David Imus’ “The Essential Geography of the United States of America” (2012)
I&#x27;ve been shopping for land to build a tiny house, lately...and I&#x27;ve kinda fallen in love with maps. It began by necessity; most places near metropolitan areas have zoning ordinances that mandate large (often <i>very</i> large) houses. So, every time I find a possible option (close enough to a place I&#x27;d want to call home, in my price range, has a reasonable road to get to it, etc.), I usually have to spelunk deep into the GIS maps for the city&#x2F;county, to figure out zoning, whether water and sewer will be reasonable to hook up to, the actual boundaries of the parcel, etc.<p>So, I had no idea that I&#x27;m a maps nerd...but I&#x27;m a maps nerd. I&#x27;m really enjoying doing the research at this point; I hated it until I figured out that a large percentage of counties provide web-based GIS map access. And, GIS provides a tidal wave of data to play with. Combined with Google maps (for street view and satellite) and Bing maps (for the Bird&#x27;s Eye view), I can rule out properties without ever leaving the house or picking up the phone. I can usually know within a few minutes the zoning, the kinds of neighbors I&#x27;d have and how far away they are, how far I&#x27;d have to run water&#x2F;sewer or whether I&#x27;d need septic and a well, etc.<p>Anyway, these really are gorgeous maps. I&#x27;m absolutely gonna pick up Imus&#x27; Texas map for the wall of my tiny house (or whatever state I end up settling in, as I&#x27;m also considering NM, for the much more flexible natural building codes).