Cartographies of Risk
Geographic Evidence/Narrative
Course: SCI 6322 Mapping: Geographic Representation and Speculation
Instructor: Eric Robsky Huntley
Collaborator: Shannon Slade, Rok An
Date: Mar.-May, 2021
Los Angeles is a city of separation. Freeways bisect neighborhoods, socioeconomic and racial divides stratify populations, and the sheer scale of the city prevents access from one area to the other. These issues are only further
compounded in the face of a crisis or disaster, such as an earthquake.
​
Social inequality and structural racism have led to an unequal distribution of resources in the city. Issues like access to medical care or greenspace are dictated by a neighborhood’s wealth. Structural problems become
magnified under disaster conditions. A lack of open space can equate to a lack of places to create disaster shelter space, and systemic problems like poor connective infrastructure to less advantaged areas creates significant
hurdles in a crisis situation. Overcoming these structural forces requires analysis of existing conditions as well as a forward-thinking approach to how to plan for these issues in the future.
KEYWORDS:
Risk and Resilience, Social Inequality, Urban Network, Infrastructure, Proximity
OBJECTIVES
In the course’s first half we have considered questions central to mapping, as a mode of inquiry with its own histories and its distinct relationships to evidence, position, projection, and intervention. Distilled: mapping...
→ is both representation and rhetoric,
→ is one form of knowledge that is partial and limited by the position of the map-maker,
→ enables forms of domination even as it supports movements for liberation,
→ draws the ground for interventions and itself intervenes,
→ relies on the use and construction of spatial and social categories that are both quite real and analytically mischievous,
→ a technique that often hides the work of its practitioners; for this reason, it demands intentional accountability.
In this first project, you will work with a small group of 3 to develop a project that visualizes geospatial data characterizing a phenomenon of interest to your group, presenting evidence of some dimension of your area of interest. Think of this as an opportunity to take a first pass at a compelling graphic for a thesis, start a research project, or simply analytically sketch an area of interest.
​
In this final project, we will be thinking of mapping as an attentional and narrative practice. As I outline below, this project should take seriously the proposition that maps are propositional… but that a proposition must be presented alongside an empirically defensible narrative that arrests and holds the attention of a reader. In other words, that mapping is a practice that can redirect the attention and care of its public.
Specifically, you should use either time-based media , static graphics , or some combination of the two to narrativize a process that is unfolding and changing a geography of interest. The project should slow us down, cause us to pause, think and rethink, and pay attention. Read more about what I mean by this in ‘themes’.
You are encouraged to extend the work you began in the first project, and develop it into a critical, reflective, and careful project.
Project Deliverable: Part I
Project Deliverable: Part II
