The heuristics of mapping
urban environmental
change
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dialogues on the move
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Project promoted by:
Adriana Allen, Alexandre Apsan Frediani, Rita Lambert Development Planning Unit/ University College London
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In collaboration with:
Francesca Cognetti, Beatrice De Carli Department of Architecture and Planning (DIAP)/ Politecnico di Milano
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Paola Bellaviti, Costanza La Mantia, Lab of International Cooperation/ DIAP/ Politecnico di Milano
May al-Ibrashy Megawra (Built Environment Collective), Cairo.
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Supported by the UCL Environment Institute
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EXPLORING THE POlITICAL AGENCY OF
MAPPING AND MAPS
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SEMINAR> lONDON, 20-21 SEPTEMBER 2012
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introduction
THE HEURISTICS OF MAPPING URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE is a platform initiated in
February 2012 by the Development Planning Unit/ The Bartlett/ University College London. Through a
heuristic process which involves an international network of researchers, activists, and organisations,
the platform aims to apprehend how place-making practices by ordinary citizens reinforce, resist or
transform the production or reproduction of injustices in cities.
The first phase of the project, DIALOGUES ON THE MOVE, organised with the support and contribution
of Politecnico di Milano, and the Cairo based organisation Megawra (Built Environment Collective), is
articulated into three stops.
The first stop was hosted by the Politecnico di Milano, in March 2012, under the central theme ‘Mobilising
the Margins’. The objective of the latter was to promote a reflection on participatory mapping as a practice
that can (re-)activate ‘hidden territories’- spaces and practices that are positioned ‘on the margin’ of the
dominant forms of city planning, and the processes conditioning emerging urban environments.
The second ‘Dialogue on the Move’ took place in Cairo, in May 2012, and focused on ‘Mapping Informality’.
The event, curated by MEGAWRA (Built Environment Collective) in conjunction with Politecnico di Milano/
DIAP - Laboratory of International Cooperation, brought together academics, activists and organisations.
The discussions centred on the dichotomy established between the formal and informal in Cairo, and the
role of mapping in challenging such dichotomy through contemporary and historical practices of placemaking in the city.
The London Mapping Seminar is the third stop in this dialogue. Entitled EXPLORING THE POLITICAL
AGENCY OF MAPPING AND MAPS, this seminar seeks to understand the tripartite relationship
between place, justice and mapping. Through a dialogue across geography, planning and anthropology,
the aim is to explore different conceptualisations of place and justice which have implications on
mapping, and to expose the nuances of how maps work depending on who and towards which specific
ends they are adopted.
The sessions are structured around four different perspectives on place: the phenomenological, the
neo-marxist, the feminist and the performative approaches. These are captured in the sub headings
of each section: Mapping as Grounding Consciousness, Mapping as Connecting Intersectionalities,
Mapping as Spatialising Dialectical Change and Mapping as Bricolage. Although there are converging
or overlapping aspects within these four takes, the intention here is to make explicit the assupmtions
within each and to foster a productive dialogue across them.
For more information on THE HEURISTICS OF MAPPING URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE please
visit the website : http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/dpu/portlets/dpu/mapping-environmental-change
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PROGRAMME
SEPTEMBER 20TH | PRESENTATIONS AND DEBATES
Room 101, DPU, 34 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9EZ
9:45-10:00 AM | WELCOME
10.00-10.20AM | INTRODUCTION
The Heuristics of Mapping Urban Environmental Change | Adriana Allen, (DPU)
Dialogues on the Move: from Milan to Cairo| Paola Bellaviti, (Politecnico di Milano/ DIAP)
10.20-11.30AM | MAPPING AS GROUNDING CONSCIOUSNESS|Rita Lambert, (DPU)
Speakers :
Mapping the geography of everything - Andrew Hudson-Smith (20min)
What is being mapped and to what ends? - Christian Nold (20min)
Discussant:
Muki Haklay (15min)
11.30-11.45AM| BREAK
11.45-13.00PM| DEBATE
13.00-14.00PM| LUNCH
14.00- 15.10| MAPPING AS SPATIALISING DIALECTICAL CHANGE| Adriana Allen, (DPU)
Speakers :
Counter\mapping: finding (y)our way through borders and filters - QMary Project (20min)
Mapping informality of post-revolution Cairo - Omar Nagati (20min)
Discussant:
Michael Edwards (15min)
15.10-15.30PM| BREAK
15.30-16.45PM| DEBATE
SEPTEMBER 21TH | PRESENTATIONS AND DEBATES
in Room 101, DPU, 34 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9EZ
10.00-11.10AM | MAPPING AS CONNECTING INTERSECTIONALITIES|Alex Frediani, (DPU)
Speakers :
Mapping otherwise–NishatAwan (20min)
Mapping everyday Palestine in search for possibilities for spatial resistance - YaraSarif(20min)
Discussant:
Murray Fraser (15min)
11.10-11.30AM| BREAK
11.30-12.45PM| DEBATE
12.45-13.45PM| LUNCH
13.45- 14.55| MAPPING AS BRICOLAGE| Camillo Boano, (DPU)
Speakers :
Draw up, Down and Sideways: Understanding the history of Cairo’s historic
cemeteries through mapping - May al Ibrashy (20min)
MyStreet: collage mapping and the venatics of everyday life - Michael Stewart (20min)
Discussant:
Beatrice de Carli(15min)
14.55-15.15PM | BREAK
15.15-16.30PM | DEBATE
16.30-17.00PM | CLOSING
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SEPTEMBER 20TH | PRESENTATIONS AND DEBATES
Room 101, DPU, 34 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9EZ
MAPPING AS GROUNDING CONSCIOUSNESS - Rita Lambert
mapping the geography of everything–ANDREW HUDSON-SMITH
From realtime mapping of Boris bikes, through to conflict in Africa and beyond to life expectancy by tube
station and mapping the geography of everything: the talk details how maps can be used to communicate
and share complex information in a world of a data deluge.
Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith is Director and Deputy Chair of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
(CASA) at The Bartlett, University College London. He is Editor-in-Chief of Future Internet Journal, an
elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Course Founder and Director of the MRes in Advanced
Spatial Analysis and Visualisation at University College London.
His work has featured widely in the media including, Sky Television, The New York Times, The Guardian
and most recently, Channel 4 News, New Scientist, Wired, ABC Australia, The Japan Times, BBC Radio 4
and BBC Radio 5.
What is being mapped and to what ends?–CHRISTIAN NOLD
The presentation discusses Christian’s PhD case study which involves a process of following an
engineering focused, noise mapping project funded by the EU. The case study is used to identify the
entanglement between subjective experience & devices and power which are at the heart of mapping.
The case study highlights a conflict between the experiences of local resident with noise pollution
versus the institutional aspirations of mapping protocols. The details of the project expose fundamental
ontological and epistemological conflicts about what is being mapped and to what ends. In the project
this conflict can be traced backwards from the tools created for the project all the way back to the agenda
of the EU research project.
The aim of this talk is to provide a real-world example of the role of subjectivity as a material affect which is
engaged in a political struggle over the legitimacy of subjective & affectual knowledge. Within the applied
disciplines that work with mapping, this struggle for legitimacy is usually treated as a technical issue and
thus not addressed. From the cultural side, mapping is often only seen as an abstract metaphor. This talk
aims to bridge both the cultural and technical understandings, by suggesting a critical material practice
which can engage with real world issues.
CHRISTIAN NOLD is an artist, designer and researcher working to develop new participatory models
and technologies for communal representation. In 2001 he wrote the book “Mobile Vulgus,” which
examined the psychosomatic history of the political crowd. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art
in 2004, Nold has led many large-scale participatory mapping projects. In particular his “Bio Mapping”
projects have been staged in many countries with thousands of participants. For the last eight years,
Nold has been developing a tool-kit of technologies that blend together human and non-human sensors
for local governance. In 2010, Nold launched an experimental currency, the “Bijlmer Euro,” which allows
people to follow where their money moves. In 2011 he published the book, “The Internet of People for
a Post-Oil World”, co-written with Rob van Kranenburg. He is currently researching a PhD in the Extreme
Citizen Science group at UCL.
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MAPPING AS SPATIALISING DIALECTICAL CHANGE - Adriana Allen
Counter\mapping: finding (y)our way through borders and filters MARA FERRERI, RAKHEE KEWADA, BUE RUBNER HANSEN
The QMary Counter\mapping project (2010-11) began with a collective action-research question - how
does the university function? – and several hypotheses: the university as a factory, as a border and as
a filter. From the very beginning, the idea of combining research and map-making was born out of a
reflection on the limitations of other forms of academic research and dissemination as well as on the
simplistic and traditionalist approaches of most mainstream activist material on the issues surrounding
the -then burgeoning- mobilisations around the surveillance of overseas students and the cuts to higher
education funding in the UK.
In this presentation we will discuss our counter-mapping project as both a process and an outcome. First
we will explain the process of collective data gathering and analysing, and briefly describe the series
of open public events we organised to share tools, ideas and critiques of the power of mapping and
counter\mapping. Moving from that, we will discuss the politics of representation that were developed
in the course of the production phase and examine the heterogeneous textual and visual materials that
were created and assembled to produce a mobile object – a map and a game – which is simultaneously
a counter-map of a place (QMary) and its position in relation to structural flows (of students, workers and
money), and a counter-representation of sites and moments of resistance, and of subjective positions
and issues. Finally, we will examine the politics of its dissemination and uses, and the functioning of the
game as a performative activation of our research findings.
The QMARY COUNTERMAPPING PROJECT(2010-2011) came out of a collaboration between two
members of the 3Cs Counter Cartographies Collective (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, US)
and a self-organised collective of graduate students from the School of Geography and the School of
Business and Management at Queen Mary, University of London. The QMaryCountermapping Collective
is: RakheeKewada, Tim Stallmann, Maria Catalina Bejarano Soto, Liz Mason-Deese, Manuela Zechner,
BueRübner Hansen, Mara Ferreri and Camille Barbagallo. An interactive version of the QMarycountermap
is available on the online journal Lateral http://www.culturalstudiesassociation.org/lateral/issue1/
countermapping.html
Mapping informality of post-revolution Cairo: Examples of current
documentation and mapping research projects – OMAR NAGATI
In the context of major political and urban transformations in Cairo during the past 18 months, the
question of documentation and mapping gains an increasing relevance, particularly in a city where more
than two-thirds of its population live in informal areas, outside the realm of official planning and formal
regulations. The role of professionals, academics and planners is also coming into questions, their
position is being substantially redefined as individual citizens and communities are taking the initiatives,
changing their streets and neighborhoods, capitalizing on a new sense of empowerment, and reclaiming
the city and its public space.
This presentation engages the issue of informality on multiple levels, interrogating this category from
different disciplinary lenses and frames of reference. It addresses the peculiar socio-urban condition in
Cairo since January 2011 as a “city in flux,” which will ultimately be restructured by the establishment
of alternative orders. Through examples of ongoing research and documentation projects to capture
such fleeting moment, the presentation aims at raising critical questions about the politics of mapping
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and the double stakes inherent in such endeavor: both solidifying an otherwise fluid condition, and, by
rendering it visible, potentially subjecting it to hegemonic forces.
OMAR NAGATI is a Ph.D candidate and a practicing architect/urban planner who currently lives in Cairo.
A graduate of Cairo University, he studied and taught at University of British Columbia and University
of California Berkeley, with a specific focus on informal urbanism. Nagati adopts an interdisciplinary
approach to questions of urban history and design, and engages in a comparative analysis of urbanization
processes in developing countries. He teaches Urban Design Studio at the Modern Sciences and Arts
University in Giza and has recently cofounded CLUSTER, a new platform for urban research and design
initiatives downtown Cairo.
Public lectures:
Nagati has widely presented his research on Cairo in several cities and institutions in Europe and North
America, including Bari (2003), Vancouver (2004), Venice (2006), Vienna, Copenhagen (2007), Berlin,
Harvard, Zagreb (2010), Leeds, Madrid, Lisbon, and Napoli (2012).
SEPTEMBER 21TH | PRESENTATIONS AND DEBATES
Room 101, DPU, 34 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9EZ
MAPPING AS CONNECTING INTERSECTIONALITIES - Alex Frediani
Mapping otherwise–NISHAT AWAN
The practice of ‘mapping otherwise’ was developed in the context of describing a diasporic urbanism.
It was conceived as a tool for representing the intersection of spaces, subjectivities and politics. In this
talk I will show some of the maps that were produced in order to explore these migrant spatialities.
Focusing on the Turkish and Kurdish communities of north-east London, the maps were conceived as a
way of describing journeys and narratives, representing trans-local connections and revealing diasporic
territories. The maps also addressed the question: within the networked, global condition of the diasporic
citizen, what objects, subjects and processes play the role of mediation and translation that is required
between ‘here and there’ and between the layers of this multiple subject.
Mapping was here approached as both the subject of the research and as a form of experimental
research.
NISHAT AWAN is a Lecturer in Architecture at University of Sheffield. Her research interests include
the production and representation of migratory spaces, inquiries into the topological as method and
alternative modes of architectural practice. She is founding member of OPENkhana, a practice that
works between art, architecture and computational design (www.openkhana.net).
Mapping everyday Palestine in search for possibilities for spatial resistance–
YARA SHARIF
The notion of ‘locality’ and its spatial influence on the map seems to be absent in the majority of work
addressing Palestinian/Israeli conflict, especially that of western scholars, and instead the focus is
mainly on the forces of occupation/occupier. The outcome is therefore incomplete, in the sense that it
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does not show a true account of the socio/spatial relationships that have been created. Through such
studies, the dominant group – in this case, the Israeli Army – is again rendered more visible through their
artifacts of occupation, while those who in fact have to occupy the resulting space with their ordinary
lives are alienated from the description of the context, and hence rendered almost non-existent.
One of the outstanding outcomes of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict that has been overlooked in the past
few years, is the everyday forms of Palestinian resistance, which have in their own way constructed a
new attitude towards the built environment and created a new character to the spaces, as well as to the
official map. Those who live within these fragments are now introducing new solid facts through their
everyday activities.
In my presentation I will therefore try – through my social and spatial mapping constructed from my
ongoing fieldwork – to offer an insight into the Palestinian context by viewing it explicitly from within.
Having lived and worked in Palestine, I will try to show and bring in the local voice of ordinary people
who are displaying a power to resist with creative tools that architecture and planning have so far failed
to achieve. Narrative and subjective experience in this context are seen both a spatial condition and a
conscious strategy to examine relationship between identity and space.
While looking at the spaces between people, lines, documents and maps, I will be ‘revealing’ some of
the tactical forms of spatial resistance which in their subversive, invisible and at times ironic forms have
managed to cut into the very heart of Israeli occupation. I will put a special emphasis on the ordinary
citizens of Palestine, who count on the urban street as a platform for performing and living.
Because mapping as a technique is not only seen as a matter of documenting and describing the surface
of the globe, but also a way of reconstructing a scene that is being lived through and indeed an imagined
one yet to come; my process of mapping is seen as a way to explore/offer/assist with a counter map and
a counter strategy of empowerment and healing.
YARA SHARIF is an academic, researcher and a practicing architect. She is an associate at Golzari-NG
Architects, working on projects related to participatory design and social sustainability in London as
well as Palestine. Yara has lived and worked in Palestine/Ramallah until 2005 where she worked as an
architect in Riwaq: Centre for Architectural Conservation. Currently she is working along with Riwaq and
Golzari Architects on the regeneration of 50 historic centres in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Yara has completed her PhD research entitled ’Searching for Spaces of Possibility within the Palestinian/
Israeli Conflict: Healing Fractures through the Dialogue of Everyday Behaviour’, at the university of
Westminster. Building on that Yara has set up Palestine Regeneration Team (PART) along with Nasser
Golzari and Murray Fraser. PART is a design-led research group that aims to search for creative and
responsive spatial practices in Palestine to heal the fractures caused by the Israeli Occupation.Part has
recently done the Palestine Pavilion as part of the International Architecture and Design Showcase in
London and the London Festival of Architecture.
Yara is also currently teaching in the Masters course entitled ‘Humanitarian Action and Conflict’ at Oxford
Brookes University.
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MAPPING AS BRICOLAGE - Camillo Boano
DRAW UP, DOWN AND SIDEWAYS: Understanding the history of Cairo’s historic
cemeteries through mapping–MAY AL IBRASHY
Cairo’s historic cemetery of al-Qarafa was established east of Egypt’s first Islamic city in 642 AD. It soon
expanded with the expansion of the city situating itself on its outskirts, but often finding itself engulfed
by the city sprawl. The cemetery played a pivotal role in the city dynamics going beyond its primary
function as burial place to provide it with much of its sacred geography – which is to be expected around
its shrines and mosques – but also with a luminal zone that accommodated alternative practices both
secular and religious. It housed its needy and its eccentrics, supporting them through charity. And it was
also where scholars taught and learned in its schools and mystics lived in its hospices. It hosted the
visitors who came in search of an experience of epiphanies, blessing and supernatural manifestations.
Yet it also owed much of its magnificent physical setting to its ruling classes who vied with each other to
build the loftiest minaret and the most sublime dome both as burial place and charitable and educational
establishment. It also was the target of a sustained campaign calling for the demolition of buildings (an
anomaly in a religion that forbids funerary structures above graves), the curtailment of visitation (allowed
in Islam, but not to women and not overnight), and the outlawing of habitation (a desecration of the
dead and in modern times seen as a mental and physical health hazard) – a campaign that is yet to
succeed.
The modern cemetery is the outcome of this complex interplay of religious norms and their subversion,
communal needs and their denial and equally interestingly if more difficult to qualify, between the
physical magnificence of the architecture and the awesome spirituality of the epiphany (or at least the
promise of one).
How does one juxtapose the maps of the dead and the living on the vertical? Or of memory and the
presence in time? Where do the property rights of the layers of burials end, and those of the residents
living above them start? What does one acknowledge and plan with – the legalities of the law as set
by the state, or the norms as set by the people? How does one take into account the conflicting claims
tugging at a land that is now eyed by developers as the city engulfs it and it becomes part of the centre
not the periphery? Which of these narratives should a map valourise or can it reflect them all impartially?
And if it is produced, what will it be used for and to whose benefit?
May al-Ibrashy is founder and chair of the Built Environment Collective, an Egyptian NGO that
operates via its space MEGAWRA, a hub and workspace that organizes a regular program of public talks
and events in addition to research and community outreach projects in architecture and urbanism (www.
megawra.org). She holds a PhD and MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University
of London. Her primarily research interest is the urban history of Cairo, particularly that of its historic
multi-functional Islamic cemetery. She also writes about conservation and heritage issues linking them
to a wider interdisciplinary framework of inquiry. She is currently adjunct lecturer of architecture at the
American University in Cairo, Ain Shams University and the British University in Egypt. She is a practicing
conservation architect with 20 years experience in architectural conservation and documentation mostly
in Islamic Cairo, that last of which was the Cairo Cemetery Salvage Project which she co-directed in her
previous capacity as partner in the architectural practice Hampikian-Ibrashy: Architecture and Heritage
Management. She has co-organized training courses in heritage management and interdisciplinary
workshops on urban issues, in addition to research projects, the latest being Cairo’s historic Cemetery
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of al-Suyuti: Conflicting Claims a Getty-UCLA collaborative research project (www.suyuti.net) and al-Athar
Lina, a participatory research and design project on the relationship of the monuments of al-Khalifa to
their surroundings (www.atharlina.com) .
Awaiting abstract and bio
MyStreet: collage mapping and the venatics of everyday life–MICHAEL STEWART
MyStreet: It’s where you are, who you are and how you live… your place on the map. MyStreet is a living
archive of everyday life, encouraging you to make your mark and bring your area to life.
People use video to record the experiences and people of a place that means something to them. Others
watch films online and discover more about other people’s lives and places. These films are part of
the MyStreet community – an ever evolving slice of life, linked to the MyStreet map: “MyStreet is your
story, your patch, wherever and whatever that may be.” In this talk I will present two short films from
MyStreet to illustrate the diversity of social media practices generated by a site like this and discuss the
significance of ‘minor practices’ for generating alternative forms of knowledge about the places we live
in. The talk will draw on Ginzburg’s contrast of ‘venatic’, ‘conjectural’ or ‘singular’ knowledge to abstract,
bureaucratic and statistical reasoning.
Michael Stewart is a social anthropologist, at UCL since 1997 who recently established the Open
City Docs Festival at UCL and, contemporaneously, the on-line social media community, MyStreet.
He has long been interested in the generation of alternative forms of social knowledge, working both
ethnographically and historically on Romany (Gypsy) populations in eastern Europe. Alongside his
academic career he has also worked on and off in broadcast media. He now runs Open City Docs at UCL
- promoting and developing the next generation of documentary film maker.
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