All Over Albany

Troy neighborhoods and districts map

Check out this map of Troy neighborhoods and districts put together for the Troy subreddit by FifthAveSam.

A clip from the background explainer for the map:

I'm tired of wishing that there was a better map of Troy when people ask where something is located. I've spent the last couple of days scouring the internet to find the old list of Troy's recognized districts in order to make a map to help others understand the area a bit better. I also used some recent government posts and injected a little bit of my own opinion in order to make a comprehensive map of our neighborhoods and districts.

And later in the explainer: "This is not 100% perfect nor do I predict it ever will be." That's understandable -- maps are hard.

We're always kind of amazed by the neighborhood geographies that people collectively keep (often informally) of cities. How they sometimes makes obvious sense, how they sometimes... don't. How they're sometimes very specific and sometimes not. How they're used as tools to locate or identify or exclude or highlight. And how people are often very willing to respond when they think someone's gotten this geography wrong.

Also: How these geographies emerge, change, and become codified over time! See: DelSo in Albany.

Yet despite these efforts, there's almost always going to be a gap between the maps we have in our headed or folded up in a car or displayed on a phone and the real world.

In other news: Many of the things that seem far apart within cities because of the maps we all collectively carry often aren't, actually. It's worth walking a few neighborhoods to feel that for yourself.