Researcher(s):
team 3399 Hanah Goldav
ENVS course(s): 400 Initiated: September 2012 Completed: May 2013 Go to project site
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There has been a profound change in the use of cartography since the digital revolution and widespread use of Internet and satellite technology. Maps have transcended the professionalized world of geography and cartography and have come to be part of basic human vernacular. This shift has resulted in a democratization of the mapping process that has formed a new kind of map user or neo-geographer, one who has the power to take part in mapmaking. This paper is focused around analyzing both pre-internet era maps and current web mapping technologies. It examines how city space is represented in these maps in and around Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon. It suggests that there have been changes in how this space is represented as a result of the shift in mapping. This paper argues that although developments in mapping have created new means of representing space, mapping tools fail to take advantage of the dynamic nature of the medium by representing mostly commercial moieties rather than more dynamic realities such as social patterns and colloquial knowledge of a place. Maps may show this limited window of reality because of entrenched beliefs of what maps should entail. First I discuss the technological developments that have made the democratization of mapping a reality. Next I look at specific spatial representations of the city on both new and old maps. Last I suggest how these findings might influence how cities are experienced through the medium of mapping and how cities may also be misrepresented as a result.