Map - or be mapped

Over 40% of human habitation is considered to be slums - that's over 1 billion people, or 1/6th of humanity. Slums have taken on a quite a connotation in the past few years, becoming one of the ugly face of fast economic growth, and one of the many examples of how-not-to-do-sustainable-development. More often than not, slums are within a stones throw of some of the richest areas in a given city, increasing people's lived experience of immense inequality that so increasingly plagues much of the developed and the developing world. And, in one of the great ironies of our age, most of those slums are not on any official map.

Despite innumerable reports, visits by presidents and noted celebrities, many slums do not actually exist on most maps. Part of this has to do with the complicated politics of city planning. If they existed, then the government would have to provide services for them - like sanitation and access to water. But many local governments can't afford to do that (or don't want to), not least because those people often can not afford to pay enough taxes. There's a reason people live in slums - and a reason why their governments have struggled to get them out.

Among the many human rights campaigns to address the often appalling condition of slums is variations of participatory mapping, Geo- mapping, mobile-cell-phone-mapping, and other ways for regular people to assert that they do indeed exist and that they can produce maps - maps that can then enable NGOs, outside experts, and the communities themselves to address issues from sanitation problems to violence inside of their communities.

In a fast-moving world, maps are constantly changing - and are constantly being used to determine safe and non-safe zones (the Green Zone in Iraq being one of many prime examples) to define and redefine 'nature' versus 'society' (such as national parks that do not enable people to live off the land) to where and what kind of businesses can do what nasty things to the environment. Maps enable us to define and thus create our world - and with GIS and impressive satellite work, old techniques such as participatory mapping, where communities themselves map their own environment can combine with new technologies to take steps towards sustainable development.

And I have to wonder - which one will you be? The mapped (or the unmapped!) - or the mapper?