Mapping Informality

Curators: Paola Bellaviti, Costanza La Mantia, May Al-Ibrashy

Workshop II of: The Heuristics of mapping urban environmental change: dialogues on the move

Project promoted by:
Adriana Allen, Alexandre Apsan Frediani, Rita Lambert
Development Planning Unit/ The Bartlett/ University College London
In collaboration with:
Francesca Cognetti, Beatrice De Carli
Department of Architecture and Planning (DIAP)/ Politecnico di Milano
Paola Bellaviti, Costanza La Mantia, Antonio Tosi
Laboratory of International Cooperation/ DIAP/ Politecnico di Milano
May al-Ibrashy
Megawra (Built Environment Collective), Cairo

The Heuristics of mapping urban environmental change is a project initiated in 2011 by the Development Planning Unit/ The Bartlett/ University College London. Through a heuristic process which involves an international network of researchers, activists, and organisations, the project aims to apprehend how place-making practices by ordinary citizens reinforce, resist or transform the production of reproduction of injustice through space in ‘hot-spot’ locations – places of rapid transformation where the everyday practices of living are confronted with planned market-led strategies of urban regeneration. Its final aim is to produce an interdisciplinary heuristic process, a public learning tool capable of ‘mapping’ the biophysical, social, political and discursive means through which place-making operates as an everyday practice in a number of selected ‘hot spots’ in the global South.

The first phase of the project, “Dialogues on the move”, organised with the support and contribution of Politecnico di Milano, and the Cairo based organisation Megawra (Built Environment Collective), is articulated into three workshops held respectively in Milan, Cairo and London. This stage is aimed at evaluating the potential dialogue across geography, sociology, planning and anthropology in mapping place-making. The underlying premise informing the development of such process is that ‘participatory mapping’ is not only a tool to investigate and capture place-making practices, but is itself a means to produce spaces and social relations and for finding and boosting alternative and creative practices and related governance systems. Mapping is thus explored as a political tool of representation, and a socially constructed process influencing the way the environment is perceived, framed, and negotiated.

The case studies of Cairo also allow us to explore different facets of the concept of “power” related with maps and mapping, and especially with the concept of informality, focusing on a city where almost the 70% of housing is informal and where formal and informal are often shades of the same reality.

AGENDA

MAY 26TH | Setting the scene

6.00 – 6.30 PM| Introduction to Dialogues on the move
The Heuristics of Mapping Urban Environmental Change | Adriana Allen, Alexandre A. Frediani, Rita Lambert (University College of London)

6:30 – 7:15 PM | Defining informality

Is the Cemetery informal? | Nairy Hampikian & May al-Ibrashy
Informality in Greater Cairo: Typology, connotations and Interventions | Khaled Abdel Halim

7.15 – 7:45 PM | Sum-up and debate

9.00-10.00 PM | Cairo cine night (public screening)
Bulak. Amongst the ruins of an unfinished revolution | D.Morandini (26.28 min.)
Cairo Micro-Gardens | C.Cescutti, B.Urbano (34.59 min.)

MAY 27TH | Sensing mapping

6.00 – 6.45 PM | Session A
Mapping Meaning: Using cognitive and behavioral mapping to read territorial claims and perceived value of the built environment | Dina Shehayeb
Mapping Post Revolutionary Informality | Omar Nagati

6.45 – 7.15 PM | Coffee break

7.15 – 8.15 PM | Session B
Mapping History: UNESCO project to set the Historic Cairo Borders | Federica Felisatti & Ahmed Mansour
Art as Mapping: Giza Threads| Rana El Nemr
Mapping Life: Cairo as a lone individual: geography and self exploration | Youssef Rakha

8.30 – 9.00 | Sum up and debate

MAY 29TH | THE HEURISTIC OF MAPPING CAIRO’S INFORMALITY

7.00 – 9.00 PM | PUBLIC SEMINAR with Paola Bellaviti, Costanza La Mantia, Beatrice De Carli, May al-Ibrashy

Presentations and discussions will be in English.