Mapping the relational construction of people and places

Routledge eBooks, 2016

This paper takes a mediated spatial cultures approach to examine how interactive urban screens are understood and utilised in two super-diverse neighbourhoods in London. Qualitative data was collected over a year of ethnographic fieldwork and six workshops. The study focuses on how residents construct a sense of belonging through both material culture and mainstream digital media (place-making efforts). Participants were grouped into three age groups according to their distinctive patterns of socialisation, digital media and material culture use. We show that individuals relate to public interactive screens with the frames of reference they already employ to approach other place-making efforts, which underpin the social life of their neighbourhoods. We demonstrate that the lens of mediated spatial culture helps elucidate how a sense of place is formed and patterned through different temporalities, materialities, media, imaginations, and behaviours, which are highly biographical. In what follows we consider space as a socio-material and cultural construction; a site of flows and becoming, constantly produced and re-produced through myriad everyday practices (Thrift 2007: 20). Thrift, a proponent of non-representational theory conceptualises space as an emergent property of practice that occurs prior to conscious definitions. Hence, space is a site of open-ended possibilities, a non-discursive affordance to life in a given locale. Conversely, place is a more conscious and meaningful construction that people use to understand the space they live in. Although it is a complex construction in its own right, "a constellation of processes rather than a thing…" (Massey 2005: 141), place is distinguished by including social narratives and meanings. The concept of 'place' therefore, extends beyond non-reflexive practices, incorporating instead purposeful social action in the form of political activities, values, norms, memories, stories and histories. This interplay between spatial materialities, socialities and culture, which transforms a generic space into a culturally charged place, is conventionally known as place-making. Place-making activities occur when we make efforts to define, understand, experience, navigate, utilise, modify or regulate what is happening in and with space. Therefore, place-making activities bridge between space and place. They draw on the, mundane practices that serve to extend or maintain local social networks through face-to-face interaction, in addition they include more purposive efforts to build a sense of meaning and belonging. Place-making then, is about the production of locality (Appadurai 1996;. It involves turning a seemingly generic, ambiguous, unruly or "fuzzy" site of spatial possibility into a more meaningful and social entity where we recognise ourselves in relation to others. When the everyday activities of place-making become patterned, prominent features of a locale they denote a distinctive spatial culture: a constellation of materialities and meanings that individuals recognize as familiar, plus understand as related. This is not to say places have a single, unified and unproblematic spatial culture. Anthropologists have long been aware of the provisional nature of places as 'cultural constructs', which are understood as fragile

Routledge eBooks, 2016

This paper takes a mediated spatial cultures approach to examine how interactive urban screens are understood and utilised in two super-diverse neighbourhoods in London. Qualitative data was collected over a year of ethnographic fieldwork and six workshops. The study focuses on how residents construct a sense of belonging through both material culture and mainstream digital media (place-making efforts). Participants were grouped into three age groups according to their distinctive patterns of socialisation, digital media and material culture use. We show that individuals relate to public interactive screens with the frames of reference they already employ to approach other place-making efforts, which underpin the social life of their neighbourhoods. We demonstrate that the lens of mediated spatial culture helps elucidate how a sense of place is formed and patterned through different temporalities, materialities, media, imaginations, and behaviours, which are highly biographical. Theoretical Perspective In what follows we consider space as a socio-material and cultural construction; a site of flows and becoming, constantly produced and reproduced through myriad everyday practices (Thrift 2007: 20). Thrift, a proponent of non-representational theory conceptualises space as an emergent property of practice that occurs prior to conscious definitions. Hence, space is a site of open-ended possibilities, a non-discursive affordance to life in a given locale. Conversely, place is a more conscious and meaningful construction that people use to understand the space they live in. Although it is a complex construction in its own right, "a constellation of processes rather than a thing…" (Massey 2005: 141), place is distinguished by including social narratives and meanings. The concept of 'place' therefore, extends beyond non-reflexive practices, incorporating instead purposeful social action in the form of political activities, values, norms, memories, stories and histories. This interplay between spatial materialities, socialities and culture, which transforms a generic space into a culturally charged place, is conventionally known as place-making. Place-making activities occur when we make efforts to define, understand, experience, navigate, utilise, modify or regulate what is happening in and with space. Therefore, place-making activities bridge between space and place. They draw on the, mundane practices that serve to extend or maintain local social networks through face-to-face interaction, in addition they include more purposive efforts to build a sense of meaning and belonging. Place-making then, is about the production of locality (Appadurai 1996; Feld and Baso 1996). It involves turning a seemingly generic, ambiguous, unruly or "fuzzy" site of spatial possibility into a more meaningful and social entity where we recognise ourselves in relation to others. When the everyday activities of place-making become patterned, prominent features of a locale they denote a distinctive spatial culture: a constellation of materialities and meanings that individuals recognize as familiar, plus understand as related. This is not to say places have a single, unified and unproblematic spatial culture. Anthropologists have long been aware of the provisional nature of places as 'cultural constructs', which are understood as fragile

Geographical Research, 2018

Understanding contemporary youth lifestyles is a challenge for urban planners and geographers. Young people's everyday needs are complex, and urban spaces in new outer city developments offer unique spaces for shaping their identities. Juxtaposed with affordances of digital technologies, the physical location of home exists in a fluid landscape. Overcoming obstacles, such as access to public transport, places to socialise, and meet their peers, is characteristic of the everyday young person's experience. Knowing how young people decide where to go for personal space, as well as who to ask for personal advice, was the aim of this study. The study was conducted with samples of young people growing up in the rapidly growing peri-urban northern suburbs of the Australian city of Melbourne. A survey questionnaire was administered to a gender-balanced sample aged 12-15 years (n = 523) with follow-up interviews to better inform the results. Logistic regression and factorial analyses of variance reveal their favourite places to be 'my' bedroom, being with friends, the park, and the café. Although not the focus of this study, some gender differences were noted. In addition to innovative use of space, the results show the positive influences on their well-being of trusted family and friends. Young people's geographies offer transdisciplinary insights that highlight their creative usage of these new urban spaces. They offer a new imaginary for geographical education and research.

2017

For the past eight years my colleagues and I have been working with diverse groups of young people, to understand their sense of place and use(s) of the city. Between September 2015 and November 2016 we organised and facilitated a number of workshops utilising participatory mapping techniques. The objective of the workshops was to develop our understanding of how the participants identified with their immediate physical context and with the wider city. This paper documents phase one of the ‘Mapping the City’ project. The paper also describes how participatory mapping techniques have informed my own architectural pedagogy and the practices of some of the students I have tutored.

Cartographic Perspectives

Maps to me were always about precision and accuracy. They were remarkable primarily because it gave one the ability to locate and place oneself ‘exactly’ without a doubt or a question. So it came as surprise to me, while doing my PhD fieldwork in the Kot - the walled city of Ahmedabad - that families living in the localities of Raikhad thought themselves as not part of Raikhad but that of Khadia.

This article introduces an interdisciplinary collaboration that brings together sympathetic trends in qualitative geographic visualization (from the perspective of one author who is a geographer) and contemporary generative artistic practices (from the perspective of the other author, who is an artist and theorist)—attempting to represent a diverse array of creative and multi-modal data through generative and participatory digital methods. We present how this convergence expands categories of meaning, allowing us to explore experiential/embodied as well as creative/imaginative engagements with everyday geographies distinct to a digital age. The article mediates on the idea of mapping the imagination and the ways we imagine quotidian spaces, as well as possibilities for new methods for the analysis and representation of spatial and emotional complexity. We particularly explore strategies of integrating multiple technologies and multiple-modes of representation for mapping and re-mapping complexities of social and creative living in order to help provide alternate ways to imagine, represent and engage different forms of embodied and imaginative geographies. This article presents a case study with the artist Andrew Buckles, in Seattle, Washington, correlating representational and participatory digital data including geospatial, temporal, audio, video as well as electroencephalography readings from brainwave sensors.

This article explores the connection between Cartography and Otherness, and intersects map and visual studies with the question of racial/ethnic identity. With the aim of making arguments through images, a visual/verbal text is staged to reflect on the ‘Map-Other’ connection in past and present times. Inspired by the epistemological turn from representation towards practice currently experienced within map theory, the article interrogates the various creative ways in which art, advertising, public communication and related fields enable post-representational ways of portraying maps. Public visual images of cartography can be read not only as an exposure of the firm, ideological meaning of maps, but also as illustrations of how maps work as shared, embodied and empowering objects. The treatment of maps as socialised, performed and relational thereby results in an involvement of Others as protagonists rather than subjects. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14649365.2014.998267

Educational Research for Social Change

Research supports the use of geographic information systems (GIS) to inform and direct action in geography and urban planning. As critical researchers, we also see the power of GIS in participatory projects with students to analyse power, privilege, and oppression in order to move toward action. Understanding that meaning shifts through an interplay of social, linguistic, and material interactions, GIS has the unique ability to show fluidity yet connectedness across geographic borders, providing intriguing opportunities as a research tool. Drawing on recent studies of GIS in research, we recognise the potential to build understanding of spatial context as both socially and politically constructed, but also the tendency to see a map as bounded data in finality. We argue here the importance to return the data back to the material itself in order to avoid reifying a flat, discursive representation of the material without claiming agency. Through the planning of a participatory project with GIS as a research tool, we consider the implications, cautions, and potential of using GIS as a fluid and incomplete representation of a moment in time and space that is also a path moving toward something else.

The study of socio-spatial representations 1 of Paris, carried out by Milgram and Jodelet in the mid-seventies, launched a line of inquiry whose contributions to Social Representation Theory (SRT) have borne fruit to this day. Since this study, geographical space has become an object of investigation in the field of social representation, giving rise to reflection on a range of topics: social memory anchored in space (Haas, 1999;; the urban experiences of residents of large metropolitan areas that oscillate between a traditional historical past and a modernity that threatens the vestiges of the past ; urban mobility (Abric and Morin, 1992); tourist images of visitors to the large European cities (de Rosa and D'Ambrosio, 2010); the social imaginaries that emerge in speech and cartographic maps of territories on different geographical scales (Arruda and Alba,