundation.” We should look, as closely and as often as possible, at the visual representation of what those foundations hath wrought, as ProPublica said in 2018: “Just because you’ve seen it many times doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be reminded again of…segregation and inequality.”

Consequently, “only one map” is a phrase we’ve used at Greater Greater Washington to draw people into our content. It is a convenient way to encapsulate, say, the compounding effects of where income-restricted, subsidized homes are located throughout the District or where a driver is most likely to harm or kill you with their car because these often are the same places.

I do not need to show you The Map because I know you are already picturing The Map. But here are some examples from a 2023 report that we produced on public transit, public health, and racial equity:

Maps, according to the National Geographic Society, the obvious authority on this, are “symbolic representation[s] of selected characteristics of a place, usually drawn on a flat surface” and “present information about the world in a simple, visual way.” So, many maps of the District, including the one above, show its eastern sides as darker in shade or color to indicate poor conditions or outcomes, which are obviously inequitable and unbalanced against the positive visual cues of more affluent parts of the District. Basically, any metric used by EJScreen, the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice screening and mapping tool, tracks in this fashion:

But, I think, not every map is the same. Segregation and inequality are so pervasive at every scale that they sometimes manifest in ways that break the patterns we’re used to seeing. I enjoy confirming my priors as much as I don’t like reductive turns of phrase, so, when I was reading the District Department of Energy and the Environment’s FY22 Childhood Lead Screening Report, I was super-interested to see this heat map and its accompanying description, on page 13, which shows cases of elevated blood lead level.

Like, literally, I looked at this and said, aloud, “Oh, wow, it’s not the same map”:

The report describes it as such:

“With a widespread distribution of pre-1978 housing, the District is a high-risk jurisdiction for residential lead hazards. Almost two thirds (63%) of owner-occupied units and one-third (34%) of renter-occupied units in the District were built before 1950. The District also exceeds fifty states in the portion of housing (34%) built in 1939 or earlier, with 9 in 10 homes likely to have had lead-based paint. GIS mapping of case data for FY 2022 reveals case clustering along the Georgia Avenue corridor in Wards 1 and 4, with additional clustering in Ward 6 (Figure 5). The Georgia Avenue corridor is home to some of the District’s most vulnerable residents, including Latin American and African-born District immigrant and refugee populations. Case clusters are also visible east of the Anacostia River in parts of Wards 7 and 8 in areas with predominantly African American residents, many of whom live in poverty. Wards 5 and 8 also appear to have a larger proportion of cases than the size of their respective child populations would warrant. Together, Wards 1, 4, 5, 6, and 8 accounted for nearly 80% of the blood lead levels equal to or greater than the CDC reference value of 3.5 µg/dL in FY2022.”

It doesn’t look like the map we have come to consider a signifier for the District and the inequities embodied by its geography, even though it is very much about the inequities embodied by the District’s geography!

(I should not have to say this, but: Children should not have elevated lead levels in their blood! DOEE’s report contains some good news on the District’s efforts to document and eradicate its kids’ lead exposure, which are way more sophisticated than other places I have lived, and there’s also a well-handled account of how testing has come to exceed pre-Covid levels: “By FY 2022, the numbers had not only recovered but were even higher than the pre-pandemic levels seen in FY 2019, suggesting that the systems and practices put in place during the challenging pandemic years may have helped to increase the number of children being tested for lead.”)

Poverty is the root cause of why so many maps of the District look the way they do, but understanding its complicating factors is essential to proposing policies that reduce it, not double-down on its associated harms. For example, only-one-map-itis underlies the repeated, off-base assumption that automated traffic enforcement cameras in Black neighborhoods are unequivocally bad for Black residents, a belief that portends to center racial equity, but ignores that neighborhoods on the District’s east side were ripped to shreds, then sutured together with asphalt specifically for suburban commuters, in a way that upper Northwest neighborhoods never were. Who drives on those roads matters just as much as where the roads are. Maps can show a lot, but they can’t show it all.

“Every map is the same” is more slogan than useful shorthand, and slogans do not rectify the issues at hand—lead, housing segregation, poor air quality, traffic crashes, or whatever other issue a map is visually representing. I find it appropriate that the aforementioned Propublica piece concludes with a reminder that, “Even if you think you’re looking at the same map, keep looking.” Wise words.