Mapping the City
Counter Mapping and Critical Geography




Sumandro Chattapadhyay
ajantriks.net
Kote, 1792
Kote, 1791
The World on Mercator’s Projection, W.G. Blackie, 1860
Serio-Comic War Map, Fred W. Rose, 1877
A Serio-Comic Map of Europe, John Bull and his Friends, 1900
Humorous Diplomatic Atlas of Europe and Asia, Kisaburo Ohara, 1904
The Prussian Octopus, 1915
Russia in 2008, Graeme Mackay, 2008
Rose Diagram, Florence Nightingale, 1858
Cholera Map by John Snow, 1854
Napoleon’s March by C.J. Minard, 1861
Internal Migration in USA by Jon Bruner, 2011
David McCandless, 2009
Africa Map by Kai Krause, 2010
The Economist, 2011
World Economy Cartogram, UNEP, 2000
Road Network, BBMP
Water Bodies, Greater Bangalore
Gorakhpur, Municipality GIS
Google Maps
Google Earth
London Bike Share Map, Oliver O’brien
Local Vs. Tourists, New York, Eric Fischer, 2010
Local Vs. Tourists, Tokyo, Eric Fischer, 2010
Live Singapore! by MIT SENSEable City Lab, 2011
openstreetmap.org
Humanitarian OSM
Humanitarian OSM
Ushahidi
MapKibera
Kibera on Google Maps
Guide Pychogéographique de Paris, Guy Debord, 1957
London Map, Stephen Walter
London Map, Stephen Walter
iSEE, Institute for Applied Autonomy
Greenwich Emotion Map, Christian Nold
Greenwich Emotion Map, Christian Nold
Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities
Opportunities:

[1] Aggregation
[2] Spatial ordering
[3] Comparison
[4] Pattern discovery
Opportunities:

[1] Aggregation
[2] Spatial ordering
[3] Comparison
[4] Pattern discovery
Opportunities:

[1] Aggregation
[2] Spatial ordering
[3] Comparison
[4] Pattern discovery
Opportunities:

[1] Aggregation
[2] Spatial ordering
[3] Comparison
[4] Pattern discovery
Reminders:

[1] Map as worldview
[2] Map as proposition
[3] Mapping ≠ mapmaking
[4] Royal and nomadic maps
Reminders:

[1] Map as worldview
[2] Map as proposition
[3] Mapping ≠ mapmaking
[4] Royal and nomadic maps
Reminders:

[1] Map as worldview
[2] Map as proposition
[3] Mapping ≠ mapmaking
[4] Royal and nomadic maps
Reminders:

[1] Map as worldview
[2] Map as proposition
[3] Mapping ≠ mapmaking
[4] Royal and nomadic maps
“
In the last few years cartography has been slipping from
the control of the powerful elites that have exercised
dominance over it for several hundred years. These elites —
the great map houses of the west, the state, and to a lesser
extent academics — have been challenged by two
important developments. First, the actual business of
mapmaking, of collecting spatial data and mapping it out,
is passing out of the hands of the experts. The ability to
make a map, even a stunning interactive 3D map, is
now available to anyone with a home computer and
an internet connection.

‘An introduction to Critical Cartography’
Jeremy Crampton & John Krygier
“
[Continued] Cartography’s latest “technological transition”
is not so much a question of new mapping software but a
mixture of “open source” collaborative tools, mobile mapping
applications, and geotagging. While this trend has been
apparent to industry insiders for some time, a more social
theoretic critique, which we argue is a political one, situates
maps within specific relations of power and not as neutral
scientific documents. One might expect a critique of the
politics of mapping to weaken the power of the map and to
work against a transition [towards] putting maps into more
people’s hands. But just the opposite has happened. If the
map is a specific set of power-knowledge claims, then
not only the state but others could make competing and
equally powerful claims.

‘An introduction to Critical Cartography’
Jeremy Crampton & John Krygier
Courtesy:
Al Jazeera, BBMP, Cedar Grove Institute for
Sustainable Communities, Christian Nold,
Eric Fischer, Foreign Policy, Global Security,
Google Maps and Earth, India Urban Portal,
Indian Institute of Science, InformationIsBeautiful.net,
Institute for Applied Autonomy, Jon Bruner / Forbes,
Kai Krause, MapKibera, miklianmaps.com,
MIT SENSEable City Lab, Oliver O’Brien,
OpenStreetMap.org, Stephen Walter, Strange Maps,
The Economist, UC Santa Barbara, UNEP, Ushahidi,
WikiMedia Commons.

Sumandro Chattapadhyay
ajantriks.net

sumandro_mapping the_city_27032012