Every year we review thousands of maps for the Platial+Frappr map awards and a new phase in social mapping tends to reveal itself. The fundamental way that people engage in social mapping evolves.
In 2006 the trend was "Mapumentary," a personal method to document and share a single view of the world. In 2007 we recognized "Movement mappers," people deeply connected to important social issues who use social mapping as a way to rally, support, and promote their causes. It was a significant trend because it meant the work people were doing on Platial, Frappr, and across the web was more collaborative and of greater potential impact.
As we look back at maps created since then, the evolution continues in the form of Community Cartography. This is a hyperlocal collaboration in the sharing of resources within a community which can benefit everyone. The willingness to share resources becomes critical in a tanking economy with rising unemployment. Our flavor of capitalism is in existential crisis. In the US, Obama offers a perspective on a more sustainable future, the world gets flatter, local movements flourish, and social media becomes more prevalent--all variables which lend themselves to hunkering down in your community and helping those around however you can. The maps we recognize this year have made initial strides in demonstrating what we can do to better understand our communities and their resources. They include mapping thrift stores, free food, good dumpsters, community gardens, farmers markets, green initiatives, public art, institutions, libraries, and more. Democracy Live is mapping public officials, Urban planners are surveying bike parking and Steev is exploring borders. Earthhour and World Have Your Say are rallying supporters and connecting members.
In celebration of Community Cartography, we've created a meta-mashup of 25 users' local maps of LA to illustrate some of the great work which is a valuable local asset. Much of the information here cannot be found on any commercial services and shows the importance of social mapping as a community tool. We will release the meta-mashup tool shortly but if you want to play around with it, feel free to email me. It extends the sharability of Platial Community data and makes mapmaking much simpler.
In this context, we also wanted to share a project in the same spirit of Community Cartography: We especially enjoyed looking at the tags used by this community to describe place. It would have been possible to fit them neatly into a static ontology: Animal Hospital, Art, Artistic, Bridgeport, Celebrity, Contemplation, Culture, Dogs, Ethnicity, Food, Gangs, Graduation, Income, Iraq, Lost, Neighborhoods, Personal, Points of Interest, Political, Pollution, Restaurant, School, Student Work, Tourist, Veterans.
It is clear that social mapping is still in an era of massive growth which will continue at both the social layer where we focus and also from the base maps themselves where Open Street Maps and Google Mapmaker are making great strides in community cartography.
Recent Comments