Psychological Maps of Paris

orangesmile.com

Milgrim discusses how parisians mentally represent their city. One part, he has participants hand draw a map of Paris and to include all of the elements of the city that came to mind and to draw the map in their personal view rather than a tourist type map. Secondly, he has the participants identify 40 photographs of scenes in Paris and lastly, he had participants state words they associate with areas of Paris.

“Parisians like to say that there is a tourist Paris, but the real Paris is something quite apart. But if we examine the maps produced by the subjects, we see that time and again tourist Paris- the famous monuments and landmarks- reappears as the basic structuring devices in their own productions of the city. Paris is integral, and it is not possible to efface l’Etoile, the Louvre, and others from any intelligent representation of the city.” (110)

“The problem for modern Paris, then, is to learn something about the transmutation of charm into its contemporary forms, and to learn it quickly, before the old is brutally replaced by the new, and only the street patterns remain.” (124)

How would one mentally map NYC? what landmarks would frequently appear?