Valentina Carraro

University of Amsterdam | UVA · Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development Studies

Purpose Mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are widely used in disaster research and practice. While, in some cases, these practices incorporate methods inspired by critical cartography and critical GIS, they rarely engage with the theoretical discussions that animate those fields. Design/methodology/approach In this commentary, the a...

The growing influence of digital platforms on cities has captured the attention of urban scholars, marking a ‘platform pivot’ in digital geography and urban research. This article reviews emerging literature on platform urbanism, using the metaphors of the fix and the glitch as starting points from which to discuss two contrasting perspectives on t...

This paper examines the resurgence of 'ollas comunes' in the context of slow disaster for COVID-19 in Puente Alto, a municipality in the Santiago Metropolitan Region. Using the DROP model to conceptualise community disaster resilience, we investigate how local characteristics (namely, vulnerability levels and the natural, social and built environme...

Purpose The authors use media research and crowdsourced mapping to document how the first wave of the pandemic (April–August 2020) affected the Mapuche, focussing on seven categories of events: territorial control, spiritual defence, food sovereignty, traditional health practices, political violence, territorial needs and solidarity, and extractivi...

I read Rossetto and Lo Presti's article, ‘Reimagining the National Map’, as an invitation to develop what I call, following Eve Sedgwick, a reparative study of national cartographies. In this commentary, I enthusiastically support their call but also argue for the need to move from an appreciation of maps’ fundamental instability to a more daring e...

Waze is a navigation app that provides routing, as well as information about traffic, road closures and fuel prices, among other things. In Israel/Palestine, it also offers an ‘avoid dangerous areas’ feature that allows users to avoid Palestinian areas. In this chapter, I examine the debates and controversies generated by this function. While criti...

In this chapter, I discuss the politics of toponomy in Jerusalem on OpenStreetMap, a collaborative mapping platform that, despite being ostensibly open to contributions from everyone, offers a surprisingly one-sided representation of Jerusalem. The absence of Palestinian names from the map could be interpreted as an objective reflection of reality...

Dynamic, multidirectional and data-driven, digital mappings blur the distinction between maps and mapped worlds. A critical cartography for the digital age should approach maps as lively matters that change as they interact with users and non-users, other (digital) media, places and events. It should also attend, however, to the durable processes o...

An introduction to the recent history of Jerusalem, underscoring the role of cartography. Here, I explore how maps have been used to support the Zionist project, both symbolically (by presenting Palestine as a land without a people) and materially (by facilitating military expansion and civic administration). I also highlight key technological and...

In this chapter, I consider how Google assembles its maps from many sources, using algorithms and, occasionally, a set of loose norms, to decide which information to foreground for which users. This process goes largely unnoticed, but glitches such as the 2016 erasure of Palestine from Google Maps can cause users to notice and question Google’s car...

El marco normativo de planificación urbana exige la presentación de un estudio de riesgo en apoyo a la elaboración de los instrumentos de planificación territorial (IPT), pero no establecen su contenido ni su metodología. Estos estudios, generalmente elaborados por consultoras convocadas a través de procesos de licitación, tienden a centrarse en ac...

This paper presents a comparative study of the Waze avoid areas (WADA) feature in Jerusalem, Rio de Janeiro, and the US. I argue that, through comparative approaches, geographers can ‘ground’ the digital, developing situated accounts of how emerging technologies work at different sites. Taking as a starting point the controversies raised by WADA, I...

This paper examines the links between neoliberal urbanism and disaster vulnerability in Cartagena, a town on the Chilean central coast. In recent decades, this area has been transformed by speculative urban development, resulting in environmental damage and increased socio-economic segregation. We adopt a political ecology perspective to consider h...

Collective mapping (CM) emerged in the Global South as a tool to embed local perspectives into territorial governance, particularly addressing issues of land use and indigenous land rights. In the last decade, several disaster risk reduction (DRR) projects have adopted CM methodologies, recognising the importance of community participation in this...

The book addresses the rapid shifts which have taken place within cartography, and argues that no amount of technological sophistication will lead to neutral representations, and that as such critical cartography provides a solid foundation for questioning the power of maps. It considers the fragmentation, dynamism and opacity that characterise onl...

In this report we explain the methodology and initial findings of the project ‘Mapeando el Coronavirus en Wallmapu’, a crowdsourced mapping project that aims to monitor and analyze the impact of the pandemic in Wallmapu, recording community health and solidarities initiatives, and instances of political violence and extractivist activities.

This paper contributes to the literature on participation and marginality on the geoweb by exploring the politics of non-mapping on OpenStreetMap (OSM). To this end, we reflect on our collaboration with Grassroots Jerusalem (GJ) - a Jerusalem-based Palestinian non-­governmental organization (NGO) - and their engagement with OSM. Specifically, we dr...

In 1993 the Oslo Accords are signed. Soon thereafter, Edward Said critically characterises the negotiations that resulted in this agreement as an uneven confrontation between Israelis armed with ‘unmatched facts, files and power’ and Palestinians caught between ‘disaffection and unrealistic optimism’. Palestinians need to turn geography into resist...