Cartography
Projection onto a plane
A world map transfers the curved surface of the Earth onto a plane. Not everything can be preserved at the same time: areas, shapes, angles and distances are distorted differently depending on the projection.
Globe and map
For a world map, the curved surface of the Earth has to be transferred to a flat grid. Distortion is therefore unavoidable.
Not all properties can be preserved at the same time.
A vote on world maps
On 4 September 2026, the UN General Assembly adopted the “Correct the Map” resolution. The resolution recommends Equal Earth and other equal-area projections when relative sizes matter. Mercator is neither banned nor replaced by a single prescribed projection.
164 states voted in favour, six abstained.
The United States was the only country to vote against. The US delegation justified its rejection not with cartographic objections, but with the political and ideological framing of the initiative: it criticised references to “cognitive justice” and reparations and described the initiative as part of a larger ideological project.
The occasion highlights an old point: a map is never merely a reduced Earth. The choice of projection already changes the impression of sizes and shapes. An overview of the many methods is available in the Wikipedia article on map projections; the Equal Earth projection explicitly mentioned by the UN is equal-area.
Mercator and Equal Earth
Both maps show the same geographic extent, from 75° W to 60° E and 40° S to 85° N. Only the projection changes.
Mercator
High latitudes are strongly enlarged.
Equal Earth
Area relationships are preserved.
MapPlanet: equirectangular
For the world view, MapPlanet uses NASA Blue Marble material in an equirectangular representation, also known as Plate Carrée. Longitudes are plotted evenly from left to right and latitudes evenly from top to bottom. This creates a simple rectangular coordinate system and works well with tiles and the regular hexagonal grid.
The price is paid at high latitudes: one degree of longitude corresponds to a much greater real distance at the equator than near the poles. On the map, however, the horizontal spacing remains the same. Areas therefore appear increasingly stretched toward the north and south.
The MapPlanet grid contains 65,536 columns and 32,768 rows – a total of 2,147,483,648 places.
How large is a MapPlanet hexagon?
The hexagonal grid follows the same projection. The north-south extent of a hexagon remains almost constant; its real east-west extent becomes smaller as latitude increases. The slider shows the effect for the same MapPlanet cell.
The yellow hexagon is being measured. The 65,536 columns do not count full hexagon widths, but the distances between hexagon centres: horizontally only 75% of a full hexagon width.
Approximation for a spherical Earth with a mean radius of 6,371 km. The area is calculated from the local width and height of a small MapPlanet hexagon.