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Short abstract:

With our case study ‘Researching the City: Mapping Imaginaries’ of Amsterdam Zuidoost, we explore grass-root, collaborative knowledge practices through mixed methods of counter-mapping that fosters critical emancipatory awareness and affective engagement with areas in the urban semi-periphery.

Long abstract:

Urban transformations often result in ‘affective displacement’ and have consequences for the health and well-being of residents (Butcher & Dickens, 2016; Brummet and Reed, 2019). Displacement is a form of violence, that includes processes of ‘cultural appropriation’ (Elliott-Cooper et al., 2020) and its impacts need to be better ‘documented and resisted’ (ibid). Responding to this call, with our case study of ‘Researching the City: Mapping Imaginaries’ of Amsterdam Southeast (Zuidoost), we turned to medium specific, embodied, non-representational (Thrift, 2008) counter-mapping to better engage (in terms of cultural sensitivity and inclusivity) with the urban ‘semi-periphery’ (Blagojevic, 2009).

We used digital methods (Rogers, 2013) to explore how Amsterdam Southeast is ‘seen’ through search engine results (stakeholders networks). We intervened in the mapping with local expert knowledge of activists, artists, and researchers. We also used affect as an intervention and collaboratively collected sensory data (recording with images, sounds, videos) with students and local communities. In this process we created a counter-archive, bringing to the forefront imaginaries, senses, emotions, and memories -- a repository of local affective knowledge.

Our case study shows that "counter-mapping" can be a meditative and reflective practice that fosters critical and emancipatory awareness in students, partners, and local communities. It opens space for reimagining and productive affective engagement with areas in the urban periphery. It also enables various themes of consideration: ‘body as an archive’, and archiving 'imaginaries' practices such as performance, memory, and digital objects.