All Mapped Out

The monumental district of Florence/Italy and the workers’ quarter Kiel-Gaarden/Germany are two case studies on the use of mapping for storyscapes on different levels. Architectural heritage is most commonly understood to be representable and representative of a nation, city or cultural group. Not only in the aftermath of armed confrontation, is a re-assessment of what should be considered worthy of preservation and remembrance necessary, but it becomes perhaps a matter of every generation to re-evaluate of what matters in the built environment as part of an identity-shaping process. Part of this on-going process could be coming to terms with the historic past, and to include the forgotten aspects and events, which had shaped to some extent the lives of a group of people, communities or entire nations. In heritage studies, this contested heritage is known for instance as “shared heritage”, “uncomfortable heritage”, and places may be even described as “traumascapes”.3 What is known as the “spatial turn” occurred roughly 20 years ago.4 It is employed in the humanities where cartographic maps become a methodological tool. It is not a new approach to understand the historic context through space and in space, but it has undergone a re-launch because mass data can be processed and linked to a GIS. When this data becomes available online, transand interdisciplinary research is facilitated with a possibility to open up new perspectives and research fields. Especially in the area of architectural heritage, a field still largely dominated by expertism, this method may act as an inclusive and democratic tool for communities, which are not yet an integral part of a heritage discourse. It also provides an opportunity to integrate new heritage topics and places to be – if not preserved so at least – remembered. By visualizing for instance an urban space and the different places with a variety of functions and events, links between them can be revealed, which otherwise would have gone unnoticed. What has been termed in this context a “deep map” is “a finely detailed, multimedia depiction of place and the people, animals, and objects that exist within it, and are thus inseparable from the contours and rhythms of everyday life. Deep maps are not confined to the tangible or material, but include the discursive and ideological dimensions of place, the dreams, hopes, and fears of residents – they are, in short, positioned between matter and meanings. […] It is simultaneously a platform, a process, and a product. It is an environment embedded with tools to bring data into an explicit and direct relationship with space and time.”5 The relationship between space and human activity is well reflected in sociology stating that “space cannot be […] distinguished from society, but it is a specific form of society. Spatial structures are, just like temporal structures, forms of social structures”.6 That means that space and human activity constitute elements of heritage. At the same time, digitalisation has a decisive impact on the possibility for accessing primary data, for creating maps with this data, and to share these maps. Two case studies will demonstrate here how the map-based reconstruction of spatial activity helps to reveal different approaches to social realities. The case studies examine very different places and situations and will illustrate the potential of deep mapping to generate attention for hitherto neglected facets of life in urban spaces.

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