Ordnance Survey paper maps remain a superior, culturally valuable way to navigate and experience the landscape compared with digital navigation
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/editorial. "The Guardian view on Ordnance Survey maps: still a superior way to navigate the landscape | Editorial | The Guardian." November 8, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The Guardian argues that Ordnance Survey paper maps are still better than phone or satnav directions, not because they are more efficient but because they combine accuracy with art and spark imagination and exploration. The editorial hopes that, like vinyl records, the pleasure of wrestling with a paper map on a windy hillside will survive for future generations.
Conclusion
OS paper maps remain a superior way to navigate and engage with the landscape compared with digital satnav tools, and their distinctive pleasures deserve to be celebrated and sustained for future generations.
Premises
- OS maps combine scientific precision and order with artistic, evocative qualities, which makes them more than mere navigational tools.
- OS maps have had a significant cultural impact on the wider population, particularly as leisure time expanded and tourist and rambler maps were produced.
- Digital navigation such as satnav and Google Maps offers passive, monotone instructions, whereas the best maps invite active exploration and fire the imagination.
- Map-readers can immerse themselves in contour lines, symbols and coded colours to visualise landscapes they have yet to encounter, an experience turn-by-turn directions do not provide.
- The revival of vinyl among younger consumers suggests that analogue formats can be rediscovered and valued, so paper maps may likewise endure.
Assumptions
- Active, imaginative engagement with a landscape is more valuable than efficient, passive navigation.
- 'Superior' can be judged on experiential, cultural and aesthetic grounds rather than only on convenience or accuracy.
- The pleasures reported by map enthusiasts are widely shared or would be shared by others if they tried paper maps.
- Nostalgia-driven revivals such as vinyl are a good analogy for paper maps.
- The historical and cultural prestige of OS maps carries over to their current usefulness as navigation tools.
- The colonial and controlling history of mapping does not undermine the case for the maps' present-day value.