Some spaces are oftentimes overlooked or undervalued. In terms of physical occupiable space, these areas may not be worthy of attention. However, moving through these spaces, their significance and importance comes through in the everyday lives of their owners. Going beyond the home on a typical grid and moving into the smaller spaces within the home, one discovers that these seemingly smaller spaces hold deep memories and sentimental connections. The thresholds and spaces in between are not left out, replaying scenes and moments in time. Typically, we celebrate the big moments, and history is usually not written from the trivial moments, but perhaps we should. For a long time, attention has been given to the cities and commercial cores, the smaller spaces which hold true and colorful history need to be highlighted. That will make a significant archive.
Inioluwa Adedapo
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A people’s archive of Calgary visualized from the ground up to me would be a series of neighborhood narrative maps, zooming in to view the city as a series of landscapes and experiences and not clumping them all together to form one vague map that erases the individual experience. Understanding that behind many conventional maps of the city are vibrant and rich landscapes. My argument is for an iterative map that never ends, a map that can change through people interacting with it, and as the stories we are telling change or alter. The peoples archive of Calgary and the maps that derived from it would further open up conversations and realizations, instead of drawing conclusions. Recognizing the social and environment injustice that arises when we as individuals try to draw conclusions around a story that isn’t ours.
Melissa Amodeo Today’s discussion focused on being more critical towards the methodology of the Calgary Archives, and possibly how to improve on mapping from the ground-up. To accurately depict the city from the ground-up, it is important to gather stories through interviews, and visit these sites in person. The philosophy of the
Calgary Archives is to build a map for the people, and by the people. However, it is limited in that data was mainly through a digital platform, rather than in-person and on-site. But despite these limitations, my experience with my community partner was incredibly inspiring. I only wish that I could have established a deeper connection by being able to conduct in-person interviews with her and visit the sites of her story. I feel that there may have been many missed opportunities with data collection being done online. Louise Barraza I map the city of Calgary with different approaches than my other team members. Everybody understands and maps a city differently. A city may be depicted and read as an organic system that daily lives are carried on. A city can be seen as a network. Networks not just power lines and communication lines but also the networks of people. Some people see the city through the quality of life lens or some may see opportunities like job finding and employment. Different people have different perceptions from the city and their understanding is based on their background and their needs. As students of architecture school, we should not just see the architectural elements of the city but also have to look at the socio-spatial, inequality, and injustice in the City. In Calgary, I see the physical landscape inequality and injustice. If we drive through Neighborhoods like Springbank Hill and Signal Hill in the South West Calgary compare to Marlborough or Castleridge in the North East, we will notice the differences. It is not just about the building types or single-family houses, it is about the green space, road condition and sidewalk, material, urban textures. In Springbank Hill and Signal Hill, you see a wider sidewalk, wider road, walls finished with high-quality materials, and more green space. The physical condition of an area not just speaks for itself but also speaks about social and political status. It tells us about a system. In a system that capitals play an important role and capitalism has a louder voice. It explains the structure of the city that does not get evenly attention of the authorities. Finally, it indicates that there are inequality and injustice in the city of Calgary.
The question asked, "what a people’s archive of Calgary would look like if visualizing a bottom-up perspective?" drew a link to the reflection on the first day of this week. Referencing the question, “what would the eco-system look like if it was centred on the marginalized?” I interpreted the term “bottom-up” as observing the city from the marginalized and neglected eyes versus the opinion of the general(accepted) public.
Suppose the city is mapped through the lens and the stories of the marginalized. In that case, it will paint a very different picture from the typical maps of Calgary. Each individual has their own unique story and holds significance to specific locations compared to others. Through interviews and listening to other’s stories, we can gain more insight. If all these individuals' stories can be mapped out in a collage-like manner, then laid out together, forming a quilt-like tapestry, it can beautifully portray the city as a more 3-dimensional and complex form. The hope is to give others a glimpse of another’s journey and spark a sense of empathy for others. Jennifer YeEun Choi Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift, Cities: Reimagining the Urban, gives clarity to the act of countermapping as it investigates the legibility of the everyday city. As I reflect on the question of how we achieve the remapping of a contemporary city. We must look at the human element and start that investigation from a place of equity. I think it is also a question of why, why do we want to do it in the first place? If it is to read a new meaning of a city, then we got to look at the city through different lenses, including sights, sounds, smells, and the spirit of the city. This further poses the question: What stories and secrets of a city authenticate and defines the city? Who is telling the story? Are those narratives informed by male or female biases, racial and class predispositions? I think this art of countermapping is rather counter-intuitive, a non-normative, and non-hierarchical taxonomy. The new map will have a better focus on the human element, tracing food paths, sights, sounds, and smells. Some of the tools to be deployed are the iterative field research processes of participant observation, interviews, physical surveys, photography, video, etc.
Obinna Ekezie Take a step back and observe. It gives new perspectives to life and makes you more aware of the everyday. Sharing these perspectives allows us to each be able to relate to one another. The People’s Archive of Calgary can be a collection of personal journeys, capturing alternate perspectives, looking into and giving a voice to everyday experiences, personal views and individual scales. It also means taking a step back and allowing yourself as an observer to reflect on how different the journeys are. In looking at the method of mapping food and immigrant journeys, what I got from this was that food was just one avenue of bringing together and capturing people’s stories. The major thing takeaway is what lies behind the story of food or the context/ topic of food, and for Rita for example, what we got from all we learned from her was the joy she experienced, the networks she made, the opportunities she had to share her culture and the people she met. These seemingly ordinary things bring about such gratifying results for Rita and for the people around her. By this, the ordinary becomes extraordinary.
Esther Ephraim-Osunde This mapping exercise shed a new light on the concept of voice. Through scheduled interviews and communication, my teammates and I were able to capture the city of Calgary from a new lens, through the voice of a Syrian woman. Methods of documentation came from graphically representing a multitude of stories, memories, and emotions through a period of time. This method of mapping goes beyond the 2D infographic that we are used to when we think of a “map” and ultimately tells a story and narrative of that persons life. Sharing these stories becomes a powerful tool towards mapping the history of Calgary and Canada that thousands of people can relate to that have faced similar experiences. I visualize the people’s archive of Calgary as a mosaic of many voices. A multicolored quilt representing a multitude of moments and stories. These stories are experiences, that evoke meaning and emotions, all through the practise of storytelling. All these spoken moments produced emotions that added a sense of vibrancy, personality, and importance to a narrative. We captured the passion of a person’s voice through deep and careful listening and observing in our interviewee. These in turn provide a sense of appreciation for voices that contribute to the history of Canada and Calgary. We can achieve the goal of remapping the contemporary city through the art of storytelling.
Today I looked back on everything we have learned this week. I realized that alternative mapping methods are a tool to build empathy and appreciation for one another. This could be possible by actively searching for underrepresented experiences. If mapped, this information can tell stories of people’s successes and challenges. Viewers would have opportunities to relate to or appreciate the life of another. This information could also be overlayed with other maps for unanticipated correlations and discover reasons for inequalities. Alternative methods of mapping are a critical tool, particularly with the inequalities experienced recently. If only the greater public better took care of each other, many injustices could be avoided.
Ashley Hu As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discusses in her Ted talk, I believe it is crucial to understand multiple perspectives enabling a holistic and comprehensive understanding of place. North America has made it a habit to wash over a place or culture with a singular brush. This negating the ability to understand the complexities of culture, place, and the individual. The inability to perceive the colour and complexities of those who occupy and activate the city, leading to inequality and a lack of equity. The singular story and perspective create the dangers of preconceived notions and biases that are then subjugated onto individuals and groups of people leading to the mistreatment and misunderstanding of how people live and inhabit space. Thus, the city imposes difficulties on these individuals constricting their daily lives. The lack of understanding leads to the inability to construct an urban landscape that is for the people, having the capacity to enrich their lives, thus, reducing or better yet abolishing the obstacles that inhibit them. As young architects, it is our responsibility to reconstruct the built environment that become attainable, accessible, and inhabitable by all walks of life. The rediscovery of city can be found, in part, through the lens of city mapping and achieving. A city archive should be composed of variety individuals that show the diversity within the city and convey a more holistic and colourful story that more accurately represents those who occupy the city.
Rhea Jenkins The city was remapped through understanding the perspective of the invisible and shining light on them to be seen and heard. By mapping intangible aspects such as experience, feelings, stories, and their journey while connecting them to more tangible things like food, space, and place, enables the viewer to possibly understand, relate or empathize with them. The bottom-up approach to the people’s archive of Calgary generates a multi-layered map with many nodes dispersed throughout the city showing diverse backgrounds, stories and perspectives allowing marginalized individuals to be heard. The argument is thus whether we can even map intangible things (such as, experiences, perspectives or values) in a way for others to even understand and empathize with. As each person reads a map differently as they hold their own bias. A map can be clear to one and unclear to another. No matter how much we explain to a person, some people just won’t be able to understand another’s perspective. As we are each our own individual person and hold our own stories and bias. We will never be able to change anyone’s view unless they realize so themselves. As people usually relate to things by comparing and contrasting to themselves and the things they know and see.
We all know what the city traditionally looks like, and understand it as a place that has a
persuasive influence on the people living there. However, I think a productive way to map represents the city as a malleable entity that can be altered by the people just as much as the people are altered by the city. I think that the urban realm can be mapped in terms of a symbiotic relationship between the two, where this malleability and impact that each has on the other is a powerful tool in defining the urban realm in new ways. The map of the city that proves this relationship speaks to a complexity that does not exist in traditional mapping, and I think this is where the Calgary Archive’s significance comes in. We cannot be made aware of these complexities and relationships where the identity of the city and of the people is being revolutionized without a means to reach out, go places we've never gone before, talk to people we don't know, and to interpret sensory and ephemeral experience that comes along with this. The archive in this way becomes a means of observing these complexities and better understanding the people who impact an ever-changing city that goes unseen by allowing the public to access an understanding through personal stories, prioritizing those who don't have a strong voice. As I learned today, the flaneur and situationist movements provide an example of how one can go out and experience the unseen for themselves, therefore altering perception and eradicating bias. If more people were to take to the streets and observe the lives of others in communities unbeknownst to them, Calgary would be more authentically represented for what it really is. If no one seeks to discover the true condition of the city, we will never truly know what it is about. Faith Lynch Through speaking with Simona, what hit me the most was the fact that Simona was just one
person and together we spoke to 8 people all of who impacted us in some powerful way. So that made me realise that there are a ton of stories every day in Calgary alone (beyond food even) that could be mapped and i think then we start to realise just how colorful Calgary really is. Simona presented a timeline of moments in time with other people at a particular place. And when she said the word moment I think that hit me Because what we were exposed to was this layer of the city that only exists for a moment and then disappears and so the only way to capture it is through listening. We, as students, were just a small piece and it was really important that we listened because they wanted to be heard and maybe this process alone further motivated them, but I think that is in a way sad that Calgary needs that. I think some cities are much more successful in that they don't need this as much. Adam Majer A perspective of the people goes far beyond reading the city as a network of buildings, streets, and pathways. If we can collect a people’s archive, then we begin to comprehend how each individual reads and interacts with the city. Through this understanding, we can better design and link individuals’ stories in order to understand how people experience the tangible. We can demonstrate how they shape and are shaped by the functions of life. Through the people's archive, we can discover layers of meanings to understand systems within systems that impact one another. By diving into an oral history of individuals we can see how they experience the city through their lens. From this we can extract unaltered perceptions of how they experience the city where non-hierarchical connections are discovered, and layers of information can be found. These layers of information show spaces within spaces or systems within systems which the city as a whole does not show.
The primary method is to first listen. Listen to the people, listen to the communities, and listen to the city. Through listening, we can discover what is truly missing and provide an outlet for the people to archive their experiences of Calgary. A mixed-method approach including such things as raw statistics, interviews, photographs, or scales of time provides methods and strategies to layer results. These layers can be combined to provide a holistic or dissected view in order to discover unique connections which otherwise may not have been recognized. Mac McGinn Mapping a city from a human perspective involves shrinking the scope and expanding the value of information you are seeking and representing. In order to do this, you must be open to perspectives of the city that are different from your own. You must be open to perspectives of the city which may contradict your views and opinions. You must be open to new ways of experiencing the city.
Shrinking the scope of the city involves documenting relational information, information that is dependent upon an individual’s use of the city. Most of the information on a traditional map is useless; people do not need to use all parts everyday, if they ever use all of them at all. The roads that are not indicated as a direct route to your destination on Google maps will most likely never be driven on. Realizing that people are selective in their use of cities shrinks the scope of the city. Shrinking the city to a more personal level makes it more approachable. The information that can be gathered from someone’s day to day movements throughout their city is what will expand the value of the city, especially if someone else can relate to the information. Knowing where something is extends beyond simply memorizing its address. Truly knowing a place involves emotions, it involves associations and senses. The address becomes meaningless when your feet just know how to get there. Everyone has places like this, places that transcend their physical locations and instead manifest within the visitor's psyche. These places and their meanings are truly valuable, and not something you can indicate on traditional maps. These valuable readings of the city can be collected and shared through a people’s archive of Calgary. This archive would consist of maps from people who have lived in Calgary their entire lives, as well as people who have just recently arrived. This insider-outsider dichotomy will be operationalized using a “seat at the table approach.” This approach will focus on acknowledging that there are voices present besides your own, as well as actively seeking common ground with others different from yourself. These methods and strategies are important, as they will act as a sort of check and balance of the success of national multicultural policies at the municipal level. The informal or tacit knowledge collected by the People’s Archive will be more valuable than any statistic the government could collect on the resettlement of immigrants and refugees within the city, and it will provide feedback on more specific issues that newcomers are facing so that these issues can be ratified more appropriately, and it will identify areas within cities that hold significance for various reasons. Sarah McMillan Traditionally we visualize the city in numbers and strict categories. Land is parceled out and divided into grids, and over time we lose the essence of what makes our cities unique. This is a common occurrence in most cities around the world, and Calgary is not an exception. What if we could reframe how we visualize the city so we no longer navigate solely by numbered streets and avenues, but by stories we listen to and share? In sharing narratives from our lives and deeply listening to the ones told to us, we can visualize and develop the city in a more empathetic way. It is hard to navigate the inherent bias that comes with mapping and if we are to reveal these stories and bring light to them, who are we to pick and choose what is highlighted? Mapping should become a more participatory activity – one that involves contribution from the masses. We can see this in the use of social media, GPS tracking, and other digital platforms. Mapping the city in a traditional way ignores the human experience, leaving them forgotten in the nooks and crannies invisible to the naked eye. In creating this archive, we can see the city from the eyes of those who inhabit it, opening doors to new connections, more questions, and comfort knowing we are not alone.
Cindy Nachareun After spending a week, learning, discussing and deep hearing the story of our community partner, I realised, it is one of the best possible ways to document a city. A city/ a place is essentially made by the people along with layers of system intertwined within. To have a peoples perspective of the city, is to have theirs stories narrated in the firsthand fashion. Having a people archive to me is like having a secret diary written by the city. I say so, because I now realize there are numerous stories unheard. And when the stories are told in the most candid fashion, they inspire and relate to most others, especially people from among the minority communities and indigenous people. As each story when further analysed can give inscribe a map, this map though centered to a person would enable most others with dimension and purpose.
Rujuta Nayak "To understand the importance of the people's archive of Calgary, we need to understand the current situation in which we are in. Using articles from 2 scholars, Leoni Sandercock and Richard Sennett, we can start to understand the present day of the 21st century city. To define this condition, Sandercock uses the term ""Mongrel City"", which portrayed the city as one of difference, togetherness, fragmentation, splintering multiplicity, heterogeneity, diversity and plurality. Richard Sennett in his book complains that the only apparent diversity in Greenwich village of New York was only observed through gaze and not through any sort of social interaction or discourse; which is similar to Sandercocks conclusion.
In today's ""Mongrel city"", multiculturalism has been denoted based on number of head counts and visible observations or racial differences rather than being denoted by interaction between various cultures. Sennett proposes tools such as infrastructure or shared spaces as a way to overturn this condition. However, in our case, the peple's archive can serve as a powerful tool to become a counter- map and to foster cultural understanding in the city. The conventional maps of today have emphasized mass public understanding rather than personal understanding. In trying to do this, these conventional maps have erased the individual, eg.: the world maps, etc. For the people's archive to be successful, there needs to be two processes. One, which is a personal or individual process (interviews, talks). And the second which is public engagement. The information gotten from the individual is plotted to create a map that is only understandable to the individual. However, this same information may lack meaning to the public, only until they familiarise themselves with the story of the individual. This process of understanding could be a meaningful intercultural interaction that becomes equivalent to Sennett's idea of shared spaces or infrastructure." Ugonna Ohakim How I map another city is through certain aspects like connections, community, scale,
storey, emotions and feelings, perspective, and vision. In my opinion, mapping a city requires a system of ideas that help the viewer to understand what the central argument is trying to illustrate. They would possibly visualize it through a different approach by probably putting themselves in someone else’s shoes. Therefore, it would look like more of a story and that can be from memories of there own real life experiences of what they went through as an example. Overall, maps can be produced from someone else’s past / conversation. The methods and strategies we should use is through the use of interviews. With the person’s experience, you can document specific aspects that can illustrate their perspective of viewing a city. So for an example with our interviewee, Margaret was mapping her way through Calgary through the use of food. It was aspects like smell, touch, taste, is what she revealed The importance of why we need to map the city of Calgary/ people’s archive’s map is because to basically understand other peoples experience especially there failure attempts which lead us to succeed a better infrastructure. A city can serve knowledge especially through the use of a map. Daniele Orsini We often look at maps to understand a city or urban space in a very two dimensional
way that seeks to provide a literal representation. The idea of adapting mapping styles to better suit how people perceive their space and ensure they are represented through how they experience space. Urban space can look very different to individuals depending on where they are located and socioeconomic factors, therefore everyone's experience of a city is different and must be documented accordingly to accurately demonstrate the conditions of space. In order to understand how a place impacts people and what it feels like, one must move away from a literalization of a map to something that is based on individuals but also captures engagement and experience. Natalie Sandelli Experiences of the everyday, repeated routines and uneventful regimens all make up the unnoticed portions of people’s lives. However, delving deeper, all these parts that form the whole of a person provide meaning, emotion, sensorial aspects, and symbols. These aspects provide appreciation and richness to help understand life and the city through the lens of others. Furthermore, understanding these different perceptions encourages one to be open minded through careful observation.
Furthermore, when observing the everyday life of an individual, there are so many overlooked moments. Although, according to James C. Scott, experiences of the everyday are not banal but are rather powerful. Experiences of the everyday have the power of resistance. In this regards, everyday resistance is about how people act in their everyday lives in ways that might undermine power. Therefore, everyday resistance is not easily recognized like public or a group resistance but is typically hidden or disguised. Most of the time we look at maps for directions or specific locations. They are simply there to provide us with quick and accessible information that doesn’t reveal anything about the city or spaces that they are mapping. People are removed from maps which in turn removes emotion. By putting people back at the forefront emotions are brought back with them. Mapping people’s rhythms, especially minorities or marginalized groups, is when we really begin to reveal some major issues in the city.
On top of this, mapping both the past and present allows us to see more patterns, how things have changed over time, and what hasn’t changed in a long time. This can help us to pinpoint what needs to change, and also raises a question. Does the city shape people’s patterns or do people’s patterns shape the city? I would argue that at the moment the city is shaping people’s patterns. Following our conversations with Manishri and listening to her experiences I think that if we observe and map people’s experiences in the city, especially those who experience blockages, we could start to allow people’s patterns and rhythms to shape our cities. Erika Sieweke A city is not just a collection of building or a network or streets and alleys nor is it just a group of people. These are things, along with innumerable other elements which make up a city. Each person, each new building changes the city's identity incrementally. But that change can be invisible. Seeing people on the street doesn't mean that you know them, just as driving down a street doesn't mean you know the city.
A people's map of Calgary can help place the city's people, in the form of their stories and link them to the buildings and the streets. Its a form of animating the city that is not possible in any other way. And those who want to better understand the city around them. It makes it very easy to find out about the stories which surround them. Allowing for a deeper understanding of their city. Maybe changing the stories that they tell about the city in which they live. Essentially poking holes in the echo chambers that we all find ourselves getting stuffed into through the multitude of algorithms and social bubbles that help to form them. When telling people’s stories you must find a way of distilling the essence of their experiences so that they can be made tangible and re-creatable for others. For this to be effective you must try and understand why things matter to the people who experience them. If food is more than just substance you have to articulate why. Additionally, A people's archive must do two things. It has to be open enough that people can share the things they care about, but also find the things they care about. Ideally it would also have a function to allow people to discover new ideas or themes in their city they did not know about. The difficulty is in sorting the information. This question depends on what success looks like. Are we doing this to engage the public or to learn for ourselves. Is it about recording for perpetuity or discovering the 'live' resent. I think perhaps it can be all of these things with the right kinds of meta-data. If people can add their ideas or thoughts on the city and all it contains and searching through can be filtered by things like time or location or theme then this could become a powerful tool to express the city's collective thoughts through data aggregation. But what is not clear here, is why people would post, if it is to have their voices heard, it will not be enough to let them shout into the void. Robin Vindum-Whitteker You never realize how much information you have gathered until you have to lay it out. Looking at the data and thinking of how it will be represented seemed like a herculean task, however, with the understanding that 'Everything can be mapped', it was just a matter of extracting and plotting out what's important using the methods learnt. Three important themes were chosen: connection, community, and feelings. Each of them was full of promise as my team members and I explored the routes these themes could take us through.
Talking with Rita again today, I understood the importance of getting stories accurately and the art of conveying the true intentions of the speaker through various media, particularly text. Inioluwa Adedapo Through conversations with newcomers to Calgary over the past few days it has revealed the importance of a method of collecting information and mapping that does not rely on statistics and abstract ideas of our cities. Through talking to the individual, each team in the class is seeing the city through a new lens, one that focuses on experience, mapping everyday life. Instead of collecting quantitative data and creating explanatory maps based on the collective, it is a method in which one attempts to measure everyday life, experiences, memories and allows for a rich understanding of what is going on in the city behind the scenes. It reveals “the invisible” and exposes many failures in our built environment.
According to Annette Miae Kim in Sidewalk City, the different types of mapping exists in a spectrum, starting at the most conventional map showcasing city qualities such as density, hierarchy, and patterns which lead to a map filled with harsh lines and restrictions. To a neighborhood negotiation narrative map which uses ethnography to show the city through a more zoomed in and individual scale. When talking to the newcomers, we are creating a neighborhood negotiation narrative map, focusing on the human body and allowing for new ways and tools to sense the city. Of course it is hard to translate the findings graphically while effectively showcasing the experiences and narratives. The greatest difficulty is understanding that in some way you are still curating the narrative and hold the power when choosing what to include and what to edit out. Hence the importance of iteration and open communication with the source of the information, in our case newcomers. Continuing the communication throughout the iterations allows for a process of mapping that does not end and does not create harsh lines and conclusions, but rather opens up the topic for further conversation and realizations. Melissa Amodeo |
AuthorCalgary Archives is a collaborative creation of community members and architecture students at the University of Calgary. The stories and reflections posted here are written by the student participants. ReflectionsCategories |