1. Mapping and Diagramming
the City:
Rethinking cities in the 21st century: in
the wake of chaotic growth and universal
expansion of cities and megacities
around the world.
We need to become experimental by
playing with different ‘models’ and
methods of studying the city
Mapping and diagramming are two
methods of exploring the open-ended
complexity that is descriptive of the
contemporary urban terrain.
But what is a map and what is a
diagram? How is information
represented?
James Corner Field Operations

2. Diagrams: visualization can play a key role in the processes of understanding that take
place before form-making begins. *Diagrams” Visible Language 26, 3 & 4 (Summer/Autumn, 1993): 451 – 73. Vijay K.
Sivasankaran and Charles L. Owen, “Data Exploration: Transition Operation in Dynamic +
Tufte made Minard’s “Figuration Map famous in his 1983 book The Visual Display of
Quantitative Information. It shows the successive losses of men in the French army during
the Russian Campaign 1812 – 1813. It took him a long time to assemble the data: city data,
temperature data, the army data [survival, direction of movement, group] simplifying all
events; utilize thickness of lines to represent overall troop size therefore correlating troop
movements with temperature, and survival rates as well as direction of advance or retreat.

3. Flowchart: It was John von Neumann (1903 – 57) who
identified the key components of the computer as an
information processor. (central processing unit,
memory to store information, and an input/output
device for bringing information into and out of the
machine)
He also developed the ‘flow diagram’ that charts the
course of information transfers and operations
Flow charts are dynamic and narrative: they describe
an actively pursued process with a clear beginning and
-- a sequential progression towards a specified goal.
In a directed graph the relations between points, the
flows of energy or the circulation of things between
points is the issue: be they goods, people, vehicles,
soldiers, or flows of water, energy, messages and
information.

4. Mapping the Urban Network:
One of the oldest flow charts is the
Peutingeriana map laying out roads
between cities --- depicting a Roman
postal system. Rome was the axis of this
entire system of intersections. Only one
level needed since no other system
intersected this one
The Tabula Peutingeriana or Peutinger
Map is a thirteenth-century reproduction
of one of the wonders of Roman
geographical scholarship, a map showing
the world from Morocco, Spain and Thule
(?) in the West to India and Sri Lanka in the
East. The most remarkable part is the
depiction of the main roads of the empire

5. Harry Beck’s map depicts stations, straight line segments connecting them, and the River
Thames; lines ran only vertically, horizontally, or on 45 degree diagonals. To make the map
clearer and to emphasize connections, Beck differentiated between ordinary stations (marked
with tick marks) and interchanges (marked with diamonds). The Underground was initially
skeptical of his proposal — it was an uncommissioned spare-time project, and it was
tentatively introduced to the public in a small pamphlet in 1933
The basic design concepts have been widely adopted for other network maps around the
world, especially that of mapping topologically rather than geographically.

6. Rome of Sixtus V (1585 – 1590)
Medieval Rome was a place of
pilgrimage – not a large city but a city of
disorderly streets and meanderings
ways. Sixtus V ploughed straight new
streets through old neighborhoods and
open countryside to provide links
between the major sections of the city
where the major basilicas lay: to
facilitate the movement of pilgrims
between the major religious sites and to
accommodate the new mode of travel
by coach, and to allow goods and
services to flow more freely through and
about the city,

7. In the Renaissance mathematics begins to rule the figuration of the city – linear perspective
and the grid effect of cartography control the accuracy of the view in this ideal city c 1470
[National Gallery Urbino]
-A perspectival grid and outlines of buildings in minute detail with bilateral symmetry
--A utopian view: an urban order ruled by the principles of linear perspective based on
horizontal lines, vanishing and distance point and the resulting grid of orthogonals and
horizontals.
--the urban environment is given center stage: considered utopian because the idea of
implementation was an unreal expectation, it was merely visionary of what might happen
one day, when perfection could be attained.

8. Leonardo da Vinci’s 1502 Map of Imola:
based on the use of a horizontal surveying
disk which allowed for accurate measuring
of spatial dimensions of land and its objects.
One of the first scaled and accurately
measured maps from the Renaissance.
It is a mathematical abstraction of spatial
reality.
Called ichnographic city plan from Greek
“iknos” meaning tracing or outlining and
“graphein” to write.
Isotropic space; uniform and continuous in all directions – utilizing a plurality of
hypothetical viewpoints all drawn perpendicular to the surface of the map.
The city plan becomes the mode of cartographic documentation for the
subsequent representation of European cities.

9. Kleanthes and Schaubert’s First plan of Athens 1833

10. These maps accompanied Booth’s Life
and Labour of the People of London
(1899) the first systematic a block by
block investigation.
There appears to be a relative amount
of mixing of classes across the city with
poverty concentrated near the river
Thames and great wealth towards the
West End of London.
London appeared to be unreadable,
everything mixed up.
Charles Booth’s London Map (1899)
color-coding of social classes in London --
yellow is upper middle and upper
classes, red is middle and well-to-do
class, pink is fairly comfortable , good
earners, and blue is poor…. Black is
‘criminal class’ of slum dwellers

11. Maps determine the manner in which we perceive reality and hence influence actions.
Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Airocean World Map of 1943: cuts the earth into triangular
facets that are then unfolded as a flat polyhedron. Both northern and southern poles are
presented frontally and with little distortion. The map can be unfolding and re-oriented in a
number of different ways, Different places and regions are seen in different sets of
relationships [James Corner]

12. Joaquin Torres Garcia Inverted
Map of South America 1943.
Places the south at the top of
the map inverting the
convention of map making
established during the Age of
Discovery, when the center of
the earth shifted from the
Mediterranean and the Holy
Lands to the Atlantic ocean.
This map upsets normal view of
the world map from a Euro-
centric viewpoint.

13. The map of Paris, entitled “The Naked City” published summer of 1957, the creation of
Guy Debord just before the Situationist International was formed. His concerns: how is
space constructed and how does space affect the perception of users of urban space?
The Map: 19 cut-out sections of a map of Paris, printed in black and white ink with
directional arrows painted in red. It subverts the image of a map, destroys the
omnipresent view from nowhere – instead it tries to spatialize movement, actions around
certain psychological hubs.

14. Illustration of psychogeographical turntables:
describes the function of the red arrows by
comparing them to a railroad turntable --- the arrows
representing the spontaneous turns of direction
taken by a person moving through ‘different
atmospheres of Paris’, or any other city, in disregard
to the normal connections that ordinarily govern
one’s conduct. The railroad can only run on fixed
tacks, so too the subject under the reign of
capitalism, but turning tables or the turntable is also
a pun on playing tricks.
Each segment of the map is a ‘unity of atmosphere’ ,
a place of special attractions --- The title in red
letters is an appropriation of American film noir 1948
set in New York City and filmed in documentary style
[director Jules Dassin] it starred the landmark streets
and buildings so too the map’s cut-out segments star
Luxembourg Gardens, Les Halles, Gare de Lyon, etc. ]
In 1955 the structure of Paris was an obstacle that
offered tiny clues to a future organization of life.

15. The city map or city plan became an ideogram of how geometry measures and controls our
perception of what is the ‘urban’, ‘the world’, the ‘cityscape’. Maps project a power/knowledge.
Now there are revisions to this process of mapping the city as a creative practice: replacing the
map as a process that mathematically abstracts from reality with a process that engenders new
ways of viewing and mapping reality.
Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of Mapping in A
thousand Plateaus: 12 “The map is open and connectable
in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible,
susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn,
reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by
an individual, group, or social formation. It can be drawn
on a wall. Conceived as a work of art, constructed as a
political action or as a meditation.”
They oppose mapping to tracing [i.e. the ichnographic
method]: the latter is closed in upon itself, propagating
redundancies while a mapping is open-ended ,
experimental, unfolding. It reformulates what already
exists: looking for hidden logics underneath apparent
forces [not just topography, rivers, roads, buildings but
wind and sun, local stories and historical events,
Tracing Summer Jonathan Kline
regulatory forces and programmatic structures.”

16. James Corner states in the “Agency of
Mapping” there is a double-sided
characteristic of all maps to be both an
analogue and an abstraction.
He notes “First, their surfaces are directly
analogous to actual ground conditions; as
horizontal planes, they record the surface of
the earth as direct impressions. …. One can
put one’s finger on a map and trace out a
particular route or itinerary, the map
projecting a mental image into the spatial
imagination ….
By contrast, the other side of this analogous
characteristic is the inevitable abstractness of
maps, the result of selection, omission,
Thus a map is the surface where isolation, distance and codification. Map
facts and conditions are collected, devices such as frame, scale, orientation, and
sorted, related to each other and projection, indexing and naming reveal
explored. artificial geographies that remains
unavailable to human eyes.” *Corner “Agency”: 215+

17. FIELD OPERATIONS
Photo: Darrel Ronald
James Corner: operational structures of mapping
The Field:= a continuous surface, the paper on the table, any analogue equivalent of the actual
ground flattened and scaled.
The Graphic System:= the symbols imposed on the field
The Extracts: things and events observed, selected and then drawn on the field
Plotting: drawing out new and latent relationships among the various extracts. “To plot is to
track, to trace, to set-in-relation, to find and to found.” *James corner “Agency”: 230.+

18. Rem Koolhaas indirectly called for a
new mode of mapping in the
‘Generic City’. “The stronger the
identity [of a city], the more it
imprisons, the more it resists
expansion, interpretation, renewal,
contradiction.…“ Koolhaas SMLXL: 1248.
Layering: superimposition of
independent layers of information
constructs a field/ site – in which
notions of centering, bounding,
finished product are gone. Instead
open-endedness, indeterminacy,
complexity allow many different
interpretations.
Each layer has a system of
organization, an array of overlappings
or stacks of these layers creates a
series of interactions or amalgam of
relationships
Rem Koolhaas Yokohama mapping SMLX

19. Raoul Bumschoten and “Chora Manifesto” Daidalos 72 (1999): 42 –
51.
1st skin of earth wraps the earth, shaped
by geological forces
2nd skin of earth are cities: this skin is so
complex that we need a new tool box, a
new practice to construct and manage
cities.
What forces shape the second skin? Need
to understand these proto-urban
conditions that are likened to emotions in
human beings: subliminal conditions that
strongly affect physical states and
behavior.
“Love, life, weather and seasons ripple the
second skin. But new techniques of
knowing and moving create different
ripples, pulses… The effect is a fluid
urbanity hard to express through static
models or identities. Increasingly, the city’s
only definable form, its only clear identity,
can be found in the manner in which its
changes evolve.”

20. The Networked City
“It is not that networks were not around before or that the structure
of the brain has changed. It is that network has become a common
form that tends to define our ways of understanding the world and
acting in it.” [Hardt and Negri, Multitudes]

21. Rethinking Networks: “Today the Mediterranean is no longer -if ever it was- a large and liquid
quot;lieu de rencontrequot;. It is no longer the generic space of a network of relations that unites distant
peoples linked by a common geographical condition; the quot;cradlequot; of different yet connected
cultures; a mobile and 'soft' area of hybridization, encounter, blending of traditions, cultures and
costumes. The Mediterranean is today a hard, solid space, ploughed by precise routes that move
from equally defined points: from Valona to Brindisi, from Malta to Portopalo, from Algeria to
Marseilles, from Suez to Gibraltar.” *Multiplicities 2002+

22. Solid Sea and Multiplicity: From: quot;Stefano boeriquot; <s.boeri {AT} iol.it> 2002 SOLID SEA
Documenta 11 - Kassel - June 8th until September 15th 2002
With “Solid Sea”, multiplicity intends to promote research into the new nature of the
Mediterranean, and to draw out an up to date atlas of its landscapes and the turbulence that
crosses it. The research on the “Solid Sea” starts introducing at Kassel “Solid Sea case 01 ¯ the
Ghost Ship”, the first case of the new research.
Multiplicity invites architects, artists, geographers, anthropologists, film makers to propose
stories and “phenomena” about the recent conditions of the Mediterranean and to take part to
the project.
Dear friends, We would like
you to join us for a public
seminar where artists,
geographers, photographers,
thinkers, architects, film
makers, photographers, social
scientists and curators will
discuss at a roundtable the new
conditions of the
Mediterranean Sea. Taking Case
01- The Ghost Ship (produced
on the occasion of Documenta
11) as a starting point, the new
geopolitical asset of the
Mediterranean Sea will be
debated.
Multiplicity: Stefano Boeri
Maddalena Bregani Francisca
Insulza Francesco Jodice
Giovanni La Varra John
Palmesino Palo Vari Maki
Gherzi Giovanni Maria Bellu

23. Identities
“Today, whoever enters into Mediterranean acquires, even if temporarily, a stable identity:
immigrant, fisherman, military, tourist on a cruise, oil derrick worker, seaside tourist ... the
�costume� will not be abandoned until the end of the journey across the water. Only
afterwards is it possible to, once again, take up those uncertain, shifting and multiple identities
that today characterise the citizens of the globalised world.
Not in the Mediterranean: you are either a tourist, or you are an immigrant; you either
transport containers, or use dragnets; routes can cross, overlap, yet rarely blend. And if and
when this does occur, it is only by accident: a short circuit that puts the different, yet coexisting,
depths of sea into contact one with each other. Unforeseen events that suddenly unite distinct
populations and isolated �corridors�: bombs dropped by NATO fighter planes and recovered
by oil derrick workers on the floor of the Adriatic Sea; Asiatic mussels attached to the hulls of
container ships; clandestine immigrants� corpses found in the nets of Sicilian fishermen...
Only then, does the Sea show itself in its three-dimensional power, in its immense and vague
volume. A Sea that is able to cover up tragic stories for years and yet make them reappear by
surrendering a small clue.
Today the Mediterranean is a Solid Sea where, with incredible growing density and often at
various depths, the planned trajectories of exacerbated identities graze one another. A part of
the world that appears to be counter-current.”
[http://www.ecn.org/lists/hackit99/200208/msg00133.html]

24. In the 19th century “… the network became ‘the entanglement of objects
dispersed in lines’ and the term would be applied essentially to railways,
roads, and canals as well as the telegraph. Its meaning became fixed around
1849.” *Armand Mattelart+

25. The modern city is made up of intersecting
networks ---[water, gas, electricity, cable, mail,
telephone subways, bus lines, road systems, etc.]
some transmit information, some energy -- but
they all represent forms of information or
communication.
And there are networks between cities which
overlap upon other networks --- railroads.
highway systems, and inter- intra-city networks.

26. Manuel Castells has been studying the shift from industrial to postindustrial society--- and the
creation of the network society where production depends on the ability to generate, process
and apply knowledge based information systems.
This mode of production again effects spatial relationships, power relations, and everyday
experiences and sets up a new problematic: how to understand and describe the space of
flows along a set of interconnected nodes, which results in the network society.
Mapping the flows of goods,
people, diseases, and the like
between cities and countries
has long been an important
part of cartography. If you look
in any good atlas you will find a
range of different flow maps,
but what you won't see are
maps of the communication
flows of the Net. This is
because no one really knows,
comprehensively and reliably,
how much information and
communications flows
between cities and countries
and few people have tried to
map these flows.

27. Look at any map of Europe, the space is divided into states, each
clearly delineated by linear boundary lines and blocked out from
adjacent areas by separate colors. In such a representation the
state is a unified territorial concept, a spatial container of people
and political authority.
.
A network, on the other hand, configures
countries as a flat horizontal field of circulatory
movement: lines drawn across the land or through
the air, flows of messages, people, or ideas across
points in space.
So it is argued networks and processes have
replaced older cartographic conventions of
location analysis and fixity in place One group that
tries to map the space of flows is TeleGeography
producing this flow map of the Net based on the
volume of international telephone traffic between
nations.

28. Since the mid 19th century communications networks have spun ever larger cities and
geographies with ever larger investments of physical capital: infrastructure in roads, bridges,
skyscrapers, houses, cities and suburbs--- telegraph system, radio and television transmitters,
cable and satellite TV, mainframe computers
Titan City 1920s
Cities and suburbs helped to create the mass media model of communication: spreading fixed
costs over larger geographical areas to ever-larger audiences: TV series, recorded music, movies

29. The Internet radically changes the mass media model of communication --- there are
thousands and thousands of independent producers of information, coexisting without knowing
each other, yet their distributed unrelated efforts are coordinated --- through Google
algorithm or some other algorithm – into a huge question and answer apparatus.
Wikipedia , for example, is a multilingual encyclopedia coauthored by 50,000 volunteers.

30. How does all this effect geography – or space and time?
In the 1990s and the early 2000s, advances in computers and telecommunications, and the
spread of the Internet, compounded the idea that distance and location were no longer relevant
concepts.
The 'end of geography' (O'Brien 1992), or the 'death of distance' (Cairncross 2001; The
Economist, 30 September 1995), received front coverage from magazines and books. Cyber-
utopianism even predicted the end of the city (Negroponte 1995).

31. “Mapping has emerged in the information age as a means to make the complex accessible, the
hidden visible, the unmappable mappable. As we struggle to steer through the torrent of data
unleashed by the Internet, and to situate ourselves in a world in which commerce and
community have been redefined in terms of networks, mapping has become a way of making
sense of things.” Janet Abrams and Peter Hall Else/Where: Mapping – New Cartographies of Networks and Territories (Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Design Institute, 2006):
Using the map as an interface to
geographic and other data sets – a
visual bridge between disparate facts.
Where are you? -- iphone, blackberry,
facebook – which space defines your
location?
How is time, memory, emotion
navigated via mapping?

32. Overview: “PDPal is an ongoing series of public art
projects for the Palm™ PDA, mobile phone and the
web. It has pushed at the notion of mapping,
attempting to transform your everyday activities and
urban experiences into a dynamic city that you write.
PDPal engages the user through a visual transformation
that is meant to highlight the way technologies that
locate and orient are often static and without
reference to the lively nature of urban cultural
environments.
Your own city is the city composed of the places you
live, play, work, and remember. It is made of the routes
and paths through which you make connections. Your
city is also about the meanings you ascribe to the
places you inhabit, pass through, love or hate. You
imagine those places and routes as more than a street
address, or directions you may give. These places have
vivid, metaphorical meanings and histories that PDPal
allows you to capture and visualize imaginatively,
effectively writing your imaginary city.”<www.o-
matic.com/play/pdpal>

33. INFO “'Life: a user's manual' is a series of
public performances and online mappings
that examine the hidden stories captured
by private wireless CCTV streams and how
they intersect with the visible world around
us….Private use of wireless internet,
cordless phones, Bluetooth and wireless
surveillance cameras has turned the
average consumer into 'micro-broadcasters'
who transmit personal narratives through
the airwaves. The culmination of these
autonomous and synchronous acts
contributes to an invisible, ad-hoc network
of media overlaid within the socially
codified spaces of urban environments, the
café, the home, the apartment building, the
office, the store, the bar, the hallway, the
entrance, the parking lot and the street. “
<http://www.ubermatic.org/life>

34. Cinema and the City: the mobile
camera, the editing techniques, narrative
conventions, representation of space
offer cinematic, televisual, video
perceptions of the space of the city.
Cinema can be looked at as a mapping
process: mediation of place, of spatial
complexities, of conflicting information,
of hybrid locations.
Maps also appear in most films and a
film is a kind of mapping that plots and
captures the imagination of the viewer. A
film sets up ‘locational imaging’,
establishing a fictional territory to
explore – it is a cartographic diagram.