Tracing postrepresentational visions of the city: representing the unrepresentable Skateworlds of Tyneside

Jon Swords*, Michael Jeffries

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

In any visualisation of the city more is left unseen than made visible. Contemporary visualisations of the city are increasingly influenced by quantification, and thus anything which cannot be quantified is hidden. In contrast, we explore the use of ‘lo-fi’, doodled, participatory maps made by skateboarders in Tyneside, England, as a means to represent their cityscape. Drawing on established work an skateboarding and recent developments in cartography, we argue that skateboarders understand the city from a postrepresentational perspective. Such a framing presents a series of challenges to map their worlds which we explore through a processual account of our mapmaking practice. In this process we chart how skateboarders’ mappings became part of a more significant interplay of performance, identity, visualisation, and exhibition. The paper makes contributions to the emerging field of postrepresentational cartography and argues that its processual focus provides useful tools to understand how visions of the city are produced.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1313-1331
Number of pages19
JournalEnvironment and Planning A
Volume47
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2015

Keywords

  • participatory mapping
  • postrepresentational cartography
  • skateboarding
  • Visualization

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