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City Debates 2025: Co-map, Re-map, Un-map

critical mapping

Counter-mapping, Mapping
City Debates 2025: Co-map, Re-map, Un-map

The 21st edition of City Debates —on collective, exploratory, and radical cartographies— engages with mapping, data visualization, and spatial representation, specifically as they intersect with urban research, furthering a variety of ways through which cities, geographies, and environments are studied and understood.

Dates: April 14 - 16, 2025
Location: Architecture Lecture Hall – Dar al Handasah Architecture Building, School of Architecture and Design (SoAD), AUB



Program

Download Abstracts and Bios

 

City Debates 2025 is organized by the Beirut Urban Lab and the Master in Urban Planning, Policy and Design Programs, in partnership with the Embassy of Italy in Lebanon, Institut Français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo), and the Urban Studies Journal.

This event is open to the public. 

DAY 1: Monday April 14 


5:30-6:00 pm | Registration, Coffee 

6:00-6:15 pm | Opening Session 

Introductory Notes 
Alan Shihadeh, Dean, MSFEA, AUB
Yaser Abunnasr, Acting Director, SoAD, AUB
Ahmad Gharbieh, Beirut Urban Lab, SoAD, AUB


6:15-7:30 pm | Day 1 Keynote 

ATLAS OTHERWISE: Mapping Location Beyond Geolocation
Nishat Awan, UCL Urban Lab

Discussant: Monica Basbous, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

 

DAY 2: Tuesday April 15


09:30-11:00 am | Panel 1: Tracing Territories (of migration, governance, conflict)

Aggregating Power: Mapping Territorial Orders in Syria 

Jadd Hallaj, LUGARIT 
Pilot books and Landing Spaces: Navigating Plural Urban Experiences
Martina Bovo, IUAV University of Venice / Politecnico di Milano
Spatializing Loss, Delineating Recovery 
Nadine Bekdache, Public Works Studio

Discussant: Mariangela Gasparotto, Institut français du Proche-Orient 


11:00-11:30 am | Coffee break


11:30 am-01:30 pm | Panel 2 [with PALESTINE WEEK]: Figuring Places (in evidence, narrative, archive)

Archiving Gaza towards the Production of Recovery Imaginaries
Batoul Yassine, Beirut Urban Lab
Surfacing Localised Stories: Mapping, Scrollytelling and (Semi)automation
Ahmad Barclay, Office for National Statistics, UK
A Cartography of Genocide
Nour Abuzaid, Forensic Architecture
MAPPING INSURGENSEAS, Part I: The Oceans of Palestine Solidarity
Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, AUB

Discussant: Nadi Abu Saada, SoAD, AUB

01:30-03:00 pm | Lunch Break

03:00-04:30 pm | Panel 3: Centering Margins (on subjects and representations) [Virtual Presentations] 
Data Feminism book talk screening
Catherine D'Ignazio, MIT and Lauren Klein, Emory University
Tools for Collaborative Research
Pablo Ares, Iconoclasistas

Discussant: Jana Traboulsi, SoAD, AUB

04:30-05:00 pm | Coffee break

05:00-06:30 pm | Day 2 Keynote [Virtual Presentation] 

GPS for the Brain: Cognitive Mapping Revisited 
Laura Kurgan, Center for Spatial Research, Columbia University

Discussant: Mona Fawaz, Beirut Urban Lab, SoAD, AUB


DAY 3: Wednesday April 16


09:30-11:00 am | Panel 4: Framing Ecologies (around water, weather, self)

Cartographies of Water Commons: Fluid Ecologies and Disrupted Landscapes
Joelle Deeb, The Water Commons Archives-Syria
The Year of the Weather
Sophie Dyer and Sasha Engelmann, Open-weather
Fractal Catastrophes Generate New Solidarities 
Imani Jacqueline Brown, Queen Mary, University of London

Discussant: Elizabeth Saleh, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies, AUB

11:00-11:30 am | Coffee break 

11:30 am-01:00 pm | Panel 5: Actioning Commons (with vernaculars, tactics, knowledges) 

Counter-mapping as Insurrection of Subjugated Knowledges: How Subaltern Fishers and Activists are Saving the Ennore Wetlands in Chennai, India
Nityanand Jayaraman, University of Waikato
Mapping to Instigate Action, Mapping for Interaction
Omar Khaled, CLUSTER
Mapping in Common: Tactical Cartographies and Collective Action
Ana Méndez de Andés, Urban Commons Research Collective

Discussant: Mona Harb, Beirut Urban Lab, SoAD, AUB 

01:00-02:30 pm | Lunch Break 

02:30-04:00 pm | Day 3 Keynote [Urban Studies Journal Annual Lecture]

New Directions for Southern Urban Praxis 
Gautam Bhan, Indian Institute for Human Settlements

Discussant: Rami Zurayk, SoAD, AUB

04:00-04:30 pm | Coffee break

04:30-06:00 pm | Roundtable & Wrap-up

How and Why to Map from the South

Moderator: Ahmad Gharbieh, Beirut Urban Lab, SoAD, AUB

 

Concept Note

The primary framing breaks down critical mapping theorization and practice into three main threads. The first, “Co-map”, focuses on issues of authorship and subject, such as who is mapping and who is being mapped, the implications of participatory mapping, citizen cartography, narrative and ethnographic mapping, and other forms that confront and dispute the traditional authorities behind the map. The second, “Re-map”, is concerned with reimagining cartographic practice, re/de-historicizing the discipline, challenging mapping and data visualization conventions, contemplating map as play, and using mapping as a speculative and experimental design process. The third, “Un-map”, examines ideas of counter-mapping, data feminism, rebel mapping, and other emerging visual strategies of dissent, agitation, and activism that deconstruct and expose the map as a socially embedded political text. 

Of course, the threads are neither mutually exclusive nor comprehensive as far as cartographic output and data visualization are concerned. Rather, they are issues that have been central to the critical shift within the field over time, and the conference aims to explore a more granulated set of themes across its multiple panels. These include questions of tools and technologies, positions and positionalities, ecologies and environments, conflict and crises, data access and scarcity, borders and territories, and other important deliberations within a rich, multifaceted, and continuously expanding cross-disciplinary sphere. Together, they aspire to delineate a well-rounded program that addresses the theme of mapping from a pertinent contemporary place, fostering dialogue between different methods and showcasing a variety of collective, exploratory, and radical cartographies in multiple contexts.
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