Tag Archives: center

One small community claims to be at the center of a hemisphere

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If the Earth is roughly a sphere, is one point on its surface more at the center of things than others? One spot in Wisconsin makes note of its particular location:

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Venture west of Wausau, and you’ll find yourself meandering down a country road that leads to a point of global significance—a point where latitude and longitude find harmony at 45 degrees North and 90 degrees West.

Visualize yourself standing at this exact midpoint, not just in a geographical sense between the North Pole and the Equator, but also between the prime meridian and its direct opposite across the globe…

If you pulled out a map, you’d find yourself at the intersection of some of the world’s most important lines of navigation.

Of the four such points globally, Poniatowski’s slice of longitude and latitude is the only one that’s readily accessible.

The others?

They’re either swimming with the fishes in oceanic depths or hiding in landscapes far less hospitable…

The original marker was a humble signpost in a field, but today, thanks to generous community efforts, there stands a clear path, welcoming benches, and an official marker that stakes its claim in the ground.

Hmmm. As Wikipedia notes, “A prime meridian is an arbitrarily-chosen meridian (a line of longitude) in a geographic coordinate system at which longitude is defined to be 0°.” And the one prime meridian that won out affects this claim in Wisconsin.

While this claim is based on imposing coordinates on the surface of the planet, I wonder how people around the world would answer this question: “What do you consider to be the center of the world?” Would it be major cities, like New York City or Tokyo? Religious sites? Their homes or land? A natural spot?

Or it might be interesting to investigate which places claim to be at the center of things. A place could be at the geographic or social center of a country. Where are the center points of cities or regions? Is it more important to be at the geographic or social center (see this example from the United States)?

Not simply deriding suburban life

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An AP story discusses a supposed movement to take the suburbs more seriously and move beyond common negative stereotypes. One scholar accurately notes:

“Change your mind about what the suburbs are,” said Robert Puentes, a suburban scholar at the Brookings Institution. “They’re not just bedroom communities for center-city workers. They’re not just rich enclaves. They’re not all economically stable. They’re not all exclusively white.”

“These are not your father’s suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s.”

Efforts toward this end include a new museum in Johnson County, Kansas and several academic centers.

These stereotypes will take time to overcome. Common stereotypes, dating back to at least the 1950s, include: bland homes and people, desperate housewives, whites only, lifestyles centered all around children, wealthy people only, conservative, low-brow, garish (from strip malls to shopping malls to McMansions).

The story cites two academic centers for suburban studies. For much of the last 100 years, academics have often led the way in deriding suburbia. To fight some of these stereotypes, more academics would need to be able to move beyond knee-jerk reactions and acknowledge suburbia’s complexities.