For this assignment, I could use a map of either my town, city or neighborhood and see how much I could remove from it (such as secondary streets) and how much I could abstract features such as parks, rivers, roads and train tracks by using simple geometric forms: squares, rectangles, triangles, circles and simple lines.
The challenge was to accomplish this without the map losing its recognition and function for navigation? It was surprising how simple and clean the neighborhood looks in a graphic form. It might actually be important to consider legibility over density sometimes. Not all the maps must precisely render exact street locations in perfect scale and proportion to be useful to readers. An information designer named William Bardel actually pointed out that distortion and detail omission is often used to produce better maps.
I used the map of my neighborhood in India called Ghatkopar to produce this simple graphic map using 3d materials. I made it on a foam board. I only selected the important streets and painted them grey which was appropriate for roads. I stuck green paper of the shapes they were in the map for parks and gardens. For the 2 lakes, I got wool and placed them in lines to give a flowing appearance. For the trains running across the entire map on the top, I used thin, wooden dowels because they reminded me of tracks. I labeled only one of each setting to give the audience an idea of what that element is supposed to represent, like green is for parks and gardens, etc.
Here is a map of Ghatkopar:
First I drew the outline of the map which was 11×22 inches approx. Using illustrator I expanded the image and could clearly point out individual streets. Then I only cut out the primary streets I wanted to use and traced that inside the boundary. 
Here is the model I made:
