Cartographies of Control: How Maps Construct (Not Just Represent) Reality
From Gaza to Ukraine and the South China Sea, cartography is again a frontline weapon. Maps circulate to assert control, redraw boundaries, and declare what counts as territory. These are not passive illustrations—they are active tools of persuasion. They construct, as much as they depict, spatial realities.
As architects, we might feel far removed from this geopolitical terrain. Yet our work is deeply embedded in similar cartographic logics. Zoning overlays, heat maps, environmental simulations, and digital twins are architectural forms of mapping that carry their own epistemological authority. They frame what is seen, measured, valued—and what is omitted.
These maps are not neutral. They perform the same fundamental move that Daniel Rosenberg (2013) identified in his historical work on data: what we call “data” is not simply given—it is taken, abstracted, and shaped. This seemingly innocuous act of measurement is always already entangled in culture, intention, and power.
Mapping Is Never Just Mapping
James Corner (1999) wrote that the power of maps lies in their “benign neutrality”—a deception that masks how selective, projective, and ideological mapping really is. What we include, how we visualise it, and who the map is for all shape the story it tells.
Architectural mapping today takes many forms: a thermal map predicting heat stress in urban fabric, a digital twin projecting building performance, or a GIS layer overlaying land values with development potential. Each promises an empirical view. But each is a composition of selected inputs and visual codes—symbolic forms that inevitably reflect the priorities of those who produce them.
From Observation to Forecasting
In architectural practice, mapping doesn’t stop at documentation. It moves into prediction. Digital twins and simulation models, for example, are not merely descriptive—they are generative tools used to inform design and guide decision-making. These forms of mapping shape spatial futures by projecting data into forecasts.
This is where power becomes more deeply embedded. As Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison (2010) show in their work on scientific objectivity, once a representational system becomes standardised—like the scientific atlas or today’s environmental simulation—it sets the terms for what counts as truth. In architecture, this can mean an over-reliance on data models that obscure their own limitations, partialities, and assumptions.
The Politics of Partiality
Zoning maps are another case in point. They appear factual—defined by metrics, categories, and coloured overlays. But these maps encode political histories, value judgments, and future expectations. They mediate access to land, determine who gets to build what, and reflect often unseen ideologies about growth, security, and worth.
As I’ve argued in my research, the idea that data is neutral or objective misses the mark. Following Rob Kitchin and Tracey Lauriault (2018), we should see data as part of a socio-technical assemblage—a set of material and cultural practices embedded in knowledge systems and institutional power. When architects use data visualisation tools, we are not merely translating the world—we are participating in shaping what is thinkable and actionable within it.
Seeing Like a Cartographer
The key question is not whether architects should use data, but how. How can we approach mapping not as a neutral act but as a situated, partial, and rhetorical one? What stories are our maps telling? And to whom?
Mapping is a design practice. It reveals and constructs realities. Its power lies in its ability to show patterns, make claims, and project futures. But with this power comes responsibility. The more sophisticated our visualisations become, the more important it is to ask what remains invisible—and who gets to decide.
In an era of planetary-scale sensing that translates everything from environmental risk to migration flows into data visualisations, architects must become critical cartographers. We must understand that every zoning diagram, every digital twin, and every GIS overlay participates in a politics of representation. And that the map, far from being a mirror, is a tool that helps make the world—one line, one pixel, one choice at a time.
References
Corner, J. (1999). The agency of mapping: Speculation, critique and invention. In D. Cosgrove (Ed.), Mappings (pp. 213–252). Reaktion Books.
Daston, L., & Galison, P. (2010). Objectivity. Zone Books.
Kitchin, R., & Lauriault, T. P. (2018). Towards critical data studies: Charting and unpacking data assemblages and their work. In J. Thatcher, A. Shears, & P. Burns (Eds.), Thinking big data in geography (pp. 3–20). University of Nebraska Press.
Rosenberg, D. (2013). Data before the fact. In L. Gitelman (Ed.), “Raw data” is an oxymoron (pp. 15–40). MIT Press.