Mapping as Community Defense.md

Mapping as Community Defense

Facilitator: Evan Tachovsky

Motivation

From Evan; Cleveland, OH

"Blockchain based city" initiative

Cleveland captured by tech advancement at the cost of the local environment

Repeating pattern

Large-scale corridor sanctioning large quantities of land for blockchain initiative

→ How can we explain what this abstract thing is that’s going to change communities?

→ Using maps as an instrument to navigate a place in multiple dimensions

→ A map as a general tool to distill complexity

→ How do we surface harm and communicate those dynamics?

→ Who are you making this map for?

Maps are made to target audience interests

Topics of Concern:

• Conflict between arctic nations surrounding trade routes and ownership of North Pole for possession of natural resource.

  • Shifting environment

  • Remote modelling of complex natural and political environments

  • Colonial interests in natural resources

  • Harmful effect on indigenous peoples

• "Rad measurement" in SW states for uranium mining

  • Privacy

  • Surveillance

  • Tools and education

  • Harmful effects on indigenous people and how to effectively communicate tool use and benefits

  • Maps as dual use technology

• How are graphs and charts like maps?

  • Bias manifestation

• "Opportunity Zones"

  • Census tracts that meet congressional requirements for incentive structures

    • Promote economics development

    • Gives tools for others to optimize on (+ and -)

• Maps as abstract systems

  • How do we choose what information to display?

  • What can we show? Should we even show it?

  • "If a map were 1:1 it wouldn’t be a map; it wouldn’t serve a purpose

  • Concern of stacking biases

  • Power and trust are dynamic and depend on varying levels of expertise at each point of a map’s use

    • How can we make these dynamics visible and accessible?

    • Ex. Algorithmic distribution of resources in low-income communities; disastrous

  • Natural, organic, and emergent growth of community support systems to communicate complex information

PIVOT → Maps that are not cartographic

Mapping as artifact distillation to communicate understanding

• Wardley Mapping

  • Understanding value and evolution to meet needs

• "What makes a map?"

  • Let’s expand our allowed definition to senses beyond the visual

• "Should maps require a call to action?"

  • Should relate to navigation

    • Ex. Songlines by Aboriginal people

  • Not how to pack in a call of action, but to be aware of conclusions that are being drawn by even making a map in the first place

What would it look like if we mapped problems from the perspective of our communities

[BREAKOUT INTO MAP GROUPS]

Isa’s Notes:

Cleveland —> industrial city

"steel instead of rivers"

Maps as an instrument that interacts with navigation and history of a place

How can one represent the scope of maps ?

Environmental-Computational- Civic Issues & creating maps that manifest these dynamics.

How does one map ?

**Conflicts happening in the arctic

→ Extraction of resources following consequences of global warming [arctic needs to be divided so that this extraction can be distributed

→ Claiming of territory (indigenous communities not feeling the need to ‘claim’ land)

Professional practice of making maps allows for specific intentions for their map

What does it mean to make maps with and for indigenous communities?

**Uranium radiation -->How can mapping be a way for people to come together and make action?

→ How do you map in a way that is encrypted?

→ How can mapping allow for BETTER communication?

→ Pre-programmed softwares are ONLY instrument to make maps?

**Graphs/Charts VS Maps

→ Languages of binning/bordering in maps and graphs

**Maps as a dual - use technology ( "a map can be used for discrimination but also for opportunities for people" )

Questions of accessibility

*Maps are inherently ‘bias’ (only visualise what the author/whoever makes them decides to put on that map)

→ Part of the challenge of a map is that it is always an abstraction of the topography/physicality of a place

→ Are there ways to manage this ‘fairly’?

POWER DYNAMICS involved in map-making

-->Trust between algorithm/maker of algorithm and the user (Power dynamics shift depending on who uses a map)

-->How do you make maps understandable for people who are not ‘experts’?

**COMMUNITIES OF SUPPORT for health workers that can create maps to understand hierarchies involved in a complex system of players and algorithms.

Non-Cartographic Maps

"Distills complexity of a journey"

Create artifacts that may be in different forms such as a song?

What constitutes a non-cartographic map?

Worlding Maps (a hierarchical mapping of nodes to extrapolate evolution and systems of value)

Similar to systems thinking?

**Maps that are not visual:

Auditory maps?

Texture/Tactile maps?Maps for the disabled? Can maps be a call to action?

Or Do maps HAVE to have a call to action?