This is my attempt to map the downtown portion of the Good Place neighborhood as we see it on the screen in Season 1 – land of adorable architecture and fro yo all around. I wanted bright and colorful, but also sort of touristy. I thought about the shopping maps you get at the beach/boardwalk and other touristy areas. They always have ads along the perimeter, which was the perfect way to highlight all the many frozen yogurt shops and other fun places. (I stuck primarily with Season 1 shop names.)

It took some time to get everything placed properly on the map because we rarely see any overhead shots, and the ones we do see don’t necessarily match up (e.g., the vast lake and sprawling forest when Michael tries to convince Chidi to take up cartography and the downtown neighborhood area when Bad Janet scans the neighborhood while standing with her back to the railroad tracks). The map hanging in Michael’s office, which I mapped separately, doesn’t show the town square. I used Google Maps to get the general layout of Universal’s Little Europe set, which is where the neighborhood scenes were filmed, but of course that doesn’t quite match what we see on TV, either. On a binge re-watch of Season 1, I took notes on shops and locations and then made adjustments as needed. I also found a YouTube video of a set tour, which helped me nail down the shops in the alley.

Major props to the person/people who put together the Good Place Screen Cap Gallery (https://captoit.sosugary.com/thegoodplace/index.php) and to Rocky, who posted his VIP Tour of the Good Place Set on YouTube (https://youtu.be/r6bFpfM1kFI). Between the screen captures and the video tour, I was able to get a nice number of tongue-in-cheek shop signs (or at least enough to let me recreate them), which I then used as advertising on the map perimeter.

This was mostly hand-drawn in Photoshop on a Wacom Intuos tablet. The fonts include Bernard MT Condensed (primary map font), Park Lane NT (art deco stuff), Tennessee Whiskey Aged (Jetpacks), Elektra (My Big Nonfat Frozen Greek Yogurt), and Canterbury (Ye Olde Tyme Yogurt Shoppe). The background is a photo of a folded sheet of paper, to achieve a pamphlet look.

Good Place Town Square Final (v10).jpg