Mapping urban assemblages: the production of spatial knowledge

Abstract

This paper engages with the ontology and epistemology of urban mapping. While geographical information system (GIS) and other digital technologies have long transformed the capacities for representation of urban data, this paper explores the capacity of mapping to produce new ways of seeing, understanding, planning and designing the city. With a primary focus on urban morphology, distinctions and overlaps between mapping, diagramming, planning and designing are articulated within a framework of assemblage thinking. Through cases drawn from urban design research, we analyse the mapping of political conflict, transport flows, functional mix and informal settlement. It is argued that urban mapping is a form of spatial knowledge production that is often diagrammatic, embodying a spatial logic that cannot be reduced to words and numbers. Urban mapping constructs interconnections between the ways the city is perceived, conceived and lived; and it can reveal capacities for urban transformation – the city as a space of possibility.