EXPLORING MAPPING AS SOCIAL ENRICHING PROJECT for [IN]FORMAL URBANISM: the case of Rome

unfold the unknown

explorinng mapping as social enriching project for [in]formal u r b a n i s m the case of Rome

EXPLORING MAPPING AS SOCIAL ENRICHING PROJECT for [IN]FORMAL URBANISM: the case of Rome

A dissertation summited in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MSc Building and Urban Design in Development

Word Count: 9.557

Deborah Navarra

Development Planning Unit University College of London 1st September 2015

a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

To the all BUDD staff To all my colleagues BUDDies, especially Sharon To Giovanna, my patient supervisor and ‘translator of thoughts.’ To Giulia, Giulia and Giorgio for their support To my flatmates that have to bear the appropriation of the living room To all the people who supported and bore me, Marco above all To my family and my friends that still do not have idea of what I am doing To the Bartlett Library that host me and backpack for the last two months.

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acknowledgments 5 table of contents 6

INTRODUCTION 9

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INVESTIGATING THE PROCESS OF MAPPING AND ITS PRODUCTS, MAPS

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WHAT IS A MAP

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Maps are relational DECODERS

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Maps are arbitrary DEVICES

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Maps are performative PROJECTS

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WHAT IS A MAPPING

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MAPPING: UNDERSTANDING MILIEU

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MAPPING : COMMUNICATIVE VISUAL DISCOURSE

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MAPPING : DESIGN PRODUCTION

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intro

MAPPING AS SOCIAL ENRICHING PROJECT MAPS AND MAPPING: FROM A DESIGN TOOL TO AN URBAN DESIGN RESPONSE

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ROME, THE NEW PARADIGM FOR URBAN COMMONS GROUND

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CONCLUSION: Mapping as thread of Ariadne

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references

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“How is it possible to represent in two dimensions something as intangible as time, vision or one’s inner self? […] The world was nothing but one large unknown territory until we discovered the means to draw its complex terrain.” (OBRIST, 2014)

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I n t r o d u c t i o n Mapping is a basic human instinct (BROTTON, 2010), a subjective nonverbal statement that represents what the ‘mapmaker’ needs to communicate (SEAGER, 2003). The mapping process and its products - the maps - have been used since the dawn of time by cultures around of the globe for different purposes. Maps date back to the prehistoric era, 8,000 years ago. They document the prehistoric customs and the mentality representing various subjects, such as navigation, magic, agriculture and war (Harley, Woodward, 1987).

Over time, the meaning and use of maps have changed. Maps used to be

commissioned by governments for military and governmental reasons likewise religious aims1; they have always been tools2 of power (HARLEY, 1989), imposed to their readers. The role of the cartographer was passive and detached from the one of the users. According to Arthur Robinson, until 1975, the cartographer’s goal “was simply to make a map” (1977: 6) without having any engagement with the users; maps were just their “intermediary“ (CRAMPTON, 2001: 237). During the last decades, the attention around cartography, mapmakers and map-readers consistently increased.

The attention shifted from the maps as a final object to mapping as a process.

Even if the subject was discussed since the end of the 1970s, and in 1994

the MOMA inaugurates the exhibition MAPPING3; the shift of the interest from maps to mapping has been explicit with the book ‘Mappings’ edited by Denis Cosgrove (1999) - a collection of papers wrote by scholars from different disciplines. According

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more information in “History of Cartography” (Harley, Woodward, 1987)

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representations, practices and relations (CRAMPTON, 2001)

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more information in Robert Storr, ed., Mapping (New York, 1994)

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to Cosgrove (1999:1) the act of mapping is the act “of visualizing, conceptualizing, recording, representing and creating spaces graphically.” Accordingly, the most challenging processes of mapping are more easily found in the work of artist, architects and designers, who show a certain degree of freedom and imagination,

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instead of being burdened by problems of factual legitimacy and authority. One of the papers wrote for Cosgrove’s book is The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention by James Corner, architect, and landscapers.

Corner (1999) declares his intention to have a “more optimistic revisions of mapping practices” (1999: 213). The consequence of his declaration corresponded to questioning if the meaning of mapping is limited and constricted inside the powerknowledge-space triad [figure 1.1], or it is possible to start thinking at mapping as a “world-enriching agent”, a productive and liberation tool to design and planning (1999). [figure 1.2]

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MAPPING SPACE

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CO G N I M D the conceptual model from maps to mapping to overcome the consolidated view of

Drawing on Corner, the aim of this dissertation is to go one step forward in

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mapping as the projection of power knowledge and space. I propose to consider the act of mapping as a socially enriching project and as an urban design strategy to engage emerging urban issues. The research starts by giving an overview of the concept of maps andM mapping A in the P different P I streams N ofGresearch. The first result of this literature review, and contribution of this research is the identification of three common agencies underlying both maps and the mapping: understanding, communicating and producing. On one hand, maps UNDERSTAND and decipher relations considering mutual different positions and links in space as well as mapmakes and users/map-readers, therefore, are relational; maps COMMUNICATE a subjective and partial world, thus are arbitrary; moreover, maps PRODUCE

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performances that make visible the process of looking at and interpreting the world,

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which makes maps, projects. [figure 1.3]

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On the other hand, mapping UNDERSTANDS the surrounding as an everyday practice, a part of our daily space-production activities (conscious or not); mapping COMMUNICATES through the power of visualization the ‘space as a discourse’;

M A imaginary P P world I asNdesign G tools. [figure 1.4] additionally mapping PRODUCES

The second part of the dissertation proposes a new framework for mapping

in order to get a step forward, from the concepts analyzed previously, suggesting mapping as an urban design response. [figure 1.5] By focusing on the example of Rome, this dissertation will advance the idea that

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mapping could be crucial to tackling the future urban strategies by understanding, interpreting and elaborating the urban social spatiality that the informal urbanism is producing. Indeed, this new informality, in contrast with the more familiar informal/ illegal practice - known as abusivismo - is developing a different attitude on the reappropriation of urban spaces and to the right to the city that can be seen as base

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for the future urban planning of post-capitalism cities - in this specific case, Rome.

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WHAT IS A MAP

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“Mapping is a fantastic cultural project, creating and building the world as much as measuring and describing it. “

(CORNER, 1999)

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INVESTIGATING THE PROCESS OF MAPPING AND ITS PRODUCT, THE MAPS Before investigating the potential of mapping as a planning tool, it is necessary to start with the definition and the understanding of the relevant concepts. This chapter reviews the definition of “maps” and “mapping”, their multiple meanings and agencies, and how they unfolded over time and through different fields of studies (e.g. art, architecture and geography). It is organized into two sections.

The first section explores maps under the agencies of understanding

communicating and producing bringing several definitions that can be arranged according to three qualitative features of maps: relational, arbitrary, and performative.

The second section shifts the focus from maps to mapping, from objects to

the organic and dynamic process that interact with space and time changing the positionality of mappers. It examines the process of mapping through the same three lenses used in the analysis of maps. These lenses unfold mapping under three new subjects such as cognitions, power knowledge, and design proposals.

investigating the process of mapping and its products, maps

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WHAT IS A MAP

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According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a map is “a diagrammatic representation of an area of land or sea showing physical features cities, and roads” or “a diagram or collection of data showing the spatial arrangement or distribution of something over an area” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2015). The first definition focuses on the representation of physical features, while the second focuses on data and spatial arrangements. These general definitions are not enough to explain the real influence that a map has on the human cognition of the spatial and social environment because it does not cover the relationship between space power and knowledge.

Indeed, this definition of maps is mechanic and neutral. It neglects the human and social functions of maps. Indeed, maps are a social construction (CRAMPTON, 2001), “the most sophisticated form yet devised for recording, generating and transmitting knowledge” (Cosgrove 1999: 12). Thinking of maps as social products point to three additional dimensions of maps as “understanding”, “communicating” and “producing” tools. Hans Ulrich Obrist (2014) recognizes maps as a means to understand and navigate exotic spaces; in his Alternative atlas of contemporary cartographies he defines map as a “symbolic depiction of space or idea that allows one to understand and navigate an unfamiliar topography or complex topology” (2014).

If in the past, cartography was the only discipline that studied and produced

maps; in the last 30 years, the meaning of maps has been investigated by many disciplines, such as architecture, art, sociology, politic, statistic, and philosophy. As Harley put it “maps are too important to be left to cartographers alone.”(1990: 231) .

This increasing interest towards maps and mapping opened up to new contributions formulating new definitions, thoughts, and applications.

This section presents a taxonomy that can be identified in the work of scholars sectionONE

such as geographers and cartographers Robinson and Petchenik, Cosgrove, Kitchin, Freundschuh, architects Corner and Stoppani; philosophers as Deleuze and Guattari and artists, one overall Alighiero e Boetti.1

It is possible, combining cross-disciplinary positions, to elaborate further on

the idea and meaning of maps as tools/devices that employ a familiar language to understand relations, communicate subjective visions and produce performative projects simultaneously. Thus, the text identifies maps as decoders, communicative

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devices, and projects. [figure 1.6]

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Geographers - scholars that study the science of understanding place

and space - used cartography - the art and science of making maps (ROBINSON, 2015) - to decipher the nature of space and translate it into a readable language.

For them, maps are the real understanding of space. However, what cartographers do is recognizable more with the idea of tracings then maps. According to Deleuze and Guattari (1980) tracings and maps largely differ. Tracings are the simple copy of reality, a drawing that follows or marks the course of the position of something; instead, maps are an experimentation, an experiment are connected to the reality.

In other words, what distinguishes maps from tracings is the orientation toward an empirical context in contact with the reality. “The map does not reproduce an unconscious […]; it constructs the unconscious. It fosters connections between fields. […] 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 mounting, reworked by an individual, group or social formation. […] A map has multiple entryways, […] [it] has to do with performance, whereas the tracing always involves an alleged “competence.” (DELEUZ GUATTARI, 1980: 12)

Maps represent spatial relationships of exact features. They describe

the perception of mental states or concepts into a spatial dimension, creating a manageable system of relationships. Stemming from this, maps can be understood for their relational value that characterize them from aseptic tracings. As Deleuze and Guattari distinguish traces from maps, cartographers identify two maps

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typology: Reference Maps1 or Base Maps that are supposed to provide the context and Thematic Maps2, that are supposed to narrate stories (ROBINSON, 2015).

The production of the latter (Thematic maps) creates relations between

actors and space. Decoding their relationships in a new narrative, maps define “a particular physical, political, social space” (OBRIST, 2014: xx). It is not a surprise that the first maps were created to enable humans to measure and make sense of the world around them (OBRIST, 2014).

Geographers use maps to understand and explain the context, but it is important to remember that “maps are highly artificial and fallible constructions, virtual abstractions that possess great force in terms of how people see and act” (CORNER, 1999: 214).

Even if we tend to consider maps as real and true and objective and

transparent, they are always subjective (FRIEDMAN, 2013). Furthermore, maps produce new realities as much as they seek to document current ones. Maps are always a going beyond the space-time of the present (OBRIST, 2014).

1 “A reference map is a map that emphasizes the geographic location of features. These are some characteristics: 1_They display a variety of information. 2_The primary aims are legibility and graphic contrast. 3_No graphics marks (that is, symbolized points, lines, or polygons; text; or raster pixels) should be given visual emphasis over others. […] The goal is to display a lot of different kinds of information without drawing the reader’s attention to any one theme of information more than any other theme. The reader can therefore direct their attention to the theme or themes of interest. For example, if the reader is using the reference map for navigation, they will direct their attention to roads and landmarks. If the reader is using the map for recreational purposes like hiking, then features on the map, such as contour lines and trails, will hold more interest for them.

For reference maps, the challenge is to figure out which classes of features are of greatest interest and use to a wide range of users (that is, what to include on the map.)“ ESRI Mapping Center available at: http://mappingcenter.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=maps.aboutReference accessed 23/08/2015 2 “[F]or thematic maps the emphasis is on the geographic pattern of the feature attributes. The challenge in making this types of map is figuring out which features to include as the minimal required locational reference information (that is, what to exclude from the map.)” ESRI Mapping Center available at: http://mappingcenter.esri.com/index.cfm?fa=maps.aboutReference accessed 23/08/2015 investigating the process of mapping and its products, maps

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Maps are arbitrary DEVICES

The arbitrariness of maps has two components: a level of abstraction and

a degree of subjectivity. Writer and artist Tom McCarthy in ‘Mapping it out’ (2014) argues that maps are projections of lines of latitude and longitude of the globe on a sheet of paper, and as such they are not “neutral, natural or ‘given’: they are constructed, configured underpinned by various and arbitrary conventions” (McCARTHY, 2014). Paralleling McCarthy, also Corner presents maps as one of the many possible versions of the earth’s surface, “an eidetic fiction constructed from factual observation” (CORNER, 1999: 215).

Artists in particular have played an essential role in highlighting (and using) the arbitrariness of maps, being “more conscious of the essentially fictional status of maps and the power they possess for construing and constructing worlds” (CORNER, 1999: 218). In this sense, maps can be assimilated to writing, being “a way of graphically expressing mental concepts and images.“ (ROBINSON; PETCHENIK, 1976: 1) Unlikely language though, maps have benefitted from less studies on form and function.

Alighiero e Boetti, an Italian artist, in 1971 started his most famous series Mappa, hand-woven carpets that interpret the world maps, transforming them in a ‘politic manifesto’; each country was embroidered with the colors and symbols of their flag, he used “the reality that already exist, […] through a mechanism that splits the object of the project (the artist) from the executive part (afghan’s women)1 .[figure1.7] Few years later (1974) he declared that for him Mappa is the apotheosis of the beauty “I haven’t done anything, I haven’t decided anything, […] the world has been done as how it is. I didn’t draw it , the flags are what they are, I did not draw them,

1 more information: Order and Disorder: Boetti by Afghan Women _ Fowler Museum, February 26–July 29, 2012 http://fondazioneazzurra.org/archives/844 sectionONE

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in other words, I had done absolutely nothing: when the base idea come up, the concept, you do not have to choose anything else.” How he explained, Boetti ’s map was just the representation|projection of what was already there. Even if what was already there come up with an explicit representation of political territories (flags).

It is also true that maps are characterized by a certain degree of abstraction from the real. A map is not the territory (or the space) it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness (Korzybski 1941: 58, in Robinson Petchenik). Similarly, according to Corner, “maps must by necessity be abstract if they are to sustain meaning and utility” (CORNER, 1999).

Thanks to such level of abstraction, maps are capable of graphically expressing mental concepts and images (ROBINSON; PETCHENIK, 1976). Mapmakers can push the concept of mapping to its limit in an attempt to map the seemingly unmappable (OBRIST, 2014).

“The map depends on the particular perspective and legitimacy of the mapmaker, who is bound by certain perspectival dimensions, ideological persuasions, aesthetic theories, and systems of measurements”_Catherine Ingraham, “Dividing the Land: Lines of Identity and Descent,” in Architecture and the Burdens of Linearity (1998) (in STOPPANI).

http://fondazioneazzurra.org/wp-content/uploads/P4_11A_hires_V1.jpg

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“The map is first employed as a means of ‘finding’ and then ‘founding’ new

projects, effectively reworking what already exists.” (CORNER, 1999: 224) Teresa Stoppani (2015), defines cartography as a projecting tool where maps are architectural projects, meaning that they could ”represent imagined or speculative worlds that exist only in the minds of their creators”. According to Obrist, maps “express a hypothetical idea of what the world could, or should be like now or in the future.” (OBRIST, 2014: xx)

Considering maps as projects opens up a debate over the correspondence

between a constructed world and the empirical one. ‘Did you find that (in the world) or did you make it up?’1’ To distinguish an external, a priori, ‘real world’ from a constructed and participatory one would not only deny imagination but also be incongruent with humankind’s innate capacity to structure reciprocal relationships with its surrounding (CORNER, 1999) . Therefore, a map is performative when it represents is the combination of the imaginary world produced by the mind of the mapmaker in relation to the constructed world.

To sum up, a map is relational when it represents and explains the relation that exists between actors (active or passive) and space/milieu.

At the same time, Maps are arbitrary because It is the mapmaker who decides what to communicate and the means of communication.

To conclude, the decisions taken by the map maker about the understanding of the space within its relationships, the communication of this understanding through

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a comprehensible or unknown, clear or cryptic language are performed on the map that becomes the project where the constructed world meets the empirical one.

It is true that, these considerations of maps instead of clarify, extends the domain of what is a map. “There is a point when everything could become a map. Maps can be totalizing visions, but they always invite their own revision. ….” (OBRIST, 2014: xx).

At this point, according to Obrist, it is mandatory to ask ourselves if everything can be a map or “what is not a map?” (2014).

The answers are open as well as is open the question, but for sure we can define that maps “are not transparent, neutral or passive devices of spatial measurement and description. […] they are instead extremely opaque, imaginative, operational instruments.” (CORNER, 1999: 218).

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WHAT IS A MAPPING

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If map is a “language of space” (FOUCAULT, 1964), a product that decodes,

communicates and proposes new projects; mapping is the ‘discourse of space’, it is the process of thinking, and analyzing; it is the elaboration, the assimilation of the context in a particular moment. It is not given as well as it is not finished.

Similarly, Teresa Stoppani defines mapping as a descriptio that combines

words – a narrative, discourse – and images – forms, figures – in mutual relations constantly changing over time. Such description is always incomplete and insufficient, and its incompleteness remains open to the condensation of multiple possibilities (STOPPANI, 2004).

According to Robinson and Petchenik, mapping refers to all the operations involved in the production of a tangible map (1976); unlike maps, mapping has a special engagement with time and focus on the subject (mapping as mapmaking action).

Mapping is not the mere representation of what is known or absent, but rather the evocation and enactment of that which is not, or not yet (CORNER, 1999).

That is, mapping combines knowledge and the codes and the distance of

the representation that “allow[s] to see something that [is] otherwise invisible”, but it also speculates, narrates, projects (sets forward) that which is not yet. (STOPPANI 2004:2). In this unfolds the special relation of mapping with time. According to Teresa Stoppani map is initially utilized as a method for discovering and afterward establishing new undertakings, viably re-working what as of now exists. Accordingly, the process of Mapping, together with their shifted instructive and semantic degree, are esteemed for both their impactful and gainful potential. “Consequently, concepts of ‘site’ are shifting from that of simply a geometrically defined parcel of land to that sectionONE

of a much larger and more active milieu” (STOPPANI, 2004)

Many cartographers (first overall Harley), Re-reading Foucault, have

interpreted mapping as a means of projecting power-knowledge, often highlighting the role of maps and mapping as tools of control and exercise of power over population and territory. What if mapping is “a productive and liberation instrument, a world-enriching agent, especially in the design and planning art?” (CORNER, 1999:

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MAPPING: UNDERSTANDING MILIEU1

“The necessity of understanding space is reflected in human activities that

attempt to communicate spatial information effectively to people in space which they are unfamiliar.” (KITCHIN FREUNDSCHUH, 2000) It is part of the human behavior to try to understand, comprehend, learn and process spatial relation and information that relates to our urban milieu (DOWNS, STEA, 1973; KITCHIN FREUNDSCHUH, 2000). It is the urban planner Kevin Lynch with “Image of the City” (1960) to start a ‘new’ field of study opening a multidisciplinary debate (1965) about the links between spatial thought and spatial behavior.

Moreover, how these studies can help to enhance the production of the spatial/ urban environment.

This section investigates Mapping as “the process of thinking about spatial

relations” (KITCHIN FREUNDSCHUH, 2000), in other world, what Downs and Stea (1973) recognize as Cognitive Mapping: “Cognitive Mapping is a process composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores, recalls and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in his everyday spatial environment.” (DOWNS, STEA, 1973: 8).

Mapping is part of our daily space-production activity - even if unconscious at

times. It allows us to understand, process and re-shape our surrounding. Cognitive mapping, as everyday practice, aims to understand spatial knowledge, spatial behavior, and spatial relation.

1 Milieu is a French term that means ‘surroundings’, ‘medium’ and ‘middie’. Milieu has neither beginning nor end, but is surrounded by other middles (CORNER, 1999: 224) sectionONE

FROM SPATIAL BEHAVIOR TO COGNITIVE MAPPING

Psychologist, Edward Tolman, with his book “Cognitive maps in rats and

men” (1948) introduce the term ‘cognitive map’ and used it as an “explicit statement with spatial knowledge functionally and representationally equivalent to a map”.

(KITCHIN FREUNDSCHUH, 2000:2) Tolman supposed that it is through the ‘black box’ of the human nervous system that we start to map our surrounding and then we used it in our everyday practice. The image composed has the same structure of a cartographic map. His consequential conclusion is that cognitive map acquires Euclidean properties with repeated environmental experience.” (Tolman, 1948 in KITCHIN FREUNDSCHUH, 2000).

Stemming from above, cognitive mapping is a process dominate mainly by

two factors that influence our spatial behavior: the spatial environment and the human perception. Spatial behavior are daily navigation (route was chosen, way findings) and decision concerning everyday activities (a journey to work, where to shop, where to meet friends); as daily activities much spatial behavior are a habitual routine (DOWNS, STEA, 1973; KITCHIN FREUNDSCHUH, 2000).

Down and Stea in 1973 explain/justify this process (cognitive mapping):

“The individual receives information from a complex, uncertain, changing and unpredictable source via a series of imperfect sensory modalities, operating over varying time spans and intervals between time spans. From such diversity, the individual must aggregate information to form a comprehensive representation of the environment. This process of acquisition, amalgamation and storage is cognitive mapping, and the product of this process at any point of time can be considered a cognitive” (DOWNS, STEA, 1973: 313). Their recognition of cognitive mapping as the primary factors in human adaptation has as consequence the requisition of cognitive maps for the everyday human endurance. In this way, cognitive maps are “the basis for deciding upon and implementing any strategy of spatial behavior” (1973) and/or spatial environment.

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If in one hand, cognitive mapping does not produce “a duplicative

photographic process”, although a “complex, highly selective, abstract, generalized representations in various forms.” as well as “incomplete, distorted, schematized and augmented” product (DOWNS, STEA, 1973). On the other hand, it helps urban

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designer, architects and planners to comprehend “how people think about and interact in urban environment” and to design “environments that facilitate rapid learning and easy retention, thus lessening the likelihood of disorientation.” (Carter, 1977; Downing, 1992 in KITCHIN FREUNDSCHUH, 2000).

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http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty_sites/sommerb/sommerdemo/ mapping/images/lizMap.png

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MAPPING : COMMUNICATIVE VISUAL DISCOURSE

After the investigation of mapping as an instrument of understanding the

milieu, visualizing, conceptualizing and recording the surroundings in a everyday practice, this chapter aims to explore mapping as a communication device that plays within space and knowledge production, and power relations.

A brief analysis of Foucault’s idea of power passing through Deleuze and Harley identifies mapping as a visual discourse that produces diagrams. Nowadays, technology plays a significant role in mapping as communicative visual discourse allowing mappers to be ‘inside ‘ the maps and create new mappings.

POWER, SPACE, and KNOWLEDGE _ exploring mapping as a discourse

Power is generically defined as the ability or capacity to do something or act

in a particular way; that can direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. Accordingly, the power of mapping is the ability, the capacity of influencing behaviors and cognitions. The question to ask is: how can it?

Maps and mapping do not possess power per se, just because they are map commissioned by someone that exercises is power (as the state, etc.) rather, their power is exercised through their visualization, the use of color as well as graphic design.

In Discipline and Punish Foucault argues that contemporary form of power “is exercised rather than possessed” (DELEUZE, 1988: 22). This form of power is heterogeneous, consisting of the relations between forces, individuals or groups of individuals “an action upon other action” (Foucault in DELEUZE, 1988: 59 ). According to Foucault, power is impersonal, without essence its only task is to produce reality and truth (DELEUZE, 1988). This reality and truth come out through the use of investigating the process of mapping and its products, maps

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graphic visualization of analysis, knowledge, the representation of forms. “Analysis and Illustration go hand in hand, offering a microphysics of power and a political investment of body.” (DELEUZE, 1988: 24). For this reason, according to Foucault, we have to develop tools to analyze subjects, and communicate information, rather

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than formulate the theory of power.

It is not a case that he was the first one to promote his analysis through

the use of graphic representations, colors, and visual effects. Harley’s text “Deconstruction mapping “ (1990) opens a series of thoughts that are the reflection on critical cartography in the last 25 years that emphasize further the concept of Space, Knowledge and Power and see Maps as “cultural text”. Deconstruction urges us to read between the lines of the map - “in the margins of the text” - and through its tropes to discover the silences and contradiction that challenge the apparent honestly of the image” (HARLEY, 1989)

GIS, civilian satellite and airborne image system (DIY DRONE): Mapping2.0

In the last 30 years, new technology as Geographic Information Systems

within the rise of satellite and remote-sensing capabilities (CORNER, 1999) have been changing the employ-abilities around maps and mapping.

In fact, GIS, with the help of the Internet and software such as Google, OpenStreetMap, etc. gives the opportunity to transform basic database of geographic image data, to

figure1.10 http://artnews.org/files/0000021000/0000020022.jpg sectionONE

appear on interactive maps. (ROBINSON, 2015) According to ESRI1 “Geographic Information System (GIS) lets us visualize, question, analyze, and interpret data to understand relationships, patterns, and trends.”

GIS transforms and changes all the role relationships between map makers, map reader but also the data resources because today everyone and everything are able to produce Spatial Data. A virtual community of volunteers - Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) - create spatial data to contribute to the creation of alternative maps that can be used and re-used by anyone and for any purpose2. One icon example is the use of GIS directing the Haiti earthquake in 2010 (Add info of the project Exemplifying from above the new technology is changing the power of mapping in 3 ways. Firstly, transforming us into individuals sensors - often unconsciously (through social networks, geotags, geolocations, etc.) - just as consulting google maps or and similar applications; creating independents set of data. You are in the map as mapreader (because when you consult the app, the app localizes you through the GPS) as well as a map-maker (adding information about the area, tagging pictures, writing twits or posting comments). Secondly, changing the visualization of all the data from chart to appealing and interactive diagram over a familiar map (base map - the globe). Thirdly, thank civilian satellite or even better DIY DRONE, it is now possible collect images of areas that otherwise, through official satellites would be difficult or impossible to reach. You are in the map as map-reader (because when you consult the app, the app localize you through the GPS) as well as a map-maker (adding information about the area, tagging pictures, writing twits or posting comments).

In this case is possible say that mapping become personal ‘Windows of the world’ (BROTTON, 2010) that represent tangible and intangible subjective realities.

1

Environmental Systems Research Institute

2

see USHAHIDI project: http://www.ushahidi.com

investigating the process of mapping and its products, maps

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MAPPING : DESIGN PRODUCTION

PRODUCING

UNDER STA N

PRODUCING ING ICAT UN M

34

CO M

NG DI

This section reflects on mapping as a productive tool where its process is the

project per se. The chapter challenges the classic usage of mapping - by architects, planners, and urban readers - as a simple design tool by the transformation of mapping into a design response.

In 1999, James Corner “draws […] on the creative potential of [mapping] […]

to demonstrate the constructive agency that can be enacted through cartographic practice in the fields of architecture, landscape and urban planning” (DODGE, KITCHIN, PERKINS, 2011: 89).

In his paper, Corner sees mapping as an instrument that with its double agency

of constructing and interpreting living spaces has “[t]he capacity to reformulate or re-work what already exists“ (CORNER, 1999). Therefore, designers and planners, through mapping, understand and communicate possibilities in the complexity and contradiction of what already exists but also actualize the underlying potential.

Drawing on Corner, the next paragraph suggests ways in which the social, imaginative and critical dimensions of mapping may be re-established in modern cartography.

MAPPING as a DESIGN TOOL

Mapping in design and planning has been undertaken conventionally as a

quantitative and analytical survey of existing conditions made prior to the making of a new project. Most designers and planners consider mapping a rather unimaginative, analytical practice, at least compared to the presumed ‘inventiveness’ of the designing activities that occur after all the relevant maps have been made (often with the contents of the maps ignored or forgotten). According to Corner, this happens because it is assumed that the map will objectively identify and makes visible the sectionONE

terms around which a planning project may then be rationally developed (1999).

This overlooks the durational experiences and effects that are behind the process of mapping. With other words, there is a tendency to view mapping in terms of what it represent rather than what it was doing. So the question is, what the mapping can do?

35

First of all, the various cartographic procedures of selection, schematization, and synthesis mean that the map is already a project in the making. This is why mapping is never neutral, passive or without consequence.

With Corner’s own words: “Analytical research through mapping enables the

designer to construct an argument, to embed it within the dominant practices of a rational culture, and ultimately to turn those practices towards more productive and collective ends. In this sense, mapping is not the indiscriminate, blinkered accumulation and endless array of data, but rather an extremely shrewd and tactical enterprise, a practice of relational reasoning that intelligently unfolds new realities out of existing constraints, quantities, facts and conditions” (CORNER, 1999: 251).

Teresa Stoppani is more interested in what mapping does – rather than what map is, and she emphasizes the openness and the operativeness of the process. According to her, mapping is the very locus of the project: the descriptive and generative tool that is capable of producing and accommodating together the many and different possible evolutions of the project(s). Its capacity for description precisely sets the conditions for new worlds to emerge (2004). We should see mapping as a means of emancipation and enablement, liberating phenomena and potential out of convention and habit. More importantly, we should embrace “the fact that the potentially infinite capacity of mapping to find and found new conditions might enable more socially engaging modes of exchange within larger milieux“ (CORNER, 1999: 250).

investigating the process of mapping and its products, maps

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MAPS AND MAPPING: FROM A DESIGN TOOL TO AN URBAN DESIGN RESPONSE

ROME, THE NEW PARADIGM FOR URBAN COMMONS GROUND

38

MAPS AND MAPPING: FROM A DESIGN TOOL TO AN URBAN DESIGN RESPONSE

Building on the previous chapter, this section sums up the features of

mapping in order to get a step forward to elaborate the concept of mapping not only as a design tool but as an urban design response. However, what is Urban Design and what it does or what shall it do?

Urban design is a social process that attempts to co-produce urban

knowledge inside urban forms and spaces. It should lead series of social practices that shapes the city and create new relations inhabiting the urban spaces (BOANO, 2015). According to Cuthbert “[u]rban design must be conceived as the design of social space in its entirely. It should not be confined, as is the norm, to the arbitrary aesthetic choice of architects, planners, developers, and politicians” (2005).

Moreover, quoting Mandanipour, we shall see urban design “as part of the broader context of the urban development process. And analyze the significance of urban design from the perspective of regulations, producers and users of the urban space” in order to apply a dynamic perspective and multiplicity in the production of space.

(Mandanipour, 2006). Robinson and Petchenik, in 1976, suggested mapping as a researching method for “meaningful design” (The Nature of Maps, 1976). Moreover, if planning imposes a “more or less idealized project from on high”, mapping “finds and unfolds complex and latent forces in the existing milieu” (CORNER, 1999).

Stemming from these suggestions, mapping with its simultaneity features

- understanding, communicating and producing - is able to produce social space building on what already exist. It is not a case that James Corner defines it a “crucial element“ (1999); in this research the existing milieu with its formal and informal productions is the core element that the case study wants to investigate looking for “the hidden forces that shape a given place” (1999). For this reason, mapping will sectionTWO

shape the urban spatiality.

Mapping as “a project in the making” (1999:250) means that maps create

new connections and relationships amongst disparate elements. It has a generative capacity to stage spatial arrangements in contexts of contemporary space-time experience and understanding (COSGROVE, 1999). Mapping is a process, and in a process things work, interact and inter-relate in space and time. (HARLEY, 1989).

Thus, the emphasis shifts from static object-space to the space-time of relational systems.

Along these lines, mapping becomes an urban social infrastructure based

on understanding, communicating and producing. Indeed, borrowing the term infrastructure from the economic field, mapping [since social urban infrastructure] creates networks of Commons and services, fundamental for the social and urban development. What mapping does here is not to represent - understood as a description of something - rather it expresses personal statements. Feelings, statements, thoughts as well as activities, initiative, etc. are expressed, and not just represented, by Mapping.

Mapping does not produce “social structure” (CRAMPTON, 2001) as finished

objects, that can just change the perception of the space; mapping changes the cognition1 of the space through rhizome, an organic entities where the idea of movement, evolution and changing is intrinsic in its essence. Indeed, a rhizome is “a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entranceways and exits and its own lines of flights” (DELEUZE & GUATTARI, 1987: 23).

Mapping produces an organic system that can work together with other two organic systems: the citizens and the city.

To conclude, Mapping is an opportunity for Urban Design because it has the

potential to design social spaces through the empowerment of what already exists, the emancipation of the unknown and the active participations of the environment.

Design requires Utopia - Harvey (1996) states that new urban planning evolves

1 cognition includes: perception, problem solving and the organization of information and idea (DOWNS, STEA, 1973).

MAPPING AS A SOCIAL ENRICHING PROJECT

39

“from a utopia of process” - “[a]ll utopias require mapping, their social order depends upon and generates a spatial order that reorganize and improve upon existing models” (COSGROVE, 1999: 2-23). So what it is Utopia if not Mapping as and urban infrastructure for post-capitalism cities?

40 The case of Rome

Pierluigi Severi defines the city a lively body that with its biologic rhythms can

not stop or hasten as required (CLEMENTI, PEREGO,1983).

The city as an organic system demands design intervention that have to deal with time and spatiality instead of spatial and aesthetic issues. “Multiple processes of urbanization in time are what produce ‘a distinctive mix of spatializing permanences in relation to one another’” (Harvey in CORNER, 1999: 227). Rome “cuts in spatial and temporal layers of historical depth” (CLOUGH MARINARO, THOMASSEN, 2014), embodies this organic rhizomatic urban form.

Even if Rome “it is one of the world ’s most known and ‘imagined cities’,

playing a central role in cinema and popular literature around the globe.” (CLOUGH MARINARO, THOMASSEN, 2014), its decline started when “Rome […] has stopped being imagined and begun to be (poorly) planned”(ARGAN, 1978). Likewise, Corner sees urban planning as a mechanic production of generic cities: “Planning makes no difference whatsoever”(1999: 227). Corner, quoting Harvey, states that the issues for planners and designers are not about the city as an object, with its spatial and aesthetic issues, but “with the advancement of more liberating processes and interactions in time (urbanization)“ (1999: 227). Mapping, having the ability to connect not with objects but with a multiplicity of interactions, helps the urban practitioners to deal with the evolving issues that a city as Rome faces, imagining new solutions and experimental alternative. Indeed, mapping embodies the multiple processes that urbanization expects in order to transform time and space in a productive relational system - understanding the milieu and its relationships among spaces, inhabitants and forms; communicate hidden and visible aspects according to the aims and producing a design tool usable by the practitioner to read, imagine and sectionTWO

emphasize what already exist.

In the case of Rome, an informal urbanism that is producing new social and

urban activities has the potential to become the ground for a new experimental urban planning based on mapping as a social enriching project. It proposes organic social relation that, instead of planning the city, proposes to imagine the city developing the idea of the city as a common goods.

Thus, the imagined city overlapped to the informal urbanity is the antidote to flat and anonymous cities. In Rome this process, in a way, is already happening: “urban development is driven less by centralized urban planning and more by spontaneous private initiative and improvisation” (CELLAMARE, 2014) The existent new urbanism can not be studied just as an exception out of the ‘formal’ way to read the city but should be seen as the starting point for new urban policies. Because of the funds available to the city administration are currently few, mapping becomes a sustainable and flexible alternative that engages with all the same processes relevant to urban planning and design while also uncovering the potentials of the city. The potentials of Rome are to be found in the very act of appropriating parts of the city thus changing their functions, perceptions, and usages.

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42

ROME, URBAN

THE

NEW COMMONS

PARADIGM

FOR GROUNDS

“The city of Rome, the original urbs, is a living miracle, incorporating opposite extremes and almost everything human beings have ever produced. Its endless and timeless beauty persists side by side with urban degeneration, pollution, ad crime proliferation in some of Europe’s most desolate city areas, often built illegally.”

(CLOUGH MARINARO, THOMASSEN, 2014: 1)

Marinaro and Thomassen’s statement gives a synthetic vision of the complexity that the city of Rome faces every day. Even though the quote shows two faces of the city, the positive and the negative side, this chapter wants to highlight that, beside the urban degeneration, the desolation of the peripheries, and even more issues, Rome “is a living miracle” and its capacity to incorporate “opposite extremes and almost everything human beings have ever produced” has always been its power.

The historical moment, the general national and international economic ‘crisis’, the consequential urban emergencies (housing, service, security), the lack of authority by the municipality with the lack of civil sense by the inhabitants, the immigrant ‘crisis’ and so on, are the influencing factors that are shaping the city.

Indeed, from this unmanageable situation, are emerging new informalities (as a pattern in its spatial configuration and as a process of urban production) that per se are creating a new urban environment.

Aware of the difficulties and the complexity to grasp informality cause spatial and social political issues overlap, this paper, considers Rome’s informality in two: informal city and informal urbanism.

A more depth examination of Informal urbanism as a concept will introduce to the last part of the dissertation. sectionTWO

Mapping as a social enriching project is proposed as the alternative methods for urban planning that allows to shift the attention from standard urban strategies to social, spatial processes in order to draft new planning policy. Thanks to mapping, informal urbanism blossoming become the locus of the new social urban productions (space and processes). Maps help to enhance the production of the spatial/urban environment, but mapping can produce it.

A Data Overview

General information, some of them known, others unknown, can help to

approach the city of Rome with its contradictions before to get into its urbanism.

There are two opposing set of data: on one hand Rome is described for its historical heritage, its beauty, its green spaces, etc.; on the other hand Rome is perceived as out of scale, lacking green spaces, and services, and insecure.

Founded in 753 B.C, it is well known that Rome is the city with the highest concentration of historical and architectural riches in the world. Over 16% of the world’s cultural treasures are located in Rome (70% of all Italy).

With its population of 2,869,461, the city of Rome is the third (after Istanbul - 5,538,77 km2, and London - 1,579 square kilometres) populous and larger municipality - 1,285,31 Km2 - among Europe’s major capitals in term of the amount of terrain it covers (ISTAT, 2014). 52.000 hectares (40% to its total surface) of agricultural land- Rome is Europe’s largest agricultural municipality - plus 40.000 hectares of protected green zones made Rome the Europe’s greenest city with a high density of green spaces - 131 m2 per inhabitant (Legambiente, 2012). There are 695 cars per thousand inhabitants (ISTAT, 2011), and it is the second city in the world (after Mumbai) with the highest number of motorbikes per citizen. Only 55% of Romans use public transportation daily, the rest 45% uses it once a month or never (Eurobarometer, 2009).

These data represent an urban condition which does not correspond to the everyday life of its residents. Another set of data, in fact, reveals how Rome is lived and perceived by Romans (Eurobarometer, Legambinete, Sole 24 ore, Economist).

MAPPING AS A SOCIAL ENRICHING PROJECT

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For instance, not all green spaces are accessible or well maintained; each person has only 14cm2 of pedestrian space. Furthermore, lack of services has worsened in the last years, accompanied by an perception of insecurity, even though it is not a dangerous city compared to others, one overall Naples (CLOUGH MARINARO,

44

THOMASSEN, 2014: 13). Despite that, Rome is seen as violent, dangerous and out of human scale: “It is the city with the highest sense of insecurity among residents of the country.� Even though, the situation is not so dramatic.1 (CLOUGH MARINARO, THOMASSEN, 2014: 13)

PRG ROME_(2013) credit Author 1

the economist The Safe City Index 2010 sectionTWO

Rome and its double INFORMALITY The city of Rome, “is both and something other than what is conveyed by its global tourist image.” (CLOUGH MARINARO, THOMASSEN, 2014: 1-16). Rome is the symbol of the city of history, built on scraps and stratifications (SAGGIO, 2013) and inhabited for 3000 years. Due to a variety of reasons - including the lack of planning, the ineffectiveness of housing policy, weakness of administrative system and “Rome’s laissez-faire urban ethos” (CELLAMARE, 2014: 206) - the urban development in the last 60 years has been driven by spontaneous initiative. More than urban planning. The phenomenon, which originated out of contingency and necessity, has become pervasive, and it can be regarded today as the dominant modality of urban production. At the end of the 60s, one-sixth of the dwellers were abusive1 (illegal); ten years later one out of two2 houses were illegal (CATALANO ROSI, 1983).

Only at the beginning of the 80s the housing emergency has been solved with the legalization of the informal areas (through Piani Particolareggiati di Recupero3, 1976) and the realization of working-class housing. Since the 90s, the only slum in the city has used to be recognized within the nomad camps (CARERI, 2012). Today, on top of the historical stratification - built on formal and informal layers - another informal urban layer is emerging: the “self-made city” (S.M.U.R., 2014).

1 According to Careri (2012), abusivismo is everything that is born out and/or against the plan. This term indicated both settlements of shacks and whole areas of the city that can be considered ‘formal’, with roads and multi-stories brick houses.

2

between 1969 and 1976 has been built 73.000 legal houses and 68.000 illegal (CATALANO ROSI, 1983)

3 an urban planning instrument focuses on the re-qualification of the informal areas http://www.comune. roma.it/wps/portal/pcr?jp_pagecode=dip_pol_riq_per_zone_zo_pi.wp&ahew=jp_pagecode

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One-third of the inhabited urban area has been built informally (BECKER, 2014; CELLAMARE 2014;CLOUGH MARINARO, THOMASSEN, 2014) - most of these areas today have been legalized through the Piani di Recupero (1976).

Informality in Rome mostly regards spontaneous initiative, self-building and self-

46

organization in areas of the city lacking of land regularization and infrastructures.

Nevertheless, informality has different degrees of legality and legitimacy that overlapped.

On the one hand, informality found its origins at the beginning of the last century when the immigration from the south Italy and the gentrification from the city center created a housing crisis that the government could not solve. Thus, “the lack of adequate housing and town planning policies” (CELLAMARE, 2014: 205) opened up to the creation of informal settlements outside the city walls. Although these informal practices have been started out of ‘needs’, they begin to become speculative practices (2014: 205). These initiatives - one based on primary necessities and the other based on private comforts and speculations - live together, overlapping4 and generating the Informal City.

On the other hand, a new type of migration - arriving from the poorest areas outside the Italian borders - is at the origin of a new informal practice. These new multicultural community produces and inhabits the new informality cause the lack of attentions and policies around the new housing emergency. The direct consequences to these emergencies have been the occupations of neglected buildings, seeing as the faster and only way to face the housing crisis (CARERI, 2012). In other words, a social auto-production is dominated by re-appropriation and auto-organization processes among legal and illegal inhabitants. These processes re-build daily the urban pattern physically as well as socially, inhabiting and coexisting the city (CELLAMARE, 2014). It is not about creating an informal city but it is more about producing an Informal urbanism, or according to S.M.U.R5 researchers a “Self-made

4

see Borghesiana case: SMUR (2014)

5

SMUR Self-Made-Urbanism-Rome sectionTWO

urbanism” (2014). This type of informality is not only related to urgent needs, but it is also a form of contestation and resistance to the dominant mode of production of the city, neoliberal policy, and capitalist driven development.

Between the late 1970s and the 1980s informal and unauthorized constructions were the subject of political and social concerns by scholars and sociological researchers, the production of La Metropoli ‘Spontanea’/Il case di Roma (1983), wrote by scholars as Benevolo, Insolera, Salzano, Secchi, Purini, etc, is an example.

Even thought the book was promoted by the municipality, this ‘academic’ attention has not reflected in the political will, “Unauthorized building is not longer perceived as a social emergency, yet it remains a very important phenomenon with a major bearing on serious problems in the city and shortcomings in urban development (land use, lack of services, inadequate and unsustainable public transport, low urban standard, and so on).” (CELLAMARE, 2014: 206).

During the last years, group of independent researchers, among everyone S.M.U.R with is expositions first in Berlin 2013 and then at MAXXI, Rome 2015 - and Laboratorio Arti Civiche - with a more didactic approach - opened the door to think Rome as built by inhabitants, no as individuals (for their personal needs) but as a community, reclaiming the ‘right to the city’ instead the right to the house. This shift shows Rome as “a laboratory of interpersonal and informal networks, which sheds new light on urban dynamics in the ‘Western’ city.” (CLOUGH MARINARO, THOMASSEN, 2014).

“Rome is a laboratory of intricate human relations and curious form of sociability, of diffidence and civility, cynism and humor, rudeness and kindness, a chaotic blend of distance and closeness, careless, apathy, and engagement which defines what everyone knows as ‘Roman-ness’” (CLOUGH MARINARO, THOMASSEN, 2014:1)

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48

informal urbanism 2.0 In 2014, UN defines Informal Urbanism “as the production of urbanization independent from formal frameworks and assistance that do not comply with official rules and regulations.[…] it emerged as an alternative path of city construction.”

(UNHABITAT, 2014). Accordingly, informality is today acknowledged as a prevalent mode of urban production, which includes a multiplicity of un-homogeneous spatial organizations, and different degrees of planning and legality.

The Informal urbanism that is developing in Rome is recognizable in the idea of an autonomous and active urban sociality that reclaim the right to the city rediscovering, creating and working with Commons (BECKER, 2014).

If on one hand the lack of power produce a conflict against neoliberalism and speculation; on the other hand the right to the city and to the house produce COMMONS, auto-governance and a new idea of Polis (CELLAMARE, 2014).

The individual right to access the urban resources, as well as in group, matches with the right to change and re-built a city based on human needs (HARVEY, 2012).

An incredible amount of city productions in the last years - occupying as well as reappropriating - are the proof that an aspiration for a different urbanism is leading to a new form of informality that can produce new social spaces.

Each common space produced, is given back to the city with a different social pattern that create a new piece of city, a new cycle that opens to different perceptions of urban space, where the dichotomy between public and private is obsolete, and where the idea of commons shapes the idea of a new urbanism understood as a new urban lifestyle of the citizens.

Harvey, in Rebel city, stresses the difference between public Space and public goods, This last are commons for the inhabitants, and they start to produce a sectionTWO

common urbanity within the space. The commons are unlimited, they are built in time, and they are open to everyone: “the metropolis as a factory for the production of common� (HARVEY, 2012).

The human qualities of the city emerge out of our practices in the diverse spaces of the city even as those spaces are subject to enclosure, social control, and appropriation by both private and public/state interest (BECKER, 2014).

New pieces of cities, with their multiple, idea, purpose, achievement, intentions etc. need to be mapped in order to create a new texture/layer that can draw a new perception of the usual urban reality even without invasive urban intervention.

These are processes that in time of crisis and cut to city budgets can be interpreted as the perfect solutions for the next future based on informal urbanism decoded and elaborated into urban commons.

http://www.ilmessaggero.it/ROMA/CRONACA/roma_campi_nomadi_centri_rifugiati_immigrato_tor_sapienza/notizie/1013240.shtml

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50

C O N C Mapping as

L

U S thread

I O N : of Ariadne

“Daedalus […] although he built the Cretan labyrinth, he never understood its structure. […] [instead] Ariadne did not build the labyrinth, she was the one who interpreted it; […] She achieved this fear through representation, that is to say, with the help of a conceptual device, the ball of thread.[…] The thread of Ariadne is not merely a representation […] of the labyrinth. It is a project, a veritable production, a device that has the result of throwing a reality into crisis.” (COLOMINAN, 1988: 7) Beatriz Colomina, in the introduction chapter of ‘Architectureproduction’ _ Introduction: on architecture, production and reproduction (1988) talks about the meanings of who could be considered an architect, if the one who builds [the labyrinth] or the one interpreters it.

Teresa Stoppani, in her paper Mapping. The locus of the Project’ (2014) uses Colominan’s input to declare that “(the making of) architecture is neither in the thread, nor in the labyrinth (the given) but it resides in the possible interaction of the two, which remains endless, multiple and formless – or multiform: it is not in the form of the labyrinth, nor is it in the form of the thread, but in what happens between (or among the many of) them.” (STOPPANI, 2014) “[T]he thread reads space selectively, and it produces a partial knowledge of the given, but it also produces excess to the given. It is in the space of this partial knowledge, the space of the difference, in its distance from and non-coincidence with the labyrinth that the thread produces a project. The unfolding of the ball of thread is not the project of the labyrinth […] but another project.[it is mapping] It is this distance that opens up possibilities for the project – changing and endless.”

(STOPPANI, 2014) According to Teresa Stoppani, “the thread in the labyrinth produces a mapping,

sectionTWO

a representation that is at the same time partial and excessive to its object, and that contains many (and contradictory) possible projects. It is in this shift between insufficiency and redundancy of otherness that the project finds it locus.” (STOPPANI, 2014) In the case of Rome, the municipality, as Daedalus, ‘built’ the city without ever understand the structure. This misunderstanding leaves the urban power to the people/inhabitant that can understand and interpret it in ‘informal’ manner.

The new informal urbanism that is emerging is taking the role of Ariadne, as interpreter but more specifically as the (following the myth) person “who gave Theseus the ball of thread by means of which he found his way out of the labyrinth after having killed the Minotaur.” (COLOMINAN, 1988) Mapping can be the device, that, moving and working in time and space as the thread ball in the labyrinth, lets emerge the parts of the city that can help to understand the unfold dynamic and structures that otherwise are hidden or are visible but isolated therefore underestimate.

Rephrasing Teresa Stoppani and substituting “architecture’ with “city” and imaging the thread as mapping, it is possible to write: Mapping allows to read the city as a project that moves away from the reference to an antecedent, to a predefined model or even to an abstract type, and becomes dynamic mapping of shifting conditions” (STOPPANI, 2004).

To sum up, mapping as a social enriching project attacks the obsolete urban planning of Rome interpreting the new informal urbanism that is emerging as a potential allied for the future development of the city with the participation of all the actors involved within the city, inhabitants, administration and urban practitioners.

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r

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unfold the unknown

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