Community mapping: from representation to action.

Abstract

Community mapping is an approach to spatial representation that promotes a sense of agency and active engagement by encouraging “bottom-up” participation by users and community groups. Reviewing the place-based work of an earlier generation of geographers, environmental writers, and artists, the paper provides a context for understanding contemporary mapping utilizing geotechnologies such as “locative media.” The author concludes that technologically empowered artists, partnered with specialists engaged in place-based research, can translate objective representations of place into socially engaged action.