Best map projection for showing distances from a city
To show distances from one city, use an azimuthal equidistant projection centred on that city. The distance and direction from the centre to every point on Earth are true to scale, so circles around the centre mark equal distances.
Best choice: Azimuthal Equidistant
Equidistant, azimuthal
An azimuthal equidistant map centred on your city shows the distance and direction to every point on Earth at true scale. This holds only from the centre of the map.
- Area: distorted
- Shape: distorted
- Distances: partially
- Angles and directions: partially
- Continuity: preserved
Also good
No other projection in our catalogue meets this need as well.
What to avoid
Its scale changes with latitude, so range circles come out distorted.
See the problem on the map →A different goal or map shape? Change the answers in the finder →
How to read this map
The centre of the map is your city. Every straight line leaving the centre is a great circle, the shortest path, and its length on the map matches the real distance. A circle around the centre contains every place at the same distance from the city.
The edge of the map is the antipode of the centre, the point on the opposite side of the Earth. Shapes far from the centre are strongly distorted.
Where it is useful
This map answers one question: how far away, and in which direction, from the chosen place.
- The range of an aircraft or of radio coverage from one base.
- Distances from your city to the world's capitals.
- The map in the UN emblem: an azimuthal equidistant projection with the North Pole in the middle.
Limitations
Only the distance from the centre is true. The distance between two points away from the centre is distorted, and so are areas, which grow toward the edge of the map. That is why this map is centred on the place you measure from.
Frequently asked questions
Open the azimuthal equidistant projection in the lab and set the centre of the map on your city. The finder on this page does it for you once you pick a city from the list.
Yes, the popular flat Earth map is an azimuthal equidistant projection with the North Pole in the middle. It is an ordinary map of a sphere, not a model of its shape: away from the centre it badly distorts distances, as routes in the southern hemisphere show.
Because Mercator's scale grows with latitude. A circle of constant radius on the sphere becomes a distorted oval on this map, swollen toward the pole.