The transit map is useful, but doesn't always capture the scale of the engineering feat that produced the world's subways systems.
An article by David Montgomery starts with a simple enough question: "[W]hat would it look like if, high above the skyline, you could actually see where trains were shuttling people around?"
That is, what if subway lines were visible from high above?
"A group of digital artists is revealing just that, using photos taken from airplane windows to highlight the real footprint of metro systems in cities around the world," writes Montgomery. Artists began creating the images and posting them online in 2013, starting with an image of New York by a Serbian artist going by the username "Arnorrian."
A new image of Paris gained viral popularity on Reddit, and now transit fans have created similar images of Budapest, Milan, Cologne, and London.
Montgomery includes the best examples in the source article.
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