Webcartography and geovisualization : end or renewal of the map’s political function?
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Grégoire, F.
1UNIVERSITE GRENOBLE-ALPES Email: gregoire.feyt@ujf-grenoble.fr
Abstract
For centuries, mapping was a nearly exclusive competence of public authorities. Indeed, they were the only ones with expertise and legitimacy to assure horizontal (integrity of the country) and vertical (scales stacking) cartographic continuity and to assume, at the same time, validity and stability of provided representations. These representations had both the advantage and the inconvenient of being spatially exhaustive and egalitarian and to constitute a normalized and common referential. This ‘topdown’ cartographical culture was structurally associated with a political and administrative system designed to elaborate and implement technical, sector-specific and standardized policies. Nevertheless, this conceptual and nested approach was also conceived to encourage a reflexive distance to the diversity and the fractal character of the “real world” as a condition for political debate and action. This model is being challenged or skirted by the combination of two kinds of transformations. The first one is political, with development of local governance by inhabitants, users, consumers in various functional domains such as services, environment, transports, etc.. The second one is technical, with ability to access to more and more rich and easy-to-use cartographical tools and data. As the historic technocratic and institutional paradigm, and yet in a quite opposite philosophy, this double evolution, political and technical, reflects and produces a symbiosis between cartographical and political cultures and practices. Indeed, general public webcartography or geovisualization tools are mainly conceived to mimic the “real world” as analogical as possible, with pictures, buildings modeling, facilities localizations, etc. positioned on a functional background map. More than large scale mapping, this representation of lived-in space is more similar to a spotlight on the stage following each of us in our specific and personal daily life. This pragmatic (instead of symbolic) and self-centered (instead of socially) cartographical approach encourages highlighting or figuring a very heterogeneous and heteroclite characterization of space. In this model, value and legitimacy of information often proceed from its density or its specifics more than its reflexive added value. However, despite its profusion and appeal, such information makes difficult to encourage a higher geographical and political overview. Deploring or criticizing this evolution is of no interest. The scientific and social issue consists in finding how common tools initially dedicated to individual and functional use can be mobilized in a political perspective. In other words, there is an urge to initiate a dialog between the ‘old’ top-down cartography and the new bottom-not-yet-up cartography. This dialog is made possible thanks to available web tools when used to figure medium scale, synthetic and/or conceptual graphical features resulting from analyses, survey or prospective works. However, it is obvious that practitioners of territorial decision or management often prefer to cautiously use the traditional mapping approach. On the other hand, conditions for helping local stakeholders to use webmapping or geovisualization tools in an aggregative and problematic perspective are rarely satisfied. In order to prevent a dialog of the deaf or a ‘maps fight’, considering these common geoweb tools as a meeting point for these two cartographic and political approaches of space and territory constitute a scientific and methodological challenge. In that perspective, the submission will focus on analyzing how spatial planning orientations or expert diagnoses can be integrated in public geovisualization tools and improve matching with bottom up information. This will be illustrated through practical applications in the French context.
Keywords
politics; governance; webcartography