Make Your Own Ferraris Map

While researching the Ferraris Atlas of Belgium from my last post, I came across a Github page that lets you create your own Ferraris style map using QGIS. The author, Manuel Claeys Bouuaert did an excellent job creating a hand drawn looking style using modern technology. Warning: if you try this at home you will likely end up with many computer crashes and very slow data loads. Here was my first attempt.

I chose a village in northwestern Belgium based on a combination of city size and ability to navigate through the giant countrywide data set before the computer crashed. One recommendation is if you're going to download a whole country's worth of data, even a small one, you should find a small area and export it to much smaller files. An even better solution is to go directly to OpenStreetMap, zoom in on a very small area and export your own files. 

Another limitation here is that the street patterns are not the same as they were in 1777, with most places having grown significantly. Here is another town in Belgium, my QGIS version compared to the original atlas pages which can be browsed on Belgium's Royal Library.

The street pattern of Poeke has clearly expanded and the name's spelling has changed from French to Flemish but much if the town is still recognizable on the (second) 1777 map. You can also compare the windmill symbols near the top left of each map.

After I made the Poperinge map, I started looking for more interesting places, in other words places with more variety of land uses, buildings and ones that have windmills and watermills. Ruiselede has some nice patterns and two windmills.

I decided to see how this style would translate to the United States. I started with my childhood suburban home of Levittown, Pennsylvania. 

I forgot to take into account that the original project was set up using a Belgium-specific map projection. This caused north to be rotated a good 50 degrees or so to the upper right. In Belgium north is at the top but after crossing the ocean the earth's curvature has rotated it quite a bit. By the time I realized this my QGIS project was no longer opening without crashing. This is what eventually seems to happen to all of these projects so I was not able to "fix" north without starting over again. There is plenty of sprawl here but the style still makes the area look a bit quaint.

Next, I went to nearby Newtown, a place we used to go for country drives. In my youth it was a lovely country town (founded by William Penn), with some nice old architecture and good ice cream. The town center is still nice but it is now surrounded by a four lane bypass expressway and bland modern housing.

I felt like Newton's street pattern might look a little more like 16th Century Belgium.

Finally, in the interest of finding a U.S. place that is more recognizable and meaningful to others, here is the western part of the National Mall in Washington, DC, including the White House, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. I had a problem drawing the water in the QGIS project so I airbrushed some blue where it seemed appropriate.

I should have used more of a green patterned fill  as in the atlas image below but again the project crashed before I had a chance to fix that.