This truth emerges as political situations change fast: Maps show us our world, but not neutrally

They can anchor us in a place or help us get somewhere else. They can show us global political realities via the drawing of contested country borders. We take it as truth that not only does X mark the spot, it shows us the size of the spot, what the spot’s name is and how the spot compares with other spots.

But while the physical geography of our world can be set in stone, the reality is that maps are not. There are choices involved in everything from which countries are centered to their size relative to each other and what the objects on the map are called. The choices create the perspective and they affect the way we assume the world looks.

Where there are choices, there can be contention. That was evident this month at the United Nations when a General Assembly vote endorsed a map with a different way of looking at the world than has more commonly been used. This map showed Africa more accurately and larger.

The vote was 164 countries in favor of the change, six abstaining and one — the United States — against. In August, President Donald Trump signed an order directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America” as a trade war with Canada continues. In January 2025, he signed an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” Some tech companies such as Google and Apple followed along with the changes for U.S.

“To the extent that maps come to shape the way that we think about different places and people who inhabit them, maps structure our politics in ways that then have consequences,” said Alex Moulton, assistant professor in the geography and environmental science department at Hunter College. Distortions are inevitable There is never going to be a flat map that is 100% accurate to the physical geography it is showing. That is because taking something in 3D, like Earth, and drawing it in flat 2D as a map is always going to result in distortions.

Think about trying to flatten an orange’s peel. What mapmakers do is decide which distortions they are going to allow, depending on a map’s purpose. Those decisions can be invisible to the general public, who see the map as absolute reality and a foundation for how they think of the world.