Why Every Map Has This Tiny Australian Town

[@TwilitbeingReboot]

Terry Pratchett regularly jokes about this phenomenon, with phrasing like "one of those places that only had a name to avoid the embarrassment of leaving large blank spaces on the map".

[@jakubslavik5595]

Oh, isn't that from the Discworld series? I remember that phrase...

[@rooknado]

There’s nothing embarassing about it, why would you leave it out regardless of if 20 thousand people lived there or 20? It’s still a location on the map, I don’t get it

[@TwilitbeingReboot]

@@rooknado Fits with the general comedic tone of the books, mostly. Often the implication is that the place is so small it barely qualifies as a town, more like "a bend in the road with a name."

[@simic0racle157]

@@rooknado sales the answer is almost always sales, people are gonna buy the most readable and useable maps. If you want to label things just because they are there then feel free to start labeling random points in the ocean, don't think anyone will want to buy your map tho.

[@marvalice3455]

​@@rooknadoTerry Pratchett's talent was in writing interesting and humorous prose. Not in social commentary. In fact, almost non of his lines which sound "deep and profound" on first reads stand up to even the tiniest amount of scrutiny. They sure are interesting and humorous to read though.

[@glennet9613]

I first went to Alice about fifty years ago. At that time ATMs all had a sign saying “if this machine is out of order the nearest machine is …..”. The one at Alice said “if this machine is out of order the nearest machine is at Port Augusta 1226 km away”.

[@cameronnewton7053]

It's like the "last fuel stop for 600km" signs

[@wheresmyeyebrow1608]

That’s hilarious

[@barts1286]

@@Jack_Russell_Brown 600km is about 375 miles. You would only have to carry your jerry can of petrol 18 miles to the next fuel stop, then 18 miles back with a full can.😆

[@baardkopperud]

​@@Jack_Russell_BrownRemember "NAF Roadbook" here in Norway from my youth, it had rather detailed maps, and sometimes a stretch of road was marked at either end with two red needle/arrow symbols with a gas-pump above, to show there were no gas-stations between the arrows.

[@erink476]

and I thought the "closed bank" sign in Hay telling you to go to Deniliquin (125km, 1hr 20 min) if you needed face-to-face service was bad. (rest stop while driving Canberra-Adelaide a few years ago. Dad needed a nap, so I wandered around to save my phone battery and data for when there was actually nothing else to do. Unfortunately, it was Sunday arvo so nothing was open except the IGA.)

[@dankchill]

Never actively thought about this before. Yokohama is also a huge victim of the Balitmore effect with 3.7m population living just down the coast from Tokyo

[@hamanakohamaneko7028]

I mean Yokohama is a satellite city of Tokyo and part of its metropolitan area. It takes less than 30 minutes by train to go between them Try Hamamatsu, it's own city of 800,000, and the largest city in Shizuoka prefecture, but it's not labeled because it's close to Nagoya (but not in it's metro area). Meanwhile Shizuoka, the capital of Shizuoka prefecture, is labeled because it is the capital and is further from Nagoya

[@EBGamez1]

169th like :)

[@josephryall9871]

Probably because everyone would just mistake it for a paid ad for tyres. 😂

[@slicer2938]

Yokohama is in japan techniquely a different city but is considered within the Tokyo metropolitan area and so its combined with Tokyo instead. also funny to see countries that are so small that no cities get shown because the country name is more important. example of this being South Korea with Seoul not being shown.

[@dankchill]

@@supernovahm1178 alright let me rephrase. I never actively thought about this phenomenon having an actual name for it. I think most people at least subconsciously notice this type of thing but nothing more than that. You don't have to be an obnoxious douche about it

[@doodeedah6409]

Well to be fair Alice Springs is genuinely world famous. So many tourists go there to visit Uluru. It’s not a cartographic anomaly, e.g. weather reports too always feature Alice Springs. It’s like the Galapagos, Cuzco, and Petra, they’re all super famous despite their small populations.

[@sylvanelite]

Uluru is kinda nowhere near Alice Springs. It’s over 300kms away. People only think they are close because there’s nothing else nearby to compare it to.

[@hhelina]

I assure you it's not. Uluru is and the other places you've mentioned yes. I'm someone who travels a lot, only heard of it when I had lived in Australia for months

[@ravage_rensvae5284]

@@doodeedah6409especially with the 160kmh speed limit in outback NT

[@doodeedah6409]

@@hhelina If I had said “Wadi Musa” instead of “Petra”, many people probably would have never heard of it either. Still I’d consider it world famous to anyone interested in Petra. Probably the first town most people ever know about Jordan. I think anyone planning to visit Australia would have heard about Alice Springs. And you’ll definitely hear it everywhere when you’re here. It’s not a random obscure town like the video seems to suggest.

[@doodeedah6409]

@@sylvanelite It is the nearest town from Uluru though. It’s a very common thing that people do to stay in Alice Springs and make a day trip to Uluru. 300kms is really no biggie for in the Australian outback scale.

[@teplapus8795]

Saskylakh, Russia (population - 2317) is visible on Google Maps even when Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Delhi and Beijing are already missing

[@sergeyredin4054]

Google maps are very strange, in all the huge Yakutia republic they only show the republic's capital and this Saskylakh which I never heard of before even though I born and grown in Yakutia.

[@allandriver2066]

Putin would love that......

[@mossfinder7516]

​@@allandriver2066 All of Russia would

[@lucarasic8001]

Jelisovo in kamptsha (probably butchered that) is visible when Tokyo,New York,Rome, Paris,Shanghai and Madrid are gone. They do have more than 100,000 people living, but these are well known cities

[@PeterKnagge]

Alice Springs has an airport. In prehistoric times before the internet/gps if you are flying a plane you would want to know where the airports are!

[@jeffdege4786]

Back in the 1970s, my dad was an air compressor salesman, and his area included Minnesota and Manitoba. He once had to make a sales call to Churchill, Manitoba. He was surprised to learn he had to take the train. Churchill is on the shore of Hudson Bay, and is a long way from anything else, over terrain that is marsh, lakes, granite, and occasional permafrost. Even keeping the rail open is an effort. My dad looked at the railroad map, and saw labelled stops, every sixty miles or so. "The towns certainly are spread out, up here." "No," he was told. "Those aren't towns. Those are the names of the guys who live there."

[@RCAvhstape]

I love looking at maps of Canada, the roads going north just turn into thin grey lines and vanish into nothing. Alaska has places you can't even get to by road. And they are on maps lol.

[@CartoType]

Even Britain has places you can’t get to by road. Inverie in Scotland is one.

[@EKA201-j7f]

Tea, Missouri is named that because the suggested names kept being rejected. In small towns they are often only a window in the store. So the owner looked up and saw Tea on the store shelf and they said Sure! Tea is ok!

[@smaza2]

this is an interesting point, but (as an aussie) I would argue that Alice is very famous within Australia for being the town in the middle of the continent. so potentially the scales are being tipped towards it a bit

[@markwestaway7207]

@@RCAvhstape, including in Alaska, the capital, Juneau.

[@domizzl]

Currently living in Alice and love this about the town ☺️

[@wheelzbruh]

What are the chances? I live in Alice too!

[@stickmdr]

How is life like in Alice?

[@goaway9977]

Stay safe. I will pray for you.

[@llamamusicchannel7688]

I've driven there from Victoria multiple times throughout my life. Had a cousin living in a caravan park up there.

[@Roger__Wilco]

I lived there for a couple years in the 90s, in Braitling.

[@DavidJamesHenry]

This video is excellent but no one's mentioning how nice it is that this dude comes in, makes his point, and then concludes the video. No filler, no nonsense. Good info in a good size

[@breakbeat_hardcore]

I mean, considering the fact that Alice Springs is set dead center in of a desert that most people completely avoid because most of it's borderline uninhabitable; 25,000 people may as well be New York City to them.

[@flandyc4513]

Sounds more like Las Vegas by that description lol

[@kangarootube.dailyvideosof5199]

Borderline uninhabitable? I love living here

[@rawnature8148]

Rather be in Alice than Sydney.

[@cameronnewton7053]

Its important to note that on that map you see a major road running from Adelaide to darwin, and it runs right through alice, in outback Australia any town big enough to hold a service station is kind of a big deal...

[@bruhfvdf3145]

Any town that IS a service station is a big deal

[@Andre_XX]

Driving south of Alice once, I had noticed that Kulgera features prominently on all maps of that part of the world. I thought it would actually be some kind of town...

[@raygale4198]

@@Andre_XX Kulgera, right up there with Cagney Park. infact almost neighbours.

[@shramanadasdutta3006]

Always wondered why its called the outback. Its not on the outter edges or in the back. Its literally the middle big chunk of the country. What does outback actually mean in Australian?

[@bruhfvdf3145]

@@shramanadasdutta3006 it means out back, like outside in a place no one goes

[@Tizzy1397]

The biggest example of this is if on maps you go to Greenland you can see Summit camp a station with 5-38 people, meanwhile Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, with a metropolitan population of 23M is not labeled in favour the name of the country. Funnily enough Nuuk, the capital and biggest city of Greenland is not labeled in favour of nothing, even though there is space to write Nuuk.

[@birdgod5584]

And to the right of Summit Camp is Myggbukta which doesn't have anyone at all

[@survivaloftheidiots6239]

That literally sounds like a mario kart track 😅

[@foreverareaper191]

South Korea apparently doesnt have a city now

[@YeahNo]

I visit Nuuk and Dhaka most days. Or I at least play in their timezones. 😂

[@january1may]

@@birdgod5584 At least it used to have people within the last century. Out on the northwest coast (at the same zoom level) there's Nunatame which I hadn't been able to confirm _ever_ had any population but even if it did it appears to have been abandoned over a century ago

[@CowsMakeMooSound]

Wild that you can't see Seoul in that last shot (3:54) but you can see Alice Springs.

[@WerewolfLord]

Seoul isn't labelled, but Pyongyang is. 😂

[@groinBlaster31]

That's a separate effect. Basically, south Korea is very particular about how they show up on Google maps. The entire country is blank at that distance, actually. At least in this video.

[@adrienaline4894]

There's also a big tourist situation given that it's the largest air connection to Uluru. Which also explains Exmouth and Port Douglas being on that zoom (population about 3k-4k) and the existence of Yulara (population about 800 off season). Though Kununurra, Derby and Karratha are stranger anomalies, as they're not quite as touristy as the other places I've mentioned, and have a similar population.

[@pixiedust7659]

Notice Exmouth, Alice and Rocky are all on maps? They are all on the Tropic of Capricorn.

[@rhino6634]

The posters thesis is entirely wrong. Alice Springs gets half a million tourists a year. Nothing to do with the actual population. It’s sad pple actually don’t do research. He could validate it by finding other small cities but he didn’t

[@chrispekel5709]

Doesn't Uluru have an airport now? Seems like Alice tourism is dying since that started

[@MattMcIrvin]

Yeah, the first thing I thought was "isn't that right next to Uluru?" Well, it's not--it's quite some distance away, but just eyeballing it, it seems to be a tourist hub for people going there.

[@GamingPenguin4545]

As a previous resident of Karratha, its the largest town in the area iirc and a major center for mining in the area

[@WeisserPaladin]

While your point still stands valid, Alice Springs is also super famous not just for Uluru, but also as a weather station. I'm from Germany, and in our Geography classes, when we learned about climate zones, Alice Springs was also the example for hot dry continental weather :D As a 14 year old, I could name and show Alcie Springs on a map, but didn't know Canberra existed.

[@cameronnewton7053]

To be fair, you don't want to know about Canberra because that's where all the politics happens, if I could magically remove the ACT from existence, I would.

[@danielsmyth7508]

​@@cameronnewton7053you can't remove Canberra yet, not until summanats has been relocated

[@jonas-9398]

Also, Allice Sprigs is famous for the United States Intelligence gathering facility Pine Gap. It is located just a few miles out of town and is a major strategic location for satalite communications.

[@menyjackets593]

as an Australian to be honest you’re quite over enthusiastic about Alice Springs. We care more about Aldi than Alice

[@VaryaEQ]

​@@menyjackets593😂😂

[@TRAVISGOLDIE]

I find that big international disaster movies often have no idea where towns in Australia are and show strange locations

[@adrienaline4894]

Team America had one of their locations for the massive strike in Geraldton, Western Australia, roughly. Had a good laugh about that when used to live there.

[@musicalneptunian]

Isn't there a Hollywood movie being filmed now in Walhalla, Vic, a place with a normal pop of 20 people?

[@Lazy_Tim]

@@musicalneptunian Yep. Ice Road 2: Road to the Sky

[@graemesutton2919]

That's because we are the arse end of the world and it has it's advantages being so

[@Magooch86]

I always notice this! It's like "wow the aliens targeted Townsville, Burke and Coober Pedy"

[@MegaGo68]

As an Australian (from Brisbane) who currently lives in Baltimore, this video was right up my alley. Never thought of this phenomenon before, the Baltimore effect, and the Alice Springs effect. Brilliant.

[@IbrahimAbid-uj7xl]

If I'm in Australia and I need the amenities of a mid sized town, knowing where Alice Springs is is probably very important. I reckon they have things like hardware stores, supermarkets, gas stations and hospitals. It is an oasis, and an oasis deserves infinitely more attention than a metropolis because you're not dependent on the latter.

[@rod.h8064]

Yep, there are all of them there, it's also on the major ground transport route through that part of the country

[@THICCTHICCTHICC]

Basically all roads that go towards the centre aim for Alice Springs, since there's no way any other roads would be maintained properly. It's not the issue you think it is. Roads towards Alice have existed for well over 150 years now with settlements and communities along the way.

[@mm6461]

I’ve been to Alice Springs, won’t go back. Total shithole

[@MattMcIrvin]

As someone who grew up in the DC area, I find it kind of hilarious that Baltimore's label disappears before Fairfax. That's an artifact of the label appearing above the dot--Baltimore is to the north; Fairfax is to the west.

[@hamanakohamaneko7028]

I'm from Hamamatsu, Japan, a city of 800,000, and the largest city in Shizuoka prefecture. It's not labeled because it's close to Nagoya (but not in it's metro area). Meanwhile Shizuoka, the capital of Shizuoka prefecture, is labeled because it is the capital and is further from Nagoya

[@nlpnt]

Shizuoka is also the capital of the Japanese toy and scale-model industry, perhaps near to the hearts of mapmakers?

[@hamanakohamaneko7028]

@@nlpnt Shizuoka makes toy cars, Hamamatsu makes real cars (the birthplace of Honda and Suzuki)

[@JB-xl2jc]

I wonder if someday it'll be "solved" by urban sprawl causing them to collapse into one megacity? But, then I guess it'd be sections within that megacity that went by the old city names.

[@jugo1944]

Justice for Hamamatsu

[@ASHERUISE]

@@JB-xl2jc I would hope not...they're pretty far apart and that would consume where I live too and also 2 entire prefectures. I prefer the city over the countryside but that sounds like an environmental catastrophe. Tokyo can have Yokohama tho like they're basically the same thing.

[@stevekluth9060]

As a retired cartographer, we used to call this using our "cartographic license". It's not just generalization. There is also a priority on what gets put down first and what gets offset, though that's more an issue with hard copy maps than digital maps. Roads and rail lines often follow shorelines and decisions need to be made when all need to be seen. At larger scales (i.e., more zoomed in) there are also decisions to be made on roads vs buildings for example. Never heard this called the Baltimore Effect though.

[@TheKira699]

Alice Springs might only have 25,000 people but it has a major highway The Stuart Highway, and is a major stop for the Adelaide to Darwin Rain Network with The Ghan train. It is actually more important than a lot of other places in Australia being a central connection point.

[@Mmmm1ch43l]

so? while this might be true on the scale of Australia, Alice Springs is still clearly much less important than multiple capitals of European countries, many multi-million cities in China and Seoul the capital of South Korea and by far its largest city. None of these are visible at the same zoom level that Alice Springs is

[@dcarbs2979]

@@Mmmm1ch43l How many of those European capitals were overseas intelligence gathering centres for the entire hemisphere? Alice Springs was.

[@Nettlewitch]

And Alice acts as a defacto city for a huge area that takes in not just the NT but also the northern part of South Australia and a huge swathe of Western Australia (ie the Ngaanyatjarra Lands and even beyond). This video really shows how ignorant east coast city residents are of the significance of Alice. The town is essentially Canberra/Sydney and Melbourne distilled into 25000. And yes, I am an Aboriginal person who had lived in Alice since 2001 so I am a little more informed about its importance than east cost whitefellas.

[@Mmmm1ch43l]

@@dcarbs2979 oh you got me there, I'm sure Alice Springs is so prominent on the map because it used to be the "overseas intelligence gathering centre for the entire hemisphere"

[@Mmmm1ch43l]

@@Nettlewitch ok, let's estimate. around 1.8 million people live in South Australia, 1.4 million of those live in (Greater) Adelaide. 2.8 million live in Western Australia, 2 million of those live in the Perth metropolitan area. around 250 thousand live in the Northern Territory. So (extremely generously) 1.5 million people live in an area "overseen" by Alice Springs. That's less than a third of the people who live in (the metropolitan areas of) Sydney or Melbourne individually Yes, Alice Spring may have a big influence over a huge area. But that's mainly because this area is mostly empty. That's sort of the entire point of this video. compared to more densely populated areas (especially on a global scale) Alice Springs is just not that important, don't kid yourself

[@serena-yu]

In addition to Guangzhou, you have Shenzhen (12.6M), Huizhou (6M), Dongguan (10.4M), Foshan (9.6M), Zhongshan (4.4M) and Zhuhai (2.47M) between Hong Kong and Guangzhou. You won't see them because they are way too compact. Same for cities around Shanghai and Tokyo.

[@dotcom137]

I knew what town would be since I saw the title of this video. I've never watched any videos from your channel, but the moment I saw Australia "every map has this town" I knew it was Alice Springs. I'm from Brazil and I still have with me an inflated Earth globe my family bought (?) in the 90s, and I've always loved Geography. And of course... the globe has Alice Springs. So in my mind as a child, Alice Springs was as important as Canberra or Sydney. I just grew with this information and after a couple of decades, it's impossible to disassociate Australia and this small town.

[@subwayfacemelt4325]

Hehe, that's so cool. There's something about this whole thing that really tugs at my novelty strings. I feel cute, warm and fuzzy on the inside. You reminded me of some/all of the globes from my childhood, on which I saw Alice printed.

[@scarabeo52]

As an Aussie who lived and worked in Alice Springs a long time ago I have to agree about it's importance (nearby is Pine Gap defence facility - think CIA and such). It's fifty years since I worked all over Sydney and visited Canberra and I would never contemplate living there...

[@Elizabeth2445A]

@@scarabeo52 I wouldn't recommend it, canberra is a glorified country town

[@chrispekel5709]

Alice Springs is a really crazy town, a lot of indigenous people sitting around the parks with a lot of fighting (generally between women more than the men) It's definitely an interesting place in a weird way

[@PeterKnagge]

Alice Springs has an airport. In prehistoric times before the internet/gps if you are flying a plane you would want to know where the airports are! I would argue that place names are included as a logical geographic reference too. I'm not American so first I would find Washington DC then narrow my search to Baltimore. If I want to find Uluru/Ayers Rock then first I would find Alice Springs then narrow my search to Uluru/Ayers Rock. Alice Springs because it is close to Uluru/Ayers Rock it is also a tourist mecca with many international 5 star hotels with an airport.

[@wardsdotnet]

Alice Springs is on any tourists to-do list and has flights from various cities in Australia. It doesn't have a huge population but it is important because it's where tourists go in order to visit Uluru which is arguably the #1 most well known feature in the continent of Australia for tourism

[@alexk7467]

That was my thoughts exactly. Instead of labelling towns and cities on a map because of their population they are listed because of them being more of tourist attractions and ways of getting to popular attractions people want to see. That could also be another reason some weather maps (particularly when looking at a whole country) some towns aren't listed, in favour of the tourist towns and cities.

[@PurplePeopleHatter]

Mount Isa is also on a few of those maps, north east of Alice, population hovering around 18K to 25K people depending on mining booms

[@MissingGamer]

I was gonna say that, it's on mine!

[@yenyehski_698]

I always find it funny because Broken Hill is about the same size as Mt Isa City and about as isolated but is left off maps a lot more.

[@quackcement]

since they are closing the mine, its population will likely drop, however it will stay on maps, for decades to come even it became completely abandoned

[@jpmasters-aus]

@@quackcementActually one of the issues in Broken Hill is the population is growing and there is now a housing shortage for the new miners and essential workers. Several new mines have opened out of BH and they live in BH and commute out.

[@michaelboyce7079]

Just in area it's self, Mt Isa lays claim to being the largest city in the world, with the longest main street in the world. It's all pretty tongue-in-cheek stuff though, mostly based on the fact that the Mt Isa city council administers the small township of Camooweal, by road, a mere 190 kilometres away!

[@joshii32]

Another example is Switzerland. The capital is Berne but if you zoom out, you'll see 3 cities labeled on the map. Zurich, Basel and Lausanne. As a person from Basel, this is quite nice haha

[@xTheUnderscorex]

Legally Switzerland doesn't actually have a capital, so that's actually consistent.

[@Mmmm1ch43l]

@@xTheUnderscorex while this is technically true, functionally Bern is the capital of Switzerland. Google maps clearly thinks so as well since Bern has the special dot only capital cities have. So I doubt that's why this choice was made (also there's a fourth Swiss city which survives to the highest zoom level: Geneva)

[@hellodolly7989]

@@xTheUnderscorexIn the same way the US doesn’t have an official language, Switzerland doesn’t have a capital bc of history and politics, but still effectively has a place of administration that functions as a capital.

[@exploringsydneysrailways]

National weather maps on Australian television almost always feature Alice Springs, and also Broome, another town on the northwest coast, just to fill out the map, because otherwise there would be huge gaps between Adelaide, Darwin, and Perth. Meanwhile larger towns and small cities in the southeast often don't get labeled due to relative proximity to larger cities.

[@rhino6634]

Not to fill the gaps but to cater to the half a million tourists who visit Alice springs an year

[@PeterKnagge]

Alice has an airport, & a major tourism & stopover point.

[@coreyhodge1798]

There's another factor at play here. We have had a fully staffed Bom weather station here until recently. Most towns do not. This isn't just to not leave the map blank but to provide a comprehensive view of the weather across the country rather than having a big unknown area making the weather elsewhere harder to predict.

[@Mulgah]

Alice probably doesn't need a forecast either, it's gonna be fucking hot

[@wanderschlosser1857]

"Relative proximity" is the ultimate description of Australia! 😂 I come from Berlin, if I didn't get what I wanted in my local IKEA I just drove 10km to the next one. I now live in Perth. Well the next IKEA is about 3hrs by plane away, in Adelaide. The planes are the busses and trains of Australia. I love the place, it just changes your mindset about distances.

[@utetopia1620]

I fell for this years ago when I drove from Melbourne to Perth. All those towns along the way... Balladonia, Eucla, Cocklebiddy... The ones you see on the map.. not a town. Just a service station and a pub!

[@zoeherriot]

So very Australian… that’s one tough drive. It’s mostly dust and trees no higher than your knees. It’s like when you look at eyre peninsula which is about 1/3rd the size of Texas, only has population of 60,000 people. It’s mostly empty.

[@barts1286]

Eucla is a town, Border Village is the roadhouse..

[@Andre_XX]

It is said that back in 1979 Jimmy Carter phoned Balladonia to apologise for crashing Skylab on them. I suppose he thought it must be some kind of town. Even today there is not much there, but it does have the best Skylab museum in the world! Back then I reckon the population would not have been more than 3 or 4 people and a couple of dogs.

[@zoeherriot]

@@Andre_XX Yeah, my father was born in a town with a population of 11. There are so many of these towns that just seem so desolate and isolated in the outback.

[@Andre_XX]

@@zoeherriot Sometimes I wish I was living out there!

[@TheAussief1]

Remember a story were tiny town somewhere in Australia got a donation/grant to build a massive library due to this. The philanthropists were looking for a suitable place to build a library and saw the name of the town on a world map thinking it was big enough for the library but in fact there was just plenty of space to write the name of the town and nothing of note within a 1000km and so the cartographers went big.

[@stephenpowstinger733]

So, did they pull the donation and relocate it?

[@TheAussief1]

@@stephenpowstinger733 was a line in an Australian novel I read many years ago, either the author was following the same train of thought or something like that happened or nearly did.

[@keith3915]

When you zoom in on the Baltimore-Washington area, you can see the town I live in, yet even as a DMV local, I never knew the phenomenon was named after Baltimore. So cool!

[@sohopedeco]

When my family traveled to New York in 2010, we visited the Barns and Nobles bookstore in the 5th Ave. My father was browsing the diaries they had for sale and saw a South America map that surprisingly had our hometown of Taubaté labeled on it. I suppose the American makers of that diary found the larger and richer city of São José dos Campos had just too long of a name to fit their map. Needless to say, my father bought it.

[@troybaxter]

I'm assuming you are from Taubaté. What country is that in?

[@janjager2906]

😁 Nice one!

[@sohopedeco]

@@troybaxter Brazil 🇧🇷

[@troybaxter]

@@sohopedeco very cool.

[@deet0109mapping]

This same thing happens with Canada. Places like Churchill, Uranium City, and Happy Valley-Goose Bay are utterly tiny and yet they always appear because they need to fill Canada's area with _something_

[@nathanmcgill7249]

I mean, if a place called Uranium City existed, I would want to know about it

[@nicholasharvey1232]

I've long known about the Baltimore Effect, but this is the first time I've heard it actually getting a name.

[@OCinneide]

I noticed that on google maps in Ireland (my country), Dingle is marked on the very zoomed out map even though it only has 2,000 people.

[@Calvin_Coolage]

Maybe someone working on Google Maps thought to themselves 'Hehe, Dingle,' and decided to include it over another city.

[@musicalneptunian]

"Our town never makes the 7 O'clock news and that's the way we like it." - Daddy-O [ movie Welcome to Woop Woop, 1997]

[@Oldtanktapper]

I’ve never been able to look at a Cherry Ripe the same way again.

[@tylers2059]

@@Oldtanktapper I've never able to watch "The Sound of Music" the same way, either.

[@jameskilgour387]

Very familiar with this effect growing up in Bristol, which is right next to Cardiff, Wales. Despite being a much larger (and arguably more historically signficant of a city) Bristol is often left off maps as Cardiff is the capital of Wales

[@jojotom01]

Alice Springs is the home of CAAMA (Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association), which promotes Aboriginal music and culture throughout Australia. I have enjoyed and promoted much of their outstanding music.

[@tigerflower853]

this is actually something ive been thinking of a lot recently. its so interesting to see how in more populated areas, only big cities show up at most scales, while Australia, and other places, will show the most random tiny towns. I love looking around these towns tbh

[@stillmalibudrew]

I had a small globe that was a bowling alley prize. On Australia it had only labelled Melbourne and Fremantle, which I thought was pretty cool

[@chrispekel5709]

So odd, considering Fremantle is just a small town that is now part of metropolitan Perth

[@RobertJW]

​@@chrispekel5709 Maybe it was made by a Dockers fan.

[@Spiffington]

@@chrispekel5709The largest general cargo port on the entire western seaboard though.

[@chrispekel5709]

@@RobertJW lol

[@chrispekel5709]

hmmm interesting@@Spiffington

[@revinhatol]

New subscriber from the Philippines here! (1:38) Take a good look at Baguio, a mountain city (much like Knoxville) located on the northern fringes of Luzon. Baguio is often seen overshadowed by Manila. That's the Baltimore effect.

[@MultiRationalThinker]

You're not wrong about some of those towns being tiny. Near the end of the video when you moved around to Alaska, it shows Talkeetna, between Anchorage and Fairbanks. It just so happens that I've lived in Alice Springs and I've visited Talkeetna. Alice is huge compared to Talkeetna. There can't be more than a few hundred people in Talkeetna, I would have thought (it's been some time since I was there).

[@staticbuilds7613]

According to google. Yes it seems only 1000 people live there compared to 25,000 in Alice springs.

[@peepeetrain8755]

Alice isn't the best example though tbf, Alice is to NT what Fairbanks is to Alaska. Next time you see a map of Australia, see if Eucla (37 pop) comes up, is on the border of WA and SA, or the truckstops along the Nullarbor (literally just a truckstop and a motel are sometimes on our maps), Yulara was on it with 800 people, Derby has 3,000.

[@MultiRationalThinker]

@@peepeetrain8755 - yes, I've seen a few with Eucla on them. I saw one recently that not only had Eucla, but also showed Top Springs, Victoria River and Threeways in the NT, all of which are roadhouses.

[@eloscuro7]

Cool point. This explains why, as a brit, I've never been quite sure where Baltimore is beyond "on the east coast somewhere", even though I've been to dc several times!

[@antediluvial]

Great dedication to the bit at 1:47

[@quackcement]

I dove across the outback 2 months ago, stopping at allice springs was essential for my trip, i think its safe to say it exists because nowhere else does. reverse balitomore, it would only take building a town of 50,000 residents right next to Alice springs to get it removed from virtually every entire map of Australia

[@katiekat2921]

8O I think your greatest achievement in life overshadows all this talk about Alice. I mean, diving across the outback is just so frickin awesome!!!

[@quackcement]

yes it was 12,000km of driving i wont forget@@katiekat2921

[@NoNumbersAfterName]

Nome, Alaska is another major example of this phenomenon. I was fascinated at how Nome was shown when the map was scrolled around at the end, but not, say, Vladivostok.

[@normanclatcher]

It's the most interesting town on the Alaskan West Coast by a lot. Kotzebue and Bethel aren't even close.

[@lyrebird9749]

Alice Springs is known world-wide. More so than other Australian cities (Adelaide or Hobart). It is a huge tourist drawcard, mainly due to it's proximity to Uluru. In fact, tourists are regularly surprised that Uluru isn't in Alice Springs, but in fact a good 5hrs drive away, since Alice is far better known than the small township of Yulara (at the rock). So, it's not just labeled due to location but its' cultural importance.

[@teemusid]

I once saw a globe with Ajo, Arizona labeled on it. I'm not from there, but I've been through it at least a dozen times. There were between 3,000 and 4,000 people there in the 2010 census.

[@jugo1944]

That label is essential if you really need Ajo

[@normanclatcher]

Doesn't that mean 'garlic'?

[@h0tel1]

Noticed the Baltimore Effect at 3:54 when zooming out from showing Alice Springs (I think of Pine Gap when talking about Alice Springs). South Korea shows no cities, including Seoul (capital with population of nearly 10 million), however North Korea does show Pyongyang (capital with population just over 3 million)!!

[@stephenrogers9664]

That’s so true as I live in Cairns with a population of 150,000. As long as I can remember it’s always been in the weather map of Australia on the nightly news, & I’m in my 50s. Great video 👍

[@carlkenner4581]

Wrong. Alice Springs is famous and important because of Ayers Rock. Nobody wants to live there, but it's a place people all over the world want to visit. It's not some minor town.

[@JaneNewAuthor]

Love how your family atlas is so worn out! I grew up pre internet, and feel the same way about maps. Interesting video!

[@realShadowKat]

I had also noticed, when you were zoomed out on the US -- Chicago appeared (which isn't strange), but Naperville did as well. When the next city over (it shares borders) is Aurora which is the 2nd populous city in the State ... Aurora has 200K, whilst Naperville has just over 150K.

[@jenward2175]

An even better example in Australia would be Derby. You can see Derby appear in the north west at the same time as Alice Springs and it only has 3000 people.

[@PhilipCau]

Your video popped randomly into my feed, and I'm delighted it did. I hadn't contemplated this before, and it is obvious after trying your "Alice Springs" experiment. Many of my favourite towns and cities had disappeared from view. Arles, Nice and Biarritz in France are the most prominent. Disclaimer: Some french blood still runs in my proud Australian veins. I'm looking forward to going through your archive.

[@thebristolbruiser]

I remember seeing Queenstown on maps a lot when I was younger. Since it is the largest town on the West Coast of Tasmania it randomly got a spot on some world maps. Its population is a bit under 2000 now, but it used to be bigger.

[@Amphibian42]

1:24 tbf, hong kong is an entire country, comparing it to a large city, the importance is an ocean apart

[@MothNow]

hong kong isnt a country, it is a 'special administrative region' of China, which is still more important than a city

[@Amphibian42]

@@MothNow they declared independence like, a century ago, they were only torn back after the US didn't keep up its end of a deal, and their entire government was taken over by chinese plants, there are to this day nonstop protests in the streets against their forceful occupation.

[@australiananarchist480]

When I was little, i always thought Alice Springs was pretty big (at least as big as Canberra, where I live) exactly because of this phenomenon. Only fairly recently did i learn how tiny Alice actually is.

[@rhino6634]

It gets half a million tourists a year so it’s actually much busier than the 30k permanent residents population would suggest

[@chrispekel5709]

​@@rhino6634yeah and I think there's probably 30k Aboriginals who don't call it their permanent home there too

[@Hand_Appreciator]

Alice Springs is significant since it's the biggest town in close proximity to the big red heart of Australia, Uluru

[@kathy6803]

Nome, Alaska is like that too.

[@sohopedeco]

The first time I saw that town on a map, I assumed it was a mistake and they forgot to fill the name of the town. "Nome" means "name" in Portuguese. 😂

[@aliquotidian]

@sohopedeco - very close to its origin. It was noted as a settlement with no agreed name, so the first field cartographer wrote "Name?", which was somehow read as "Nome". The publisher didn't verify, hence Nome. Although maybe the first field cartographer was a Portuguese speaker and wrote "Nome?" End result the same

[@knutthompson7879]

That’s a good example

[@MrDoobla]

This has some very interesting real world implications. I always think of this when people discuss where to put a new AFL team. People often throw up names like Alice, Darwin or Cairns because they know them on a map. In reality though they are tiny compared to Sydney and Melbourne

[@latenightlogic]

I wouldn’t call it tiny. It has more people than Broken Hill in it. Tiny compared to big cities perhaps but true tiny is Cobar, or Silverton.

[@PaulHartyanszky]

What's weirder about Google maps is that at some zoom levels it shows Guangzhou but then zoomed further in it stops displaying Guangzhou but displays Shenzhen instead before showing both

[@Myne1001]

>Alice Springs population: 24,855 people (2021 census) >"Tiny town" Why are city people like this?

[@RandomStuff-he7lu]

Dude, my suburb has 40,000 people.

[@Myne1001]

@@RandomStuff-he7lu and? 25k in a regional city is a lot, especially considering over 80% of Australia lives in the capital cities. An inland city being in the tens of thousands is quite rare and far from a "tiny town". I grew up in an actual tiny town of under 300. The current place I live is barely 1/5th of Alice Springs' population. It ain't small.

[@Nukearc]

You could fit 25,000 in one building. That is pretty tiny.

[@RandomStuff-he7lu]

@@Myne1001 Yeah.... it's still tiny and I say this as an Australian.

[@Myne1001]

@@RandomStuff-he7lu but are you a city person?

[@AnnaMno1]

Alice Springs is fairly important for several reasons - It does have an airport that, while only has secuduled domestic flights, is still able to accomedate international flights if needed - It lands in the top 50 of the highest population cities in Australia, which considering it's not on the coastline is notiable - It's good for interstate touism, cause while it's not the closest town to Uluru, it is the largest and most memorable one near it - They do also host some interstate competions, since it's at the centre of the country. And I know this bevause there was a soccer one I did early highschool in either 2010 or 2011 (if you want to look it up it was offically refered to as football, we just call it soccer casually over here cause footy is AFL, in offical stuff it still get written down as football) In all honesty if it was just to write something, most of the time it would fall off as it's close to where the country name get's put alot of the time

[@SantaFe19484]

I wonder how Alice Springs residents feel about their hometown's worldwide fame?

[@xyreniaofcthrayn1195]

Hot, bothered, thirsty and proud.

[@chrispekel5709]

Most of them just want some money to go put it in the casino pokies

[@chrispekel5709]

I wish I was joking

[@tyronebiggums5547]

Don't care Ur a white dawg + gimme money 4 da bus m8 + my land + white dawg + goon yummy yum yum.

[@mm6461]

They’re too indigenous and too drunk to care

[@hi9580]

It's most useful to label the largest town in a state or area, otherwise nothing would be labeled in that area which isn't helpful to most people.

[@themetalslayer2260]

the main problem with Australia is : if they don't label small cities or even villages, people will think there's absolutely nobody in Australia (there's as many habitants in Australia as in The metropolitan area of New York, New York is only a city while Australia is nearly as big as USA)

[@rhino6634]

Alice springs isn’t small by any means. It gets half a million tourists a year. It’s a very popular tourist destination. His thesis is completely wrong.

[@maarten1115]

@@rhino6634Tourists aren't permanent residents, by that logic Mount Everest would be a medium sized city.

[@ian7033-qj9wg]

@@rhino6634 half a million people pass though it a year, if you going from Darwin to Adelaide or vice versa you pretty much have to. Thats not the same as getting half a million tourists. You might as well say the same about every little town along the Nullabor.

[@SEL-CHI]

As an Australian here one of the reasons might be everyone who goes to the out back or Uluru goes to Alice Springs

[@ianlehman8342]

This is a little reminiscent of the metric of "Prominence" for mountain peaks. To me, Alice Springs stands out in a way similar to how small hills get significance where I live. Sure, Cobbler mountain isn't much compared to its sibling Appalachian peaks, several miles away, but its surrounded by so much flatter land that its seen as significant. Likewise Alice Springs may be a very small and remote town, but its the biggest town for an immense stretch in any direction

[@apertamono]

That's an interesting comparison, because the prominence of a mountain peak can be calculated. It should be possible to calculate the prominence of cities too, when you have complete population data. Maybe they're already doing that for digital maps, I don't know.

[@StuffandThings_]

@@apertamono Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. We need a new metric, "population prominence," which factors in not only the size of the settlement but also the distance to a settlement of equal or greater size. It would be very handy for determining how important various settlements are.

[@pinedelgado4743]

THIS explains why San Diego, California (where I was born and in whose general area I've lived all of my life) is often left out of national weather maps on television. It's so close to LA. I've always felt that San Diego is Los Angeles's often-forgotten and overlooked stepsister to the south.

[@JuanDaringMann]

4:12 - Talkeetna Alaska, the tiny town that elected a cat for Mayor. Palmer / Wasilla are too close to Anchorage.

[@redhorsburgh..2345]

Went though Alice... 48 years ago... came down from Elliot trying to beat the Wet... on the Way to S.A .. travel for days then hit the Alice hills just before the town.. beautiful after days of flat scrub.. never forgotten it. .

[@jakebower587]

This video came up in my recommended for a couple days in a row and I didn't watch it because I already understood why Alice Sprongs was marked, but I finally decided to watch it and honestly this is a great vid. I'm very glad I decided to watch it

[@swampertdeck]

Children in the Netherlands grow up with this. Our country has 18 million people. The capital city is Amsterdam (1.5 million urban area). Den Haag (The Hague) is the seat of government, and has the international court of justice. Rotterdam has the LARGEST port in Europe. Yet on a globe or world map it just says Ned. (or Neth.) and Ams. if you’re lucky. When countless cities in siberia are fully named. Belgium has the same thing. The second largest port of Europe (Antwerp) isn’t visible. Only Brux. is.

[@levi-stock]

I'm from Adelaide, South Australia. Alice Springs is the first place that comes to mind when people mention the central part of Australia.

[@TehOnlyAnd1-pw8ci]

I already liked looking at maps as a kid and was always fascinated by Alice Springs, sitting there in the middle of the desert in this country on the other side of the world. I think it was even on my globe. So when eventually I went to Australia, that was one of the stops. Nice telegraph station there, by the way!

[@robertreynolds1044]

Being a huge cartophile, I've noticed this for many years, mainly on weather maps on TV, especially the small towns like Havre Montana.My name is Bicycle Bob and I approved this message.

[@yoosh9034]

Essentially every Australian knows about Alice Springs. You’re missing a lot of cultural context. Alice Springs is not just some tiny random country town.

[@yoosh9034]

Additionally, comparative to population size it’s not even much smaller than Baltimore (0.0015% vs 0.00096%). Tiny is relative. It would be tiny in America.

[@liddz434]

I was born and raised in Alice Springs...The traditional Indigenous name for the town/area is Mparntwe in the local Arrernte language. Always makes me happy to see our little town up there on the map :-)

[@ramvasuthevan]

The reverse Baltimore phenomenon is a cool idea, that I hadn't thought about before. This was an really interesting and engaging video.

[@jurassicattack01]

this is one of those phenomenon that I'd never have realized unless it was pointed out, as you have in this video, but it really is interesting to think about

[@marcellomancini6646]

anybody else knew about Alice Springs out of curiosity for the Australian Outback?

[@ericstevendennis3206]

This is the sort of thing that if you are uninterested, you are VERY uninterested, but if you are interested, is a life changer.

[@carrionysus5893]

yeah alice is also tho fairly major tourist destination (hub of central australia, near Uluru) & I think this also has a practical value - if you're in Washington you may not need a small-scale map to label Baltimore as you have access to most services & other maps. if you're in central australia you NEED to know where you can reliably get water, fuel, accommodation, food, emergency services, roadside assistance, whatever as there may not be anywhere closer/any closer places are even smaller. as a practical tool it makes total sense to me

[@stubru66]

Glad I stumble and this video - cheers, looking forward to more

[@a.bergstrom7172]

I kinda thought this in my head before watching the video, and I had seen Alice springs on maps before. But I loved watching a full video on it!

[@edmerc92]

1:51 - I like the names. Fish n Chips and Ornamental Hedge sound like fun places to visit!

[@s1eepypig775]

Great video! But as a Chinese, I think why Guangzhou is faded when you zoom out while HongKong is not, is because Guangzhou is the Capital City of Guangdong Province, while HongKong has the same administrative level of Guangdong Province, since it is a Special Administrative Region (known as SAR HongKong), therefore Guangzhou city is lower than HongKong in administrative level. I reckon that’s why when you zoomed out the map Guangzhou City is filtered out and Guangdong Province and HongKong SAR is not.

[@stephenpowstinger733]

As soon as I read the title I knew exactly what he was talking about. Alice Springs. I read the Nevil Shute book “A Town Like Alice” so I always remember its significance. And I visited Australia on R & R.

[@lucasbracher]

Man, your channel is amazing! You deserve a portable teleprompter! Please get one! :)

[@sophias.7017]

As I clicked on this video I said to myself "wonder if it's Alice Springs"! I remember learning about it years back when playing Pocket Planes since there was an airport there in the game, and I remember thinking it looked like such a small town when I looked up photos of it. Now it makes sense!

[@kazrabable]

This is really cool. I think we should all agree to call it "the Alice Springs affect" because its such a good example.

[@vastariner]

The one for me is Punta Arenas in Chile, all alone at the southern tip of the American continent. I finally got to go there in 2018. Loved it, proper frontier spirit, and a museum with a stuffed Eskimo curlew.

[@rb239rtr]

Getting back to the analog maps, in this case, the globes found in classrooms, the three towns I lived in as a child in Northwest Territories, Canada were printed on the globes. Yellowknife, Hay River, Fort Smith. Its nice when your territory is 40% of the size of the country

[@TheDiamondBladeHD]

Now I know my hometown is suffering from the Baltimore effect, though in a bit smaller scale. I live in Reutlingen, Germany (~120000 inh.) and just next door is Tübingen (~93000 inh.). On the majority of maps, Reutlingen is not named, but Tübingen is, even though it's smaller than Reutlingen. This is actually one of the bigger reasons why Tübingen is much better known to people; unless you have taken a closer look at a map or live in the general area you likely would not even have heard about its existence, sadly

[@hoarder1919]

why is that? is Tubingen a center of some big industry or have more historical weight? for instance, we can guess why Hong Kong is featured and Guangzhou is not despite Guangzhou being larger. The reason, most likely, is because Hong Kong is more economically important, it's one of the world cities, and while Guangzhou is also extremely important, it's just not comparable to Hong Kong. maybe it's the same for Tubingen and Reutlingen?

[@TheDiamondBladeHD]

@@hoarder1919 Both have very important history. Tübingen has had a university for like 500 years and has been a very important city with some in the old kingdom/duchy of Württemberg, and still is. Reutlingen was a free imperal city for a long time, which means it was directly under the Kaiser of the entire Holy Roman Empire, instead of almost everything around it, which just belonged to the count of Württemberg in medieval ages. Reutlingen was also the place where protestantism was introduced and spread from throughout the southwest german speaking locations, including switzerland. Economically speaking, Tübingen has more tourists (which may have also been a factor to reutlingen being seen later on maps), but reutlingen has a semiconductor fab from bosch, which is one the biggest worldwide, and there's barely any electronics globally that do not have some elements from the plant in reutlingen. The only reason i could think of is that since tübingen was an important city with partial governmental functions for the former kingdom of württemberg, it had (and thus still has) the necessary governmental potential for a bigger region, rather than just for one city, so it would fit the job for a dominant city better, even if reutlingen is bigger in other places

[@BessCreations]

Also, a little off topic but the biggest United States intelligence base on the southern hemisphere (I believe in use by the CIA) is a couple kilometres south west of Alice Springs, it’s called Pine Gap and it is surrounded by mountains all around it. I came across it on accident when I was travelling to Ayer’s Rock.

[@mariahnelson5511]

oh yeah, that was a good watch!. Please make merch for me haha x

[@fredmmigao7483]

Actually, I think Shenzhen is a city that better exemplifies the Baltimore effect than Guangzhou. Because Shenzhen shares a border with Hong Kong to the south, therefore closer to Hong Kong than Guangzhou, it is often unlabeled on many maps. But Shenzhen has a population similar to Guangzhou, both having about 18 million; and a larger economy (Shenzhen has a higher GDP). Shenzhen is also among the "First Tier Cities" in China alongside Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Even so, due to its proximity to Hong Kong, many maps don't label Shenzhen while labeling Guangzhou.

[@lloydspivak-psc-9430]

Terrific video. As a map aficionado (and sometime Baltimore resident), it's great to see this explained so clearly.

[@Michael_Raymond]

As an Australian I feel obliged to point out that our entire country is an example of the Alice Springs Effect; our total population is only 27 million (literally 10 million less than urban Tokyo) but everyone knows about us because we’re so large and isolated as to be confused for a continent