THE SHRINKING CONTINENT - NEW TIME-SPACE MAPS OF EUROPE

Increasing mobility is one of the constituent features of modernity. Today Europe is facing a new thrust of acceleration: the planned European high-speed rail network will open up new dimensions of travel speed and so of the relation of space and time. The topic of this paper is the visualisation of the new relationship of space and time by a new type of map. These time-space maps do not display spatial distances but time distances between cities and countries. A method for creating time-space maps has been developed which improves current methods and avoids their pitfalls. To demonstrate this method, time-space maps of Europe and selected European countries showing the effects of the evolving European high-speed rail network are presented.