more map love: Manhattan neighborhoods

This pretty and almost-accurate map of Manhattan neighborhoods is simple and concise. I especially love the typography and color - it may be useless for tourists, but it's a decent enough way to get a good general idea of what's where for non-residents who come to the city regularly.

Our friend David points out its several shortcomings, and because of these we think it may have been made by a non-Manhattanite:

NoLiTa = North of Little Italy. Really just refers to three blocks east of what is really SoHo and wound up with lots of trendy boutiques a few years ago. Given that Little Italy itself is just one block these days it's a misnomer, but people definitely do use it as a term.

I have a friend who lives in NoHo and uses the term but outside of the BID people just call it the Village.

Clinton is lame but that's the official term, referenced on taxi maps among other things. It is the same as Hell's Kitchen; they are not distinct neighborhoods.

A lot of the breakouts on this map are misleading. Yorkville and Carnegie Hill are part of the UES, not separate from it; East and Spanish Harlem are still Harlem; the theater district is still in midtown. For that matter, a bunch of neighborhood coinages, like Union Square and the Flatiron District, are missing.

I've lived in Manhattan for nearly 10 years and have been in the tri-state area my entire life, and I have never, ever heard of Bowery, Two Bridges, Civic Center or Rose Hill. Rose Hill? That little square is so nondescript that it's the only part of the borough on the taxi map that doesn't have a name. It's just grayed out.

Steven, also a New Yorker, writes

NoLiTa is north of ... ? This map looks like it was made by corcoran. Every marginal neighborhood with an interesting name is given the maximum area possible, while the generalities people on the street actually use are reduced to ageographic nonentities. Just like a real estate agent would do!

But the big question - who made it? Can anyone tell us where this comes from? We need to give the artist props - while this may not be the best infographic ever made, it is certainly a very well-constructed piece of art. The artist has been found.