006_ Reaction to Denis Cosgrove's "Carto-City"

Cosgrove describes a brief history of cartography as a method of control, socially and geographically. Map making has evolved as a "synthetic rather than analytic; its goal is celebration rather than analysis or critique." The idea of maps AS space/place is now inseparable from the physical streets, lots, offices, storage, social zones(or "culturally valuable") and commercial. The places we now live in are tied to images and text initially generated as abstract representations, morphing 'real spaces' into standardizations (lines, grids, machine-generated). Such instances as Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg's 1580 Civitates Orbis Terrarum, which attempted to "illustrate every major city in the world according to a standard...allowing the atlas owner to survey the civilized globe of urban places within the privacy of a study or reading room." This shift is more than a physical-to-image or place-to-map, but also redefines our perception of mobility, transportation and an overall feeling of being grounded (physically, emotionally, spiritually). Furthermore, the use of cartography as a science, one of respectability and Truth, reveals the map as a tool for understanding place and space, and pushes oneself further from the place itself. Obviously, Situationists recognized this and created an urban-wander to recognize the design of cities on our lives and bodies, but also the map's intention as urban Knowledge goes beyond tourism (for good or bad) and into a fight for efficient daily navigation (aka paths of least resistance). If cartography points towards a structure or understanding of place, then our mastery of it should help speed and progress the nature of things, right?

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Project 2