1st Edition
Mapping Narratives, Practices and Spatial Inquiry
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 chapters examine mapping as both representational and generative, spanning participatory mapping in informal settlements, film-based documentation of marginalised geographies, embodied cartographies, and data-driven analysis. Organised into five parts, “Representation,” “Critical Cartographies,” “Mapping Belonging,” “Performative Cartographies,” and “Data Mapping”, the volume highlights methodological and layered dimensions of contemporary mapping. By interrogating traditional cartography, the book emphasises 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.
Mapping: Narratives, practices, and spatial inquiry
Gihan Karunaratne
PART I Representation: The Map as a Transformational Device
1. The Revenge of the Straight Line: Smooth and Striated Space in Thomas Pynchon’s 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 (University of Toronto)
3. Harvest Mapping
Graeme Brooker, Patrick Quinn (Royal College of Arts), and Joe Trickett (Manchester Metropolitan University)
PART 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 (University College London) and Doreen Bernath (Architectural Association)
5. Outside the Baselines: Mapping Hidden Stories in the Postcolonial Colombo
Gihan Karunaratne, Jagath Munasinghe (University of Moratuwa) and Youcao Ren (Sheffield University)
6. Cartography and Mercantile Port Cities in Early Modern Asia: Goa, Batavia, Macau, and Nagasaki
K.B. Izac Tsai (Architectural Association)
7. Cartographic and Filmic Topographies: The Case of Tehran
Hamideh Farahmandian and François Penz (University of Cambridge)
PART 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 (University of Oxford)
11. Risky Environments: Transect Investigations in the FEMA Floodplain
Kira Clingen (Harvard University)
PART IV Performative Cartographies: Embodied and Ephemeral Practices
12. Mapping and Its Projective Multi-Dimensionality
Marc Schoonderbeek (TU Delft)
13. Mapping the Everyday
Heidi Saarinen
14. Performative Cartographies: Capturing Ephemerality through Notational Drawing
Angeliki Sakellariou
PART V Mapping with Data
15. Mapping as a Lens to Address Complex Problems
Ed Parham (Space Syntax)
16. Inferring Data through Mapping
Luigi Pintacuda (University of Hertfordshire) and Silvio Carta (University of Greenwich)
17. Overcoming Embedded Logics in Data: Requisite Imagination and Authorship in the Process of Mapping
Anthony Vanky (Columbia University)
Biography
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.
