About
My love for maps started at a young age. I remember, in kindergarden, drawing a map of the United States. From then on, drawing maps in my free time became a hobby – a way to clear my head and enter an imaginary world where I was always in control.
The maps (nearly 500 in all) evolve steadily in style over the years, and reflect my interests in different points of my youth. In early high school, for example, I had still never spent time exploring urban life – so the city I drew consisted of middle class subdivisions and corporate shopping malls. After college, they consisted of high-density housing and mass transit systems.
15 years later, I still doodle maps in my notes. I wonder what to do with them. I want them to be used somehow before I die; I’d be sad to see them sit in a closet for the rest of time. This blog is my step toward getting them in the public eye – not for fame, but rather to see what others think about them as a sort of validation for the hours I’ve spent developing fictional metroplexes.
That being said, I hope you’ll enjoy exploring my work. If you’d like to chat about anything you see, feel free to contact me using the info below.
Cheers,
Brian Nunnery
brian@catandbrian.com
Austin, Texas, US
2 Responses to “About”
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Great job! I enjoyed exploring you cities. I do have a question. What is a frontage road? You mention that being something from Texas. Perhaps we don’t have them in the NW?
Thanks so much! Yeah, frontage roads are unique to Texas (with a few exceptions). They’re one-way roads that parallel a freeway on both sides, accompanied by “turnarounds” allowing northbound traffic, for instance, to exit and easily loop around to travel southbound without having to go through a traffic signal. The big idea here: frontage roads enable commercial development along the sides of major highways, giving businesses greater visibility and convenient access. In Texas, most major shopping centers sit along interstate highways.
The major drawback, though, is that this takes commercial development away from traditional urban arterials and funnels more traffic to the freeways – making traffic worse and taking vehicle traffic away from local businesses tucked away from highways. I prefer a no-frontage-road design like you’ll see in the NW.