Mapping has evolved beyond navigation into a method for interpreting spatial, ephemeral, and sociopolitical dimensions of contemporary life. This volume explores how cartographic practices are being reimagined across disciplines to understand and reconfigure urban space.
Mapping has evolved beyond navigation into a method for interpreting spatial, ephemeral, and sociopolitical dimensions of contemporary life. This volume explores how cartographic practices are being reimagined across disciplines to understand and reconfigure urban space.
The essays examine mapping as both representational and generative, spanning participatory mapping in informal settlements, film-based documentation of marginalized geographies, embodied cartographies, and data-driven analysis. Organized into five sections—Representation, Critical Cartographies, Mapping Belonging, Performative Cartographies, and Data Mapping—the collection highlights methodological and layered dimensions of contemporary mapping. By interrogating traditional cartography, the book emphasizes maps' role in constructing social realities and navigating contested urban terrains. Contributors demonstrate mapping as an engagement practice that reveals hidden geographies, amplifies marginal voices, and reimagines spaces.
This volume challenges readers to reconsider mapping as an interdisciplinary practice and mode of inquiry that can transform our understanding of complex environments and social dynamics. It will be of interest to researchers and students of urban design, architecture, planning, human geography, politics, and sociology.
Introduction (Gihan Karunaratne) Section I. Representation: The Map as a
Transformational Device
1. The Revenge of the Straight Line: Smooth and
Striated Space in Thomas Pynchons Mason and Dixon (Sean Griffiths)
(University of Westminster/ Modern Architect/Fashion Architecture Taste)
2.
Maps as Mediations: Space, Ideology, and the Politics of Representation
(Kanishka Goonewardena)
3. Harvest Mapping (Graeme Brooker, Patrick Quinn and
Joe Trickett)Section II. Mapping and Counter-Mapping: Critical Cartographies
of Power and Place
4. Mapping Us and the Empathetic City: Nigel Coates in
conversation with Tom Dyckhoff - edited and introduced by Doreen Bernath
(Nigel Coates, Tom Dyckhoff and Doreen Bernath)
5. Outside the baselines:
Mapping hidden stories in the Postcolonial Colombo (Gihan Karunaratne, Jagath
Munasinghe and Youcao Ren)
6. Cartography and mercantile port cities in Early
Modern Asia: Goa, Batavia, Macau, and Nagasaki (K.B. Izac Tsai)
7.
Cartographic and Filmic Topographies The Case of Tehran (Hamideh
Farahmandian and François Penz) Section III. Mapping Belonging: Community,
Culture, and Identity
8. Community mapping of informal settlements:
Experiences from Maputo, Mozambique (Remígio Chilaule, Gustavo Ribeiro,
Cristina Henriques and Johan Mottelson)
9. Community, Culture, and Space:
Mapping Belonging Through Participatory Art in Urban Contexts (Azadeh
Fatehrad)
10. Mapping Health: Auditing Healthy New Towns in the UK (David
Howard and Hannah Grove)
11. Risky Environments: Transect Investigations in
the FEMA Floodplain (Kira Clingen) Section IV. Performative Cartographies:
Embodied and Ephemeral Practices
12. Mapping and its Projective
Multi-Dimensionality (Marc Schoonderbeek)
13. Mapping the everyday (Heidi
Saarinen)
14. Performative Cartographies: Capturing ephemerality through
notational drawing (Angeliki Sakellariou) Section V. Mapping with Data
15.
Mapping as a Lens to Address Complex Problems (Ed Parham)
16. Inferring data
through Mapping (Luigi Pintacuda and Silvio Carta)
17. Overcoming Embedded
Logics: Requisite Imagination and Authorship in the Process of Mapping
(Anthony Vanky)
Gihan Karunaratne is an architect and academic whose research engages critically with urban transformation, spatial justice, and informal urbanisms, particularly in the Global South. His work explores the intersection of urban change and the lived experiences of marginalised communities, emphasising the socio-spatial dynamics of informality and resilience. Karunaratne foregrounds often-overlooked dimensions of urban life, offering insights into the structural inequalities that shape contemporary cities. His publications with Routledge, including Informal Settlement of the Global South, Resilient Urbanism, and Displaced Urbanism, contribute significantly to scholarly discourse on architecture, urban design, and the complexities of precarity in rapidly evolving urban contexts.
