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DO I: 10.14714/C P106 .200 9
RADICAL ATLAS OF FERGUSON, USA
By Patty Heyda
Belt Publishing, 2024
312 pages
Paperback: $34.00, ISBN 978-1-953368-75-1
Review by: Shriya Malhotra, Independent Researcher
P H ’ Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA exem-
plies what is arguably an increasingly necessary form of
critical cartography, particularly so in an era where inclu-
sive, crowd-sourced, and participatory mapping has been
gaining traction by tapping into people’s everyday personal
and communal experiences. I, myself, see this atlas as an
example of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore has called “activist
scholarship” (2022, 448).
e city of Ferguson is located in what the atlas often refers
to colloquially as North St. Louis County or North County:
the northern part of the county of St. Louis, Missouri.
is previously obscure, predominantly African-American
suburb of St. Louis came to prominence in August of
2014, when Michael Brown, an eighteen-year-old African
American man, was killed by a white policeman. An out-
raged populace took to the streets demanding justice and
accountability—in demonstrations that later devolved
into rioting and looting. Physically, demographically, and
spatially dened by an industrial past, the developmental
trajectory of Ferguson highlights the racialized injustices
faced by people of color. at history, and the present re-
ality, provides the setting for Radical Atlas of Ferguson,
USA’s immense, almost forensic, exploration of gentrify-
ing suburbia—an exploration that leverages the revelatory
power of maps and of information design.
e Radical Atlas demonstrates how Ferguson’s built and
social environments have been constructed upon core
racial and power inequities, and it does so by bringing
together disparate narratives, indicators and variables
visualized as maps and diagrams. Once a typical, mid-
dle-American landscape—a rst-ring suburb of a major
US city—Ferguson can also be taken as a paradigmatic
example of how endemic, foundational inequities led both
to the killing and to the subsequent unrest.
Heyda and her team aim to show how a seemingly benign
suburb embeds and obscures systems of violence, racial
segregation, and nancial disenfranchisement, while also
shielding those systems and their agents’ actions from
scrutiny and legal consequences. e atlas does so by orga-
nizing maps under categorical subheadings, each accom-
panied by a “mobilize” section oering actionable respons-
es. In doing so, it brings home a much larger point: that
racism’s myriad manifestations are embedded in policy
and designs that inuence urban spaces.
Since the 1970s, urban design and planning in the United
States has been substantially inuenced by neoliberal eco-
nomics—wherein public policy is directed by the concerns
of private wealth and free market ideology—resulting in
certain, typically racialized, segments of society being con-
ned in compounding cycles of exclusion, inequality, and
poverty. e consequences are visible in America’s built,
social, and economic environments. As Gilmore herself
puts it in the Antipode Foundation film Geographies of
Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore: “capitalism
requires inequality, and racism enshrines it.”
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 106, FORTHCOMING Reviews | 2
Mapmaking may not be the mode of response that rst
comes to mind when one considers racial justice, but Black
intellectuals such as Ida B. Wells and W. E. B. Du Bois
have, historically, used cartography to reveal to the gener-
al population the often hidden economic injustices rooted
in race, and to communicate the realities those injustices
create. By contrast, the more recent and visible practice of
redlining—of drawing maps that explicitly identied and
excluded (again, often racialized) neighborhoods from ac-
cess to the nancial services required to secure housing—
is well known as a common tool in the hands of the agents
of racial injustice. It is this latter technique, rst developed
in the 1930s, that is most widely seen as the primary rela-
tionship between maps and race.
Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA questions this assumption
of an exclusionary correlation between race and cartogra-
phy, and succeeds in turning it on its head. e challenge
to power using maps is catalyzed by the fact that, in recent
years, civil society groups have had better access to spatial
analysis and mapmaking tools that help to identify metrics
for justice and equity. rough visual analysis of the urban
form, as well as through an examination of assorted vari-
ables of design and planning, the maps in this atlas demon-
strate how urban development has been used to justify and
advance agendas of power and control. In particular, these
activist maps reveal how “layers of racial capitalism were
entangled with scenes of cookie-cutter houses, strip malls
and suburban politics” (15), and, more broadly, how the
seemingly mundane built environments of suburban USA
encode a form of hidden violence through exclusion.
is intent—to illuminate the complicity of economics,
policy, and urban design, and to encourage “recognition,
accountability and resistance” (9)—is laid out by the au-
thor in her “Introduction,” which notes how this atlas rep-
resents an attempt to “remap the city as a political eco-
nomic construct to understand how and why inequality is
structured into the built environment, and how and why
such limited improvement persists” (11). Teddy Cruz and
Fonna Forman further remark in their “Foreword” that by
identifying and visualizing the geographies of inequality,
Heyda and her associates allow the assorted themes to be
examined to reveal the “layers of violent contradiction in-
ected on space and people by the extra-local priorities of
capital and its agents” (8). Collectively, the maps—and in
particular the actionable sub-sections on mobilization—
comprise a form of activism that, in my view, achieves the
goals of its authors.
e Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA project was not com-
missioned by any group or organization, but it does es-
pouse a point of view. Patty Heyda led the atlas project
as part of a course at the University of Washington in St.
Louis, where she is currently a professor of architecture
and urban design. Over 100 visuals, including photos,
charts, and maps, were created with support from her stu-
dents and research assistants.
As part of its introductory materials, the book provides an
“Atlas Guide” (28–29) that “orients the reader to the exact
frame, scale, and location in the region of each map” (18).
e information underlying the maps is extensively docu-
mented near the end, in the “Sources” section.
Data underlying the atlas maps were gathered using a wide
variety of methods—onsite observation, digital search en-
gines, media interviews, news accounts, reports, scholarly
research, and the transcription of historical, analog infor-
mation—with a primarily focus on the situation in and
around Ferguson between the years 2014 and 2023. Many
of the maps overlay and combine disparately sourced data
on a variety of themes, in order to highlight intersections
and interrelationships between topics—including some
that might at first seem unrelated—and illustrate the
proposed correlations. Any spatial data that were adapt-
ed or spatialized from news articles or public or nonprof-
it reports are fully cited on the map and also listed here.
Source citations for all spatial and statistical data, whether
adapted or spatialized from news articles, public or non-
prot reports, are documented, by chapter and map, in the
thirty-one page “Sources” section (272–303).
e atlas is organized into ve chapters, each covering a
specic theme or research category. “Territory” reviews
contestation and separation; “Space” looks at material
forms of neoliberalism to explore weaponization and vi-
olence; “Opportunity” examines systems of exclusion and
privilege; “Politics” examines governance sectors including
public and private; and “Justice” reviews human rights,
freedoms, health access, and the environment. Each chap-
ter is broken into thematic sections that are supplement-
ed by infographics, photographs, and maps, and is head-
ed with a brief preface, setting out the hypotheses to be
expounded.
Two detailed visual timelines—“Privatization of public
policy” (Figure 1) and “Civil rights & policy reactions,
1960–2020” (Figure 2) introduce and contextualize the
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 106, FORTHCOMING Reviews | 3
impetus for the project. The
former “shows the shift from
federally sponsored social
programs (in blue) to pub-
lic-private trickle-down mod-
els favoring business growth
and private wealth accumu-
lation (in orange)” (12) and
the latter shows “Civil rights
gains [and] reactive policy
protecting access to wealth
and power” (24). Between
them, the timelines illustrate
chronologically how neoliber-
alism has resulted in inequal-
ity by perpetuating structural
poverty through its programs
and policies.
By making visible the ways in
which privatization has acted
to the detriment of margin-
alized communities in and
around Ferguson, the subse-
quent maps reveal inherent
contradictions in city plan-
ning, policy, and design by
showing how tax incentives,
housing codes, urban plan-
ning design, and policing can
both aect and often increase
racial-based inequalities.
Chapter 5—entitled “Jus-
tice”—is particularly strong. It
focuses on social and human
rights through sub-sections
on “Liberty,” “Health,” and
“Environment.” Maps in the
“Health” section show how
environmental justice neces-
sitates racial justice, as well
as necessitating investment in
policies that are more equitable in their redistribution of
wealth equity. e “Liberty” section oers an overview of
the predatory criminal justice system, “where police and
courts in North St. Louis County prot o of poverty as
a mechanism for making up austere municipal revenue
shortfalls” (218). rough these maps, the cyclical nature
of poverty and the ways in which it is compounded and
enmeshed with inequality becomes clearer.
The maps in the Radical Atlas have the potential to in-
form the construction of more accountable frameworks
for urban research and design intervention by exposing
Figure 1. 0.1.01, Privatization of public policy (12–13).
Figure 2. 0.1.03 Timeline of civil rights & policy reactions, 1960–2020 (26–27).
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 106, FORTHCOMING Reviews | 4
crucial, but often missing or suppressed, information. In
addition to identifying and making pertinent patterns vis-
ible, they also identify specic areas for intervention and
improvement—often annotating them with explicit inter-
pretive guidance. For example, the “Development” section
of the “Politics” chapter examines neighborhoods that
need investment to help improve residents’ lives, by oer-
ing maps of food deserts (Figure 3, 178; Figure 4, 179)
that reveal which communities have easy access to healthy
foods, which do not, and how the solution lies in qual-
ity and not simply quantity. A comment on map 4.C.19
(Figure 3) notes that the construction of a large grocery
store in the middle of a food desert oers “helpful surface
level, not structural, changes” (178). Another map points
out that there remains a “persistent mismatch of jobs, ed-
ucation and income in Berkeley, MO, [a city adjacent to
Ferguson] despite it being home to two major Fortune 500
companies” (192). Similarly, a map on page 216, showing
the locations where Arch City Defenders—a local coordi-
nating organization for pro bono legal advocacy—has led
lawsuits has a note telling us that the group “works to hold
accountable those in power, to stop the criminalization
and prot o of poverty in the region” (217). ese carto-
graphic annotations lend credible depth to the visuals.
e maps in this atlas are designed to explicitly debunk
some very well-entrenched narratives and to advance
more equitable distributions
of justice by spurring a re-
think and repositioning of
established “systems of race
and power” (18). To do this,
the Radical Atlas offers the
reader a heavy load—almost
an overload—of rigorously
objective visual information
while at the same time un-
abashedly espousing a clear
political advocacy count-
er-agenda of its own. Still,
although a large part of the
atlas makers’ goal is to prob-
lematize entrenched assump-
tions, at least some of the
Radical Atlas maps might be
thought to play a bit fast and
loose with conflating cor-
relation and causality, and,
in the process, stretching the
Figure 3. 4.C.19 Food desert (178).
Figure 4. 4.C.19 Food des-
ert, western portion of Kin-
loch, MO (179). This map
makes clear the reality of
an inaccessible resource
located in a food desert.
Most of the households in
the western portion of Kin-
loch do not have access
to vehicles, or to adequate
public transportation, and
are therefore reliant on
local retail food outlets. In
practice, this means small,
nearby corner stores with
limited inventories and
often higher prices. The
large—and perhaps eco-
nomically efcient—re-
gional distribution center
is not accessible to retail
customers; no one can
shop at the facility.
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 106, FORTHCOMING Reviews | 5
reader’s credulity a bit far. Similarly, in some of the graph-
ics, the limits of design—both graphic and information—
and of cartography, become evident. In some instances
the mapmaker’s design choices tend to over-simplify the
reality they purport to depict, while some of the graph-
ics are simply a bit hard to understand. Creating simple,
accessible, and persuasive graphics of a complex, nuanced
situation is not easy, and a graphic that is not easily under-
stood will often be ignored or misinterpreted by a reader.
In at least a few of these maps there is a risk that either
the graphic or the rhetorical aspects, or both, might over-
whelm or confuse at least some of the atlas’ readers.
Nevertheless, the book is a fantastic example of activ-
ist scholarship and of communication and information
design through maps. As a collection, these maps offer
relevant and contextualized representations of pertinent
socio-economic information while challenging dominant
power structures. As an exercise in mapping the politics
of inequality, it is a substantial contribution to cartogra-
phy—particularly as an example of forensic, grassroots,
and critical cartographies leveraging the power of maps
for activism oriented towards social justice. Although
targeted mainly at an audience of students and faculty in
architecture and urban planning programs, and at people
engaged directly with urban policy, this visually appeal-
ing compendium is useful for anyone interested in map-
ping for social justice, or in exploring the role of visual and
spatial analysis enabled by new research tools that support
grassroots, critical, and collective cartography.
at said, there exists some room for criticism. One ques-
tion concerns the title: what is it, exactly, that makes this
Radical Atlas “radical”? ere is no question that Heyda is
exploring a complex situation, and is providing a cogent
and coherent statement and analysis framed in a man-
ner radically at odds with that espoused by the dominant
power structures, but does that make the cartography, and
by extension, the atlas itself, radical? It could be argued
that it represents what Mark Denil (2011) has called “a
cartography of radicals and not a radical cartography”
(2011, 19). While a cartography of radicals is in no way
Figure 5. 5.2.01 Health / food (244–245).
Cartographic Perspectives, Number 106, FORTHCOMING Reviews | 6
illegitimate, we should remember that “a politically or so-
cially challenging map should not be mistaken for a carto-
graphically challenging map” (2011, 19).
e absence of interviews is another noticeable weakness.
While the atlas exhibits an admirable visual multidimen-
sionality, it doesn’t always manage to show depth, com-
plexity, and interrelationship of many issues—something
that could potentially be captured by allowing people on
the ground to speak for themselves—and comes o as a bit
of an academic exercise.
Urban planning and development have historically, in
the United States, been underpinned by systemic racism.
With these maps, Patty Heyda presents a fantastic good
example of alternative uses of cartography—one recalling
Laura Kurgan’s work (2013) surrounding racialized incar-
ceration. is sort of mapping project, similar to initia-
tives like those of the Forensic Architecture group, reveals
how structural racism underpins much of the American
system, resulting in harm and (barely) hidden violence.
Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA is an invaluable showcase
for the potential of critical cartography for grassroots ac-
tivism and radical social justice: “By mapping Ferguson
through layers of spatio-political complexity and contra-
diction, the atlas unravels stories that underline how and
why the event [the 2014 murder of Michael Brown] and
its urban responses came to be, with glimpses of how and
why people are so resilient and creative in the face of such
systemic oppression” (17). ese maps illustrate how long
standing urban planning practices have entrenched pov-
erty and racial inequality spatially and physically into the
built environment—and the atlas succeeds in identifying
areas for intervention and change, realms necessitating so-
cial justice, and the intersections of variables such as pov-
erty, race, class, and health.
I personally enjoyed reading and reviewing this atlas be-
cause I have always loved maps: as informative works of
art and design, for how they work, what they reveal, what
they indicate about power and how they attempt to deal
with changes in space. is atlas is ultimately an ambitious
experiment into the power of spatial analysis and sense
making—something Cruz and Forman call “urban foren-
sics” (9). Overall, it is a wonderful and important contri-
bution—particularly with its examples of health mapping,
which reveal how a multitude of factors (including geog-
raphy) contribute to community well-being. It eectively
builds upon what Gilmore refers to as “engaged scholar-
ship” and “accountable activism,” something she says
Always begins with the politics of recognition . . .
plenty of bad research is produced for all kinds of
reasons, and plenty of fruitless organizing is un-
dertaken with the best intentions. Activist schol-
arship attempts to intervene in a particular histor-
ical-geographical moment by changing not only
what people do but also how all of us think about
ourselves and our time and place, by opening the
world we make. (2022, 447–8)
As part of this genre of work, the Radical Atlas of Ferguson,
USA oers readers the optics to begin working towards
systemic change and justice.
REFERENCES:
Denil, Mark. 2011. “e Search for a Radical
Cartography.” Cartographic Perspectives 68: 7–28.
ht t p s://doi.org/10.14714 /CP68.6.
Kurgan, Laura. 2013. Close Up at a Distance: Mapping,
Technology, and Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore. 2022. Abolition Geography: Essays
Towards Liberation. New York, NY: Verso Books.
