As technology increases so does our ability to make maps. Some professional and passionate cartographers are taking advantage of this and making more and more accurate street map of the world . Many city maps are simple, using a grid to set them up, where others are more complicated. Technology has made it easier to be able to get a full view of these more complicated cities so that map makers can make the proportions and turns more in line with the actualities of the city. Successes in these areas have turned people to wanting to take on more complicated and interesting projects from across the world. While it should be no surprise that there is a market in city maps of villages in the countryside of some of the smaller Asian countries such as Japan and Thailand from those who are backpacking the world, there are a number of problems that arise from trying to get an accurate map of some of the areas.
One of the things that complicates the effort to make these new maps is that as you move away from the maps of developed areas you have to find new ways of defining a street or a street map. Are footpaths maps in areas that have no cars? What about biking trails? In that same front then are these things then streets in some sense in countries where there are cars? What about where cars are the main way to get around? Google seems to think so. The definition problem has been a debate in the community. It gets even more complicated when you are talking about small villages in Africa. For the most part people doing work in these small villages have needed to bring a guide and or a map maker on their first few trips to the village in order to make sure that they can get there again.