Participatory Cartography applied to Environmental Design

Abstract

This article presents a connection between social cartography and environmental design. The social cartography brings new contributions to the traditional cartography, breaking the paradigm that maps should only be designed by governmental agencies, it proposes that the people itself design their own maps so that they can be critics and take part in the process. The participatory mapping have a social function, in the way that it helps territory management, identifying the traditional uses of the territory, its struggles, its frailties, its potential, empowering these people, encouraging then to take action upon this territory searching for ways to transform it or to secure their rights over it. The objective of this paper is to show how the participatory methodologies studded in this research, the participatory mapping and the affective mapping can contribute to the environmental design in its initial stages seeking the participation of the populace in the urban planning as they organize their visions about the territory, articulating and proposing dialogues with the community and (or) external agents or through their own initiatives seeking the transformation of their lived reality. The applied methodology in this paper was one of a documental and bibliographic research who had the intent of establish an overview of the situation regarding the creation of participatory environmental designs through participatory mapping and affective mapping. In the context of the study area it was selected experiences were the social cartography was used as a support to increase community awareness and as an example of the participation of the environmental design in urban environment.