1-2-3 – it looks so harmless on the map: a thin line that runs eastwards, then takes a sharp 90-degree turn northwards and again 90-degrees eastwards up to the edge. Yet on the ground, the line is a concrete wall, built to demarcate the boundary between two worlds, the “legal” and the “illegal”, the accepted […]
Emancipatory Mapmaking: Lessons from Kibera
Modern mapmaking in the global South has been deeply entwined with the colonial endeavor of producing legible spaces. Critical Geography has emphasized the role of maps in governing populations and their politics of in/visibility, especially concerning marginalized communities. What else can maps do? How can communities and activists deploy mapping technologies as tools that support […]
A Students’ Map for a Students’ Building
We are Geoide en Revolución, a political group composed of students and alumni of the Faculty of Geography at the University of Buenos Aires. At some point in our activism, a few years ago, we began to understand and use social cartography (similar to participatory mapping) as a valuable tool for working with and for […]
Tyneside’s Skateworlds and their Transformation
Post-representation cartography is an approach to mapping which emphasizes the processes involved in map-making. The emphasis shifts from “the ‘rules’ of map design and techniques of cartographic production, and/or documenting and deconstructing the underlying ideologies and agendas of maps, to a processural perspective concerned with how mappings and cartographic design, technique and ideology emerge time […]
A Civic Mapping Project in an Indian Megacity
Hyderabad Urban Lab (HUL) looks at cities as a complex set of relationships consisting of relations of production, social relations and relations between citizens and governments. HUL began in mid-2012 with the aim of conducting research on urban issues in a way that would bridge the gap between academic urban research and life at the […]
