For a nocturnal cartography: writing the story of territories that don’t fit on the map

Abstract

Since the 19th century, a science has been constantly rationalizing urban landscapes and territories in accordance to economic demands. The urbanism was born, at this time, as a speech of truth which, in order to shape and standardize the space, had tried to sanitize it at any cost, removing the elements that were considered undesirables. Amongst these elements, the poorest inhabitants were evicted out of the central areas, divergent ways of thinking and occupying the space were silenced. Nevertheless, alternative forms of social urban life never cease to emerge between the lines of the master plan, filling the vacuum left in urban spaces after each evictions. As such, cities remain a place of permanent conflict and struggle around different visions of spatial occupation and relationship with the territory. There conflicts and contradictions, however, are overlooked in modern cartography, the official way of spatial representation, instead looking at how to render the space more homogenous, in line with the ideal of urbanism. Drawing on recent experiences of collective production of knowledge and the idea of co research, this articles discusses the possibility of a multi authored cartography, which could underline the political dimension of space, as well as the other urbanity, silenced and systematically rejected to the hidden corners of the map.