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Published by Maney Publishing (c) The British Cartographic Society
SECTION 1
Community Mapping
Chris Perkins
Geography, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL
c.perkins@manchester.ac.uk
The state of the art of collaborative community mapping in the UK is reviewed. Employing five contrasting case studies, a
contextual approach is proposed as the most useful way of assessing the changing significance of these local alternative
cartographies. Parish mapping, green maps, artistic maps, open source mapping and cycle mapping are best understood as
political, social, aesthetic and technological practices reflecting differing institutional configurations.
Keywords: community mapping, contextual approaches, institutional frameworks
Throughout most of the history of cartography, maps have
been used to administer nations or cities, support colonial
projects, reinforce property rights and underpin military
operations (Pickles, 2004). Individuals in modern societies
have, until recently, only rarely mapped; they have used
maps created by cartographers. Yet all human beings can
map: people have natural mapping abilities (Blaut et al.,
2003). And, in response to technological and social change
in the last twenty-five years, cartography has increasingly
been democratised (Rood et al., 2001), with an emergence
of critical approaches to mapping (Crampton and Krygier,
2006). People in theory now have the tools to create their
own maps and express their own mapping skills.
Community mapping plays a significant role in this process.
It might be defined as local mapping, produced collabora-
tively, by local people and often incorporating alternative
local knowledge.
Early research seized upon this alternative potential to
highlight radical possibilities. Aberley (1993) offered
practical advice for local protesters, and King and Clifford
(1985) offered an action guide to local community
conservation. Such volumes explored the best ways forward
for local community mappers, charting possible source
material and explaining how to organise a community map.
They showed the kinds of struggle that could be advanced,
including
N
reasserting indigenous peoples’ rights
N
re-mapping lost place-names
N
re-publishing the past for contemporary consumption
N
protecting local wildlife in the face of development
N
conserving landscapes threatened by agribusiness
N
advancing local claims to land
N
putting forward arguments over resources such as
forests, minerals, or fishing
N
protesting against planners
N
opposing military power
N
rejecting surveillance
N
showing t he powers-that-be what might be locally
distinctive.
Democratised mapping offers new possibilities for
articulating social, economic, political or aesthetic claims.
Formerly marginalised groups can gain a voice. And this
practical, emancipatory advice has taken on new significance
in the era of digital mapping and the world wide web. Data
are increasingly available, accessible and flexible. Software
tools allow people to make their own maps. The web
encourages collaborative participation and cost-effective
dissemination. It can be used as an effective medium to
organise opposition. And the social context has shifted with
the new orthodoxy of sustainable development encoura-
ging local involvement. In theory, all of these factors ought
to lead to an upsurge in the amount of community
mapping.
In practice though, community mapping is much less
frequent or emancipatory than might be expected. In the
developed world, it has been largely subsumed into the
burgeoning literature around participatory GIS (see
Omsrud and Craglia, 2003). Participatory GIS in theory
delivers a more democratic spatial governance (see
Kingston, 2007, this issue), but the majority of this work
emphasises the incorporation of local voices into maps
produced and controlled by specialists, and articulating
their agendas, rather than subverting mapping, or changing
what is mapped. And truly participatory GIS is particularly
thin in the British context. Wood (2005), for example,
observes that very few community mapping projects in the
UK have yet involved GIS. Even in the American context of
publicly available federal spatial data, community mapping
arguably does not threaten the interests of those with real
power, and sits safely marginalised in a local world of
The Cartographic Journal Vol. 44 No. 2 pp. 127–137 ICA Special Issue 2007
#
The British Cartographic Society 2007
DOI: 10.1179/000870407X213440
Published by Maney Publishing (c) The British Cartographic Society
struggles over identity politics. In a recent review, Parker
(2006) reflects that empirical studies of community
mapping have focused largely upon indigenous mapping
and the role of maps in the reassertion of property rights,
rather than upon relationships between community map-
ping and power per se, or the practices involved in mapping
projects.
Counter-mapping has probably been most practiced in
the Third World. The new orthodoxy of participatory
development relies strongly upon mapping to help imple-
ment locally-led, village-based development (Chambers,
2006). But there has not yet been much critique of the
process. Exceptions are King (2002) and Hodgson and
Schroeder (2002), who focus on Third World practice, and
Parker (2006) and Crouch and Matless (1996) whose
critical ethnographies focused on western contexts.
Given the much more sanguine contemporary reactions
to the potential of community mapping, what is the state of
the art in the UK? Which voices are most likely to be
articulated through a community mapping process? This
article addresses these issues and parallels Parker’s work by
charting the relations between community mapping, power
and place in a mature post-industrial western context, but
changes the focus to provide a wider snapshot of some of
diverse British community mapping contexts. Instead of
Parker’s (2006) detailed ethnography of a single kind of
community mapping, this research focuses upon institu-
tional frameworks and networks of practice, through which
alternative and local maps are created, and argues that
contexts beyond immediate participation are crucial for
understanding their significance. The argument is illu-
strated by five contrasting case studies, which show how
community mapping reflects and articulates contested and
complex notions of place, mediated through politics,
practices, technology, and aesthetics.
ARTISTIC ENCOUNTERS
Schulz (2001) argues that mapping is increasingly
employed in modern art. In addition to the map in a fixed
artistic representation, created by a single artist, mapping is
being carried out as part of performance art practice and
enacted by wider community groups. Maps are once again
personal and subjective (Harmon, 2003). Engaging in
artistic mapping activity allows people to think in new ways
about their places and bring new places into being.
Two contrasting examples illustrate the significance.
Psycho-geographic encounters with the city frequently
involve mapping and can be traced back to the situationist
‘de
´
rive’ inspired by the practice of Guy Debord in Paris in
the 1950s. Debord mapped his drifts around Paris as a form
of resistance to capitalism’s acquisitive power. By walking
and mapping personal tracks across the city, psycho-
geographers argue that alternative, more playful maps can
be made, which open up new views of the same spaces. The
1990s saw a significant revival in psycho-geography and
urban exploration in the UK, which was frequently
associated with new social movements, street theatre and
protest (Pinder, 2005). Participants walk the city in new
ways, following algorithmic patterns (first left, second right,
third left etc), solving puzzles, reclaiming places from
commerce or surveillance by staged performances, navigat-
ing new routes and constructing new maps. Sometimes
permanent mapping emerges from these events and is
displayed in exhibitions. It often, however, remains an
ephemeral performance, of the moment, and shared by the
participants alone.
Mapping practice for many community artists also often
employs geospatial technologies to subvert accepted norms.
Christian Nold’s work on bio-mapping illustrates the
potential of mixing geo-spatial technologies with biometric
sensors and helps communities create their own maps. Bio
Mapping consists of three different components: a galvanic
skin response (GSR) sensor and data logger, similar to the
equipment employed in lie-detectors; a commercial GPS unit
to locate bodily responses, and mapping software to plot
how the person was feeling in a particular place. There is a
relationship between GSR response and emotional arousal:
anger, being startled, fear and sexual feelings can all produce
similar responses. Using this system it is possible to construct
individual tracks and display the ridges and troughs of
emotion on a map. Results can be merged into composite
maps reflecting wider social responses. Annotated emotion
maps can be produced. In 2006, Nold published a complex
emotion map of Greenwich, which brings together the
composite feelings of local people about their place (see
Figure 1). His data are available in KMZ (compatible with
Google Maps) and GPX formats and may be downloaded
from http://www.biomapping.net/data.htm. This and
other composite emotion maps may be viewed against a
Google Earth backdrop, as a Flash implementation, or
downloaded as a .pdf file. Videos and DVDs of the project
are available and the technique is being cast as useful art,
showing objective, consensual, community feelings about an
area that might inform the planning process.
THE PARISH MAP PROJECT
Some of the earliest widespread community maps in the UK
were initiated by the charity Common Ground. In 1985,
they launched the Parish Map Project, as an ongoing
initiative encouraging local people to map what their own
parish valued. The remit was to support local distinctive-
ness. The mapping process was seen as being at once
aesthetic and political, encouraging active participation in
map making, with the process in theory bringing together
local communities to ‘hold their own ground’ (King and
Clifford, 1985).
The project offered general advice but avoided central
standardisation. Instead local people were encouraged to
employ whatever skills were a vailable to create a map of
their own place. A travelling exhibition of commissioned
maps from artists encouraged participation. And subse-
quent county-level initiatives have kick-started more
recent involvement, for example in Bedfordshire,
Cheshire, Shropshire, Devon, Norfolk, Suffolk and West
Sussex (England in Particular, 2007). But it is local people
who decide what is mapped, who is involved, how
mapping s hould be carried ou t, the form of t he map and
its me dium. The Pa rish Map Pr oject is p redo mina ntly
128 The Cartographic Journal
Published by Maney Publishing (c) The British Cartographic Society
English, quintessenti ally local, invariably defined by the
largely backw ards-lo oking spatial frame of the ecclesiastical
parish and, despite the initial wishes of Common Ground,
mainly rural.
Common Ground itself has no idea how m any Par ish
maps there are, and has only managed to track down
details of around 850 communities that have engaged in
mapping (England in Particular, 2007). By 1996, Crouch
Figure 1. Greenwich emotion map (source: http://www.emotionmap.net)
Figure 2. A typical Parish Map Design: Bonsall Parish Map excerpt. Source: http://www.england-in-particular.info/parishmaps/m-bonsall.
html
Section 1: Community Mapping 129
Published by Maney Publishing (c) The British Cartographic Society
andMatlessguessedataround1500maps.Projects
continue to be initiated, the millennium witnessing a
particular surge in activity. By 2007, over 200 0 d ifferent
communities have probably engaged in parish mapping
andanimpressivepercentageofruralEnglandhasbeen
mapped.
Parish mapping has been hugely diverse. Most projects
have involved parish surveys, many based on old Ordnance
Survey mapping, supplemented by historical research,
parish walks and discussions. Common Ground encourages
participants to map the parish boundary, old tracks or green
lanes, rights of way, commons, field boundaries and names,
ancient monuments and historic buildings, parkland,
woodland and orchards, water-meadows, streams and
ponds, quarries and old industrial buildings, nature
reserves, recreational facilities, boundary stones and places
associated with artistic, literary or historical events (King
and Clifford, 1985). The typical design comprises a
bounded central map, surrounded by imagery relating to
the place, events, or shared narratives (see Figure 2).
Mapping has typically resulted in an artistic artefact, usually
painted, and often still displayed in village halls, schools or
other community facilities. So the maps serve as icons
representing the place, but are also situated in the place, and
are part of its material culture (Crouch and Matless, 1996).
Many parish mapping projects have also involved a strongly
performative element: dance, stories and events are a central
part of the recreation of place.
Many maps have also been published as posters or folded
maps, or served from web sites. The same image is often
available in different forms, a valorised original in pride of
place in the village and a mass-produced representation for
outside consumption and to raise funds. Maps have been
sewn, woven, knitted, printed, drawn, painted, filmed,
animated, performed and written (Common Ground,
1996). Projects have employed photography, photomon-
tage, embroidery, quilting, applique
´
, patchwork, needle-
work, batik, soft sculpture, cast metal, collage, ceramics,
found natural materials, drawings, and calligraphy, but also
video and multimedia technologies (Clifford and King
1996) (see Figure 3). The aesthetics of map design
themselves exercise a politics: some communities celebrate
a radical multi-vocal aesthetic, deliberately juxtaposing
different visual styles and voices, whereas others evoke a
picturesque and nostalgic style more akin to a best kept
village competition.
Figure 3. The Parish Map as Artistic Artefact: the Welney Millennium Parish Map. Source: http://www.welney.org.uk/
Millenium%20Arts%20Project.htm
130 The Cartographic Journal
Published by Maney Publishing (c) The British Cartographic Society
Even apparently simple designs, however, rarely reflect a
single person’s work; an organisation has almost always
engaged in mapping, typically a church group, school,
parish council, evening class, or WI. The process sees many
different voices raised. The remit encourages sharing, but
the format tends to articulate a single voice. On the surface
most parish mapping seems to be uncontested, largely
aesthetic and to reflect a single unified sense of place. But
final products often hide uneasy and negotiated compro-
mises (Crouch and Matless, 1996). Nor do voices
articulated in the process necessarily support the same
radical planning agenda as Common Ground. They are
often rather conservative: many designs are more celebra-
tions than howls of protest. A more careful ethnography
reveals tensions and a local politics strongly at play. For
example the Parish Map of Mottram-in-Longdendale that
this author facilitated in a Workers’ Educational Association
evening class in 1995 elides a vigorous debate over what
should be included. The final product leaves out the
Manchester overspill estate, and chooses to silence the roar
of traffic heading through the Mottram traffic lights. The
published map instead celebrates local history, reflecting the
interests of people in the study group, excluding everything
outside its remit and the parish.
Figure 4. The global Green Map symbol set. Source: http:www.greenmap.org
Section 1: Community Mapping 131
Published by Maney Publishing (c) The British Cartographic Society
THE GREEN MAP SYSTEM
The Green Map System is ‘a global eco-cultural movement,
energised by local knowledge, action and responsibility’
(Green Map, 2007). The first Green Map, of New York
City was published in 1992; in 1995 a global network was
established to encourage use of a common symbols and
practices. Since then, publication has grown apace. There
are now 276 published maps and 376 projects worldwide,
with 50 or 60 new communities joining each year; there are
14 of these Green Map projects in the United Kingdom and
a majority of them have an urban focus. Most encompass
larger areas than are covered in the Parish Map Project.
Like the Parish Map Project, Green Map is a centrally
orchestrated, locally delivered and collaborative process.
Partnership between different groups is seen as best
practice. The Sheffield Green Food Map for example was
co-ordinated by a steering group with representatives from
seven different organisations, and supported by funding
from health and environmental grants. An altogether larger
scale of collaboration exists in some British Green Maps.
For example the London Green Map serves as an online
framework for other local initiatives, offering a mechanism
for local communities to upload information about their
own area, and also as a capital-wide front-end to local
authority-based initiatives (London 21, 2004).
Maps are made locally to different specifications. In the
London project, the mapping is employed as part of a
London-wide Local Agenda 21 initiative promoting local
green activity and communicating green issues, by engaging
Londoners to build local sustainability and capacity for
sustainable future action. This map shows: food growing
projects, food coops, farmers’ markets, community gar-
dens, scrap banks, computer, furniture and white goods
reuse projects, walking or cycling projects, residents groups
with a green approach, locations of different local groups,
recycling points, health food shops, green businesses, and
various council services.
The Green Map system offers, however, a greater
uniformity than the Common Ground project: new
mappers register their interest and in return for a small
annual fee receive a kit of Green Maps, a resource disk and
advice about best practice. They are encouraged to use
‘global icons’, grouped under the eleven different headings
(see Figure 4). Local mapmakers may also employ their
own symbols. The London map for example devised its
own local set. But the global remit encourages global
participation. Co-ordination and networking takes place to
Figure 5. Oxford Green Map excerpt. Source: http://www.greenoxford.com/greenmap.html
132 The Cartographic Journal
Published by Maney Publishing (c) The British Cartographic Society
facilitate the shared political objective of sustainable local
development and this dictates more control. There is also a
much greater focus on the process of mapping. The ethos
of collaboration may be the same, but methods matter
more to Green Map and often explicitly incorporate
participatory methodologies.
This greater central control has resulted in more
standardised designs, which paradoxically prevent local
people finding their own aesthetic voice. Green mapping
is much more functional and less diverse than parish
mapping. Its media are more limited and less creative.
Almost all of the British Green Maps serve as visual
directories locating point-based green facilities. Some are
online, (such as the Wiltshire map at http://www.big-
barn.co.uk/wiltshire/ where postcode searching allows
local resources to be mapped out); some are simply in hard
copy; whilst some are available both in hard copy and on
the web (for example the Oxford map in Figure 5). A sense
of place only rarely emerges from this process. But
incorporating community voices into an articulated, shared
resource faces similar tensions to those that which challenge
parish mappers. Aims may not be met when volunteers have
to buy in to the process. Resources may be stretched and
urban mapping projects are likely to face grave difficulties
defining their ‘communities’. It may also be difficult to
reconcile the often disparate needs of different shades of
green opinion. It is too early to tell whether the lofty ideals
of the Green Map system will be realised in the UK.
OPENSTREETMAP
Moves towards participatory mapping in the USA have
benefited strongly from the availability, at minimal cost to
the consumer, of officially produced public-domain federal
spatial data. In the UK, however, official data are still
regarded as a commodity, subject to careful protection of
intellectual property rights. It can be argued that this
discriminates against local communities that lack the resource
to be able to access Ordnance Survey map data (Barr, 2001).
The lack of community-led and owned GIS in the UK
reflects these cost-recovery policies and the status of
Ordnance Survey exploiting its monopoly and market
position to maximise revenue (Office of Fair Trading, 2006).
Technological advances in the last five years have led to
new community mapping initiatives that aim to build
collaborative, community-led alternatives to commodified
map data. Many of these initiatives have exploited high-
resolution satellite data and mapping from portals such as
Google Maps or Google Earth (see Erle and Gibson,
2006). Some explicitly seek to focus public attention on
secret sites (Dodge, 2004). These hacks and mashups,
Figure 6. Raw GPS tracklogs on the OSM web site. Source: http://www.openstreetmap.org
Section 1: Community Mapping 133
Published by Maney Publishing (c) The British Cartographic Society
however, still depend upon the commercial provision of
base map and image data.
More completely Open Source alternatives are being
created to offer fully sharable data, notably OpenStreetMap
(OSM), founded in July 2004 by Steve Coast and currently
transforming itself into ‘an international non-profit
organisation dedicated to encouraging the growth,
development and distribution of free geospatial data and
to providing geospatial data for anybody to use and share’
(www.openstreetmap.org).
OpenStreetMap explicitly seeks to create a ‘free’ alter-
native map, subject to use under Creative Commons
licensing. Data are collected from diverse public domain
sources. Probably the most important are GPS tracks,
collected by volunteers with standard GPS receivers (see
Figure 6). Local knowledge is also important for street and
feature naming, but sources also comprise public domain
data such as out-of-copyright OS mapping, satellite imagery
and TIGER data. The ethic is strongly to oppose any non-
public-domain sourcing of material that ends up in the
database.
The OpenStreetMap website facilitates access to
collaboratively collected map data, by employing simple
viewing software, including a newly ‘slippy’ map.
Editing tools allow GPS tracks to be converted into ways,
support the feature-coding of the database and the creation
of properly rendered mapping from SVG formated data.
The enterprise is decentralised and strongly collaborative,
a kind of ‘Wiki map’, shared amongst those who create
it. Any user can amend any part of the map and the
process of map creation explicitly relies upon sharing and
participation.
So this community mapping shares a functional focus,
rather than any necessary geographical propinquity. Shared
identity is reinforced through mailing lists and a complex
array of online tools. A real community of interest is
fostered through regular social events, notably ‘map
parties’, which aim to fill in gaps in coverage. Building
upon successful models held in the Isle of Wight and
Manchester in 2006, regular parties bring together novices
with more experienced mappers and have become an
important part of the open ethos.
OpenStreetMap is still growing at an exponential rate. At
the end of 2006, there were 4400 users, and 44 million
track points had been added to the database. Only three
million line segments, however, have so far been tagged.
The map is far from complete. But data can now be
exported as SVG graphics, be output back to a GPS, and
displayed on mobile devices. Real commercial users are
employing OpenStreetMap data, for example the property
search web site Nestoria.co.uk using OSM data for the Isle
of Wight (see Figure 7). And OSM has recently negotiated
support from the commercial web mapping portal
Multimap, as well as reaching an agreement with Yahoo
to use and extract information from their aerial imagery
(with certain conditions) for significant portions of the
world.
There are inevitable tensions in the project. OSM is
run on a shoestring and relies strongly upon a small
key group of activists who are essentially interested in
developing the open source code and the functionality
of the system. The majority of users simply collect street
data: few edit and code. The hardest work is in adding
layers of data to the GPS tracks, labelling the ways and
adding value to the street data. As the data becomes richer
so there may well be increasing pressure to employ it in
ways that do not conform to the initial collaborative remit
of the system.
CYCLING MAPS
Cycling offers a good example of a community leisure activity
creating new mapping. Until recently mapping in the UK
catered badly for the needs of cyclists. Official map
specifications changed in the 1990s to incorporate long
distance leisure cycling, and commercially published small-
scale specialist route-based mapping, began to emerge
sponsored by the cycling charity SUSTRANS. Today, there
are more cycling maps, but most still focus on cycle touring
rather than urban commuting. Perkins and Thomson (2005)
argue that Ordnance Survey and most commercially
published urban mapping in the UK is inappropriate for
community cycling needs. Cycle City Guides from Dome
Publishing and the web-served output from Pinder are larger
scale representations that map the urban road network
emphasising cycling facilities, hazards, and a system of cycle
routes, derived from local authority classifications, but these
do not incorporate the views of the cycling community.
A different model of cycling map has also emerged in the
last decade in the UK. This is created by and for cyclists,
incorporating road and route classifications that they want
rather than what the local authority might want to be
depicted. In Manchester for example the Community
Mapping project (www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/mapping/)
has created a suite of hard copy and web-served cycling
maps and developed a multi-method approach to incorpo-
rate community views (Perkins and Thomson, 2005) (see
Figure 8). This process is similar to the ways in which the
cycle maps for London, Sheffield, Kettering and
Cheltenham have been produced.
The methods employed in Manchester include analysing
existing designs, collecting user reactions and community
views about what should be mapped, producing test maps
of different designs, content and with different degrees of
interactivity. Using focus groups a specification that was
widely acceptable to cyclists was agreed. Cyclists’ route
choices were then incorporated into a series of completed
maps. Amongst the decisions taken by the cyclists were the
need for multiple scales, preferences over publication
formats, route classification and depiction, a preference
for photographic depiction and detailed provision, and
the need to incorporate larger scale access information to
off-road routes.
As a collaborative initiative this process sometimes resulted
in uneasy compromises. The mapping project was funded
through a health promotion agency attached to the local
authority. Funders wanted facilities to be audited and needed
to have evidence of the success of the project in terms of
getting more people to cycle. Elements within the cycling
community distrusted the authority to enact change. There
were also tensions between the research, and the need to create
Section 1: Community Mapping 135
Published by Maney Publishing (c) The British Cartographic Society
a community-led map and ongoing process. Divisions within
the cycling community themselves are also papered over in the
mapped outcomes. Warning symbols may be appropriate for
some cyclists, but the more activist community saw these as
part of a conspiracy to discourage reclaiming the streets!
CONCLUSIONS
It is hard to quantify how many community mapping
projects exist in the UK in 2007, but the amount of
mapping is almost certainly greater than it ever has been.
There are still substantial barriers hindering participation:
mapping is still perceived as a technical exercise, demanding
expertise, carried out by others who know best. But by
highlighting different examples, this article has shown the
vibrancy of bottom-up initiatives and how the democratisa-
tion of cartography is progressing in the UK.
Parker (2006) shows that community empowerment is
complex. Cycling mapping isn’t only about mobility, the
parish map is much more than just rural art, Green Maps
don’t just advance ecological protest etc. Safely compart-
mentalised projects hide a considerable overlap of places,
people, products and systems. Cycling activists are also
often concerned with green mapping. The politics of Open
Source mapping is closely associated with urban activism:
map bases may be shared between different projects and
cycling is the most effective mechanism for collecting urban
GPS tracks. Expertise in participatory techniques is shared
at the grassroots. Urban artistic projects rub shoulders with
Open Source hacking and green mapping at artistic festivals
(see for example www.futuresonic.org).
Much of this complexity also stems from the nature of
the technology employed in different projects. At one
extreme, community mapping often eschews anything
more complex than the practical skills need to create a
simple map. In the Parish Map Project, very few of the
projects have employed GIS or the web. Nor is a de
´
rive
dependent upon new technologies, but much of the
upsurge in collaborative and performative community
mapping art relies upon interactive possibilities stemming
from GPS, mapping software and the web. A community of
interest built around shared and complex technology is the
focus for OpenStreetMap and the whole notion of wiki
mapping is strongly technology-dependent. Using more
complex technologies such as GIS in community mapping
can empower communities (Wood, 2005).
In the UK at least, community mapping is also most
strongly facilitated by institutional structures that encou-
rage involvement. It is easier for activists to follow a
template, whether it is the Green Map methodology, the
OpenStreetMap code and structure, or a regional promo-
tional exercise for the Parish Map Project. Counties that
have been most mapped in the Parish Map Project are those
where agencies have encouraged the process. The existence
of networks of like-minded people has been fundamental in
the spread of community mapping: institutions encourage
the social intercourse that underpins active collaboration. A
cycling group, green group, WI, OpenStreetMap mapping
party, or psycho-geography mailing list provides social
possibilities which encourage mapping.
Interconnections matter. Wider social influences are
fundamental for all community mappers. The Green Map
movement depends upon LA21 for its moral and political
direction. OpenStreetMap would probably not exist were
it not for OS cost-recovery. Community cycling mapping
implicitly opposes car culture. Parish mapping reflects
opposition to creeping uniformity and a desire to practise
creative skills, and collaborative artistic community map-
ping is fuelled by a creative desire for difference. All of
these examples depend upon a particular zei tgeist an d a
local community mapping initiative is never simply local.
Grasseni (2004) argues that the macro-level of policies
and agencies coexist and intertwine with the micro-level
of local mapping capacities. The Greenmap system i s
globally scaled and enacted locally. Community-led
cycling maps in the UK enact a local response to a
particular need. The Parish M apping Project r eflects
English national and regional identities. OpenStreetMap
facilitates local activity that f eeds in to a potentially global
project, which has so far largely been enacted at a national
level etc.
There are inevitable tensions in this intertwining. Some
exist in a community; some reflect internal–external conflict
(Crouch and Matless, 1996). Many community mapping
projects serve both aesthetic and functional roles: a parish
quilting group may want to produce an object of beauty
and be much less concerned with political protest, than the
objectors who want to use the project to oppose the latest
Tesco development. Local constructions of place reflect
struggles that are not always easy to see in the often bland
aesthetic of completed Parish mapping. But the more
functional aesthetic of Green Map projects also hides
argument. Completed mapping will often have to face in
several directions to satisfy group dynamics: cycling maps
have to show the best routes, but also persuade local
authorities to improve infrastructure. An artist leading a
community mapping group may have different agendas
from other participants. Parent bodies may have long-term
political agendas remote from the pleasures of creation or
participation: Green Maps enacted on the ground may
deviate from the global master plan.
The nature of empowerment is complex too. Most
community mapping implicity seeks to change the world.
The product is a tool helping towards this process: a Green
Map for example documents organic food shops or
recycling points; OpenStreetmap grows until it competes
with commercial mapping etc. On the other hand mapping
exercises are usually about an empowering process in their
own right: local capacity is developed and social groups
grow around a mapping event. And community mapping
tends to be explicit about this, instead of pretending to be
neutral (Parker, 2006). This transparency is also explicit in
almost all of the British projects discussed above.
All of these initiatives show the importance of mapping as
a set of practices, as well as an end goal (Perkins, 2006).
Their longevity varies, but technological and social change
implies that collaborative community mapping will become
increasingly significant. People are once again mapping
because they want to, and it is the emotional attachment
that emerges as central to all of these projects. New forms
of community mapping can be expected to emerge,
136 The Cartographic Journal
Published by Maney Publishing (c) The British Cartographic Society
employing different styles, media, technologies, content
and politics. The precise configuration of local interests will
almost certainly be strongly influenced by a much wider
context, drawn from a community that at first sight might
appear to be off the map.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTES
Chris Perkins is Senior
Lecturer in Geography,
School of Environment
and Development,
University of Manchester.
He is also the Map Curator
at the John Rylands
University Library,
University of Manchester.
His research interests focus
on the different roles that
mapping plays in contem-
porary western society,
with an ongoing interest
in cultures of map use and
community mapping.
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Chris Perkins
Section 1: Community Mapping 137
