Welcome to My Place: Subjective Maps

This page is basically another way to introduce the activities organised as part of the Welcome to My Place project. They all involved at some point subjective maps. Subjective maps don’t have to be spatially accurate; they should communicate how a territory is perceived. They are a tool of critical cartography, “a set of mapping practices and theoretical critique grounded in critical theory. It differs from classical cartography in that it links geographic knowledge with power, and thus is political. Critical cartographers do not aim to invalidate maps; instead the critique is a careful analysis identifying maps attributes that are taken for granted” (Wikipedia).

Every map is partly subjective in fact, and as the towards project in Brussels explains it, the aim “is in no way to give up a so-called objective cartography to head for a subjective cartography, but to think about representations that would come to terms with this subjectivity in the approach of the territory and to promote the plurality of cartographic visions”.

Here are few links for people interested in cartography:

• Strange Maps, a great blog about strange maps.
• Open Street Map, the alternative to Google Maps. The community based approach avoids the problems related to dodgy legal ownership of the data, as exemplified during the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
• Towards, a subjective collective cartography of Brussels.
• Intrusive Connections, a project I did a while ago questioning the utilitarian use of maps.
• The Mapping for Change project that provides “participatory mapping services to communities, voluntary sector organisations, local authorities and developers”.
• Vague fuzzy vernacular geographies, or why to use sprays in maps.
• A summary of the sessions held during the Where Camp EU non-conference that I attended in March 2010.

The following paper on the appropriation of space is not specifically about maps but describes the spaces they mediate and the places they locate.

And here are some of the subjective maps drawn at the occasion of the Welcome to My Place project:

• A subjective map of the London N4 area made during the Welcome to Finsbury Park workshop, organised in collaboration with the Transition Finsbury Park association. You can find here a step-by-step manual.

• Another subjective map of the London N4 area, made by children this time.

• A map of the main ‘teletransporters’ near the Olympic Station in Hong Kong. Find out what it is about in my study on verticality.

• More to come…