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Focusing on thematic and more specifically, cate-gorical maps, the paper emphasises the importance of horizontal relations in automated generalisation. A literature review shows that automated generalisation of thematic maps has not received ample attention. It shows further that the extraction and use of relations in topographic maps for generalisation purposes is making progress, but no systematic categorisation for relations has been made so far. Hence a typology of horizontal relations for categorical maps is proposed and links to existing generalisation constraints are identified. Besides this, methods for the storage of extracted relations are proposed. A selection of relations is discussed and illustrated in more detail. Subsequently a characterisation of alignments–here subsumed about the socalled meso structures–is presented using Wertheimer’s laws of organisation. Finally further research perspectives are proposed, with the aim of pattern detection and data enrichment in thematic maps.