What is the best way to read, represent and render map data?

Question

I am interested in writing a simplistic navigation application as a pet project. After searching around for free map-data I have settled on the US Census Bureau TIGER 2007 Line

Answer 1

SharpMap is an open-source .NET 2.0 mapping engine for WinForms and ASP.NET. This may provide all the functionality that you need. It deals with most common GIS vector and raster data formats including ESRI shapefiles.