From the Cartographic Fringes: Map Mobilizations and the Urban

Through a retrospective reading of previous works carried out in the fields of cartographic humanities, map activism and creative research, this chapter suggests how a mobile conception of cartography can be activated to question territorial, social and imaginative urban margins. Starting from a reworking of the concept of mobilization, I present four case studies that exemplify the multiple ways in which cartographic imagery and objects are put in motion as actors that hold the potential to promote change in the urban realm. The chapter considers imaginative city mappings emerging from postcolonial literary texts, activist maps aggregating urban protests against anti-immigrant policies, circulating cartographic visuals and practices stimulating solidarities in quarantined cities, and map-like urban objects fictionally animated to raise awareness of political questions about Europe. The perspective of the mobility humanities helps in reading such different practices as kinds of movement implying diverse ways of mobilizing the cartographic through activism and creativity.