{"id":6818,"date":"2017-06-29T21:04:22","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T03:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=6818"},"modified":"2017-06-29T21:15:05","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T03:15:05","slug":"geography-pokemon-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/06\/geography-pokemon-go.html","title":{"rendered":"The geography of Pokemon GO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"From<\/p>\n

Did you know that we\u2019re approaching the first anniversary of the release of Pokemon Go? \u00a0According to Wikipedia<\/a>, its \u201cextended launch\u201d was on July 6, 2016, which seems about right, if you think back to all of the kids gathered around, phones in hand, at various parks and other public places at all times of day, this time last year, and all of the articles about how this was going to be a game-changer in getting kids to be active because the rules of the game required it.<\/p>\n

Of course, at least around here, you don\u2019t see all those kids, or really, any kids, playing Pokemon Go any longer. \u00a0My son reports that, at his sailing (day) camp, there are a few kids that come by who are visibly playing the game, and he reported that some of his friends played it during their Washington D.C. trip, though it wasn\u2019t quite clear to me (and I couldn\u2019t get a clear answer from him on this point, either) whether this was because there were new Pokemon they could catch that weren\u2019t possible locally or if it was just the novelty of playing in D.C. \u00a0(My son has a relatively \u201cdumb\u201d smart phone, that is, without a data plan, so he\u2019s never played himself, and now also says, anyway, that it\u2019s a fad that his friends with data-enabled devices have lost interest in anyway.)<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing: \u00a0Pokemon Go only works to get kids active if they\u2019re allowed to leave the house and, under their own power, get to Poke-stops, so I found a site that allowed me to look at\u00a0all possible Poke-stops<\/a>,<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a map of the various Poke-stops near my home:<\/p>\n

\"pokestops<\/p>\n

The cluster in the top right is the downtown area of our suburb; as you can see, our neighborhood is older and more traditional, with a traditional, city-like grid, and the diagonal in the top right is the commuter line into the city.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a map of the various Poke-stops near the house I grew up in:<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/www.pokemongomap.info\/\"
https:\/\/www.pokemongomap.info\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The cluster at the bottom right is the shopping mall. \u00a0If I\u2019d gone a mile or two north, there would have been many fewer, e.g,<\/p>\n

\"poke<\/p>\n

Here are the Pokestops in my brother and sister-in-law\u2019s neighborhood, in far suburban Milwaukee:<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/www.pokemongomap.info\/\"
https:\/\/www.pokemongomap.info\/<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now, one thing I\u2019ll admit that I\u2019m not sure that the scale on all of these images is consistent. \u00a0And, yes, as readers will have noticed by now, I am a total nerd about maps. \u00a0But it seems to me that kids growing up in the generic cookie-cutter suburbs, where every subdivision has an entrance from a main road, and where cars are required to get pretty much anywhere, would have a pretty difficult time playing the game, and all the more so if they\u2019re\u00a0helicopter-parented, and not allowed to cross busy streets \u2014 unless, I suppose, those same parents drive them to more Pokemon Go-friendly destinations.<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0From Pixabay; https:\/\/pixabay.com\/en\/pokemon-pokemon-go-phone-game-1553995\/; public domain<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you know that we\u2019re approaching the first anniversary of the release of Pokemon Go? \u00a0According to Wikipedia, its \u201cextended launch\u201d was on July 6, 2016, which seems about right, if you think back to all of the kids gathered around, phones in hand, at various parks and other public places at all times of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":6820,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[663,665,662,111,664],"class_list":["post-6818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-helicopter-parenting","tag-maps","tag-pokemon-go","tag-suburbs","tag-urban-development"],"yoast_head":"\nThe geography of Pokemon GO<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Did you know that we're approaching the first anniversary of the release of Pokemon Go? \u00a0According to Wikipedia, its "extended launch" was on July 6,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/06\/geography-pokemon-go.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The geography of Pokemon GO\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Did you know that we're approaching the first anniversary of the release of Pokemon Go? 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