Mapping stories: representing urban everyday narratives and operations

Abstract

This paper proposes the idea of narrative mapping as a way to reveal how urban space operates in an everyday context. It argues that narrative mapping has the potential to capture the particularity of urban living space through interactive digital medium. In particular, this paper presents the development of Mapping Stories—a mapping representation that captures the observed everyday narratives and visualizes them through an interactive digital medium. Drawing on De Certeau’s idea of everyday spatial operation, we developed this mapping as a form of practice that spatializes narratives with its geo-referenced location. It projects the chain of the events occurring in a time–space context, which articulate the everyday narrative to reveal the particularity of urban space. The interactivity of the digital medium allows for the reading and selection of narratives within their time–space contexts instead of enforcing the totalisation of the map into a single narrative. This mapping approach acknowledges the potential of urban spaces as dynamic sites of everyday narratives and operations. It highlights the open-ended nature of urban contexts and suggests their potential for re-appropriation through the more plural and open-minded urban design practice.