Academic literature on the topic 'Socio-spatial cartography'

Blackgirls have a long subaltern legacy of being geographers. We have complicated the settler-colonial project of cartography uniquely through our radical placemaking efforts towards achieving safety, inclusion, and liberation. In this autoethnographic article, I trace my own socio-spatial-sensory reflections that I experienced during my visit to Harriet Tubman’s Homeplace, Senior Home, and Grave Site in Auburn, New York. I attempt to unsettle the undertheorized renderings of Tubman by interrogating her personal freedom dreams, liberation geography, and womanist cartography. I then map the intergenerational solidarity that Blackgirls have forged with Tubman more contemporarily through their own space making. I conclude by unpacking what ontological lessons both knowledge producers and organizers can glean from Tubman’s geographic sacredness and savvy.

<p class="Abstracttext-VITRUVIOCxSpFirst">Socio-residential vulnerability is one of currently increasing challenges for cities and metropolitan areas in addressing the interaction between the vulnerable resident population and the need to improve the building stock, particularly after the financial crisis of 2008 and the consequent regression of public investments.</p><p class="Abstracttext-VITRUVIOCxSpFirst">Recent studies have measured and described the levels of vulnerability in the city of Barcelona and their results highlight socio-spatial similarities between urban fabrics that happen to be morphologically, historically and geographically very different.</p><p class="Abstracttext-VITRUVIOCxSpFirst">The present research focuses on the assessment of physical and social shortcomings of vulnerable areas in the city of Barcelona. With this purpose, a sample of buildings in some of the most vulnerable neighbourhoods are statistically analysed through a set of variables at building scale related to both the need of improvement of residential existing buildings and the characteristics of their inhabitants.</p><p class="Abstracttext-VITRUVIOCxSpFirst">An extensive sample of cases is described through several profiles according to the simultaneity of indicators both from a physical and social perspective. As a result, the cross-analysis of indicators and profiles according to each neighbourhood and urban fabric, contributes to better understanding the specificities of each area. Moreover, the cartography of results provides information on how certain indicators and profiles manifest geographically in the urban fabric and the city.</p><p class="Abstracttext-VITRUVIOCxSpFirst">The observation of the combination of shortcomings in the different urban fabrics is a helpful tool for the design of future polices that aim for the improvement of living conditions in vulnerable residential buildings from an integral perspective that aims at addressing both physical and social issues.</p>

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> “Anticipando la Crecida” Project (Anticipating the Flood) is an interdisciplinary project which deals with flood risk management strategies associated with intense rain events and southeasterly wind « sudestadas » in socio-economical vulnerable urban areas in Argentina. The objective of the current study is to use local knowledge through participatory activities to strengthen the phase of risk awareness of an early warning system by using cartography as a work tool. For this purpose, eleven workshops with adults and children were held between 2014 and 2017 in Buenos Aires metropolitan area and the towns of San Antonio de Areco and Santa Lucía.</p><p>By helping communities articulate and communicate spatial knowledge through workshops, enable the possibility to advocate for a change. That change result in a new direction on how the community and stakeholders can act towards a flood event. Analysing community-based maps of 85 adults, flood theoretical models can be evaluated and perhaps improved. Additionally, overall 287 students between 10 and 17 years old learned about cartography and interacted with poster maps during the workshops held in different schools.</p>

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The paper considers three scientific approaches and outlines a new concept of systematic cartography.</p><p>The first approach – systems theory</p><p>Systems theory has long been concerned with the study of complex systems (in recent times, complexity theory and complex systems have also been used as names of the field). Complex systems are present in the research of various disciplines, including geosciences, economics, social studies and technology. Recently, complexity has become a natural domain of interest in real-world socio-cognitive systems and emerging systemics research. Complex systems tend to be high-dimensional, non-linear, and challenging to study. Organised complexity is the degree of both the organisation and complexity of a system. When organisation and complexity are not part of the same system they each undoubtedly can occur naturally, but when both organisation and complexity are found in the same system, the odds of their occurring drop considerably, and the more of both that a system has, the less probable it becomes.</p><p>It is often useful to consider spatial problems through a general systems approach. A general system is a group of fundamental elements bound together by specific linkages. Systems may be open or closed and may change through time. The earth is an open system in which there are inputs, outputs, and flow-through mechanisms. The linkages, or connections, that bind entities together into a system are paths through which matter, energy, ideas, and people pass from one element to another. General Systems Theory is useful to any approaches describing the earth – cartography is one of them.</p><p>Cartography employs systems to develop analytical models with which they seek to understand and explain spatial patterns and interactions. Cartographers use the systems model, for example, to examine human migration patterns, the diffusion of ideas, and the spread of information. Moreover, research about maps relies on understanding the systems in which information and communication processes operate. Cartographers are interested in identifying, explaining, and predicting information flows in maps. They also seek to identify, describe, and explain cycles and patterns in both maps and map collections.</p><p>The second approach – atlases</p><p>Atlases are, probably, the best known and the most flexible of popular cartographic products. Atlases are used to address different issues and to target different audiences. Historically, atlases have played different roles – from instruments of power, in the Renaissance to a current decision and planning support tools. Atlases are used for general reference, education, research and business. As they evolved, atlases were produced in different ways, from the initial manual compilation to current computer-generated processing. Atlases have experienced many changes in the way they are conceived, produced, disseminated and used.</p><p>Many definitions of an atlas exist, and all of them involve words “systematic collection” or similar expression that an atlas is not a set of map randomly chosen maps and their random arrangement as a book. After a rapid ICT development provides fast map compilations, it seems that atlas cartography is much more comfortable. Various types of atlases can be distinguished by the region, theme, dissemination concept, presentation medium and interaction with users. All these kinds of atlases share the overall objective to communicate geographic knowledge and facilitate new insight into geographic phenomena.</p><p>The third approach – Tobler's first law of geography</p><p>The Tobler's first law of geography was introduced into the geographical literature in an article that Waldo Tobler (1930–2018) published in the journal Economic Geography in 1970. He described a simulation of population growth in Detroit and invoked the law: “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.”</p><p>It considers the following questions for cartographers: Can the Tobler's law be applied in cartography when we replace objects with maps? How can “near” and “distant” be measured in an atlas? Is it right for Euclidean and network space?</p><p>A concept of systematic cartography</p><p>Systematic cartography is a set of interrelated approaches for visualising a wide range of spatial data sources by various techniques. A traditional field of systematic geovizualisation is the atlas production. At present, advanced display techniques and distributed spatial data sources multiply the possibilities and range of visualization outputs. A theoretical systematic approach plays a crucial role for content, designing, compilation and symbology of any atlas. This calls for the implementation of system theory into an atlas conceptualisation.</p><p>Can atlas be described as a system? If a system consists of elements and relationships between them, then an atlas consists of maps and relationships between them. As a system has a structure and behaviour, an atlas has a structure and usage. In the system theory, a system has a language (information is passed through the information channels). In systematic cartography, an atlas passes spatial information through map language. If we describe an atlas as a system we might measure atlas and then to improve it, redesign it, reuse it etc.</p><p>If an atlas is a system according to the theory of systems (a system universum A involves maps, symbols, map elements, graphs, texts, etc. and a system characteristics R involves all relationships between them) it make us possible to measure “a rate of systematization”, and make atlas taxonomy better. It will also provide a view into an atlas structure and tools for its imporving. And it is really worth!</p><p>Maps in atlases are organized gradually (i) from simple analytical maps (of the main theme components), (ii) to the complex and synthetic maps, (iii) the content of the thematic atlas is arranged like a storybook, (iv) from simple to complex, (v) from basic information to the culmination as the main message in sense of spatial synthesis (typology and regionalization). The relationships relate to map language either in map series, in atlas structure and design and between maps vs. graphs, tables and figures.</p>