City Debates 2025 - Recap and Recorded Proceedings
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.
Conference Proceedings
The event opened on Monday April 14 in the evening with the First Keynote presentation by Nishat Awan, Director of Research at the UCL Urban Laboratory, titled “ATLAS OTHERWISE: Mapping Location Beyond Geolocation”. The first keynote was moderated by Monica Basbous (Universitat Pompeu Fabra).
The debates unfolded on Tuesday, April 15, with three panels and a second keynote. Watch them here:
Panel 1: Tracing Territories (of migration, governance, conflict)
Panel 2 [with PALESTINE WEEK]: Figuring Places (in evidence, narrative, archive)
Panel 3: Centering Margins (on subjects and representations)
Second Keynote: Laura Kurgan – GPS for the Brain: Cognitive Mapping Revisited
Some presentations are redacted at the request of the speakers.
The first panel “Tracing Territories (of migration, governance, conflict)” featured three presentations: "Aggregating Power: Mapping Territorial Orders in Syria" by Jadd Hallaj (LUGARIT), “Pilot books and Landing Spaces: Navigating Plural Urban Experiences” by Martina Bovo (IUAV University of Venice / Politecnico di Milano), and “Spatializing Loss, Delineating Recovery” by Nadine Bekdache (Public Works Studio). Panel 1 was moderated by Mariangela Gasparotto (Institut français du Proche-Orient).
The second panel, "Figuring Places (in evidence, narrative, archive)" featured four presentations: “Archiving Gaza towards the Production of Recovery Imaginaries” by Batoul Yassine (Beirut Urban Lab), “Surfacing Localised Stories: Mapping, Scrollytelling and (Semi)automation” by Ahmad Barclay (Office for National Statistics, UK), “A Cartography of Genocide” by Nour Abuzaid (Forensic Architecture), and “MAPPING INSURGENSEAS, Part I: The Oceans of Palestine Solidarity” by Nikolas Kosmatopoulos (Faculty of Arts and Sciences, AUB). This panel was part of AUB’s second Palestine Week. Panel 2 was moderated by Nadi Abu Saada (SoAD, AUB).
The third panel, "Centering Margins (on subjects and representations)" featured two presentations: "Data Feminism book talk screening" by Catherine D’Ignazio (MIT) and Lauren Klein (Emory University), “Tools for Collaborative Research” by Pablo Ares (Iconoclasistas). Panel 3 was moderated by Jana Traboulsi (SoAD, AUB).
The second keynote presentation by Laura Kurgan (Center for Spatial Research, Columbia University), titled “GPS for the Brain: Cognitive Mapping Revisited”, was moderated by Mona Fawaz (Beirut Urban Lab, SoAD, AUB).
City Debates 2025 was concluded on Wednesday, April 16, with two panels and final keynote.
Panel 4: Framing Ecologies (around water, weather, self)
Panel 5: Actioning Commons (with vernaculars, tactics, knowledges)
Closing Keynote [Urban Studies Journal Annual Lecture]: Gautam Bhan – New Directions for Southern Urban Praxis
Some presentations are redacted at the request of the speakers.
The fourth panel “Framing Ecologies (around water, weather, self)” featured three presentations: “Cartographies of Water Commons: Fluid Ecologies and Disrupted Landscapes” by Joelle Deeb (The Water Commons Archives-Syria), “The Year of the Weather” By Sophie Dyer (Open-weather), “Fractal Catastrophes Generate New Solidarities” by Imani Jacqueline Brown (Queen Mary, University of London). Panel 4 was moderated by Elizabeth Saleh (Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies, AUB).
The fifth panel “Actioning Commons (with vernaculars, tactics, knowledges)” featured three presentations: “Counter-mapping as Insurrection of Subjugated Knowledges: How Subaltern Fishers and Activists are Saving the Ennore Wetlands in Chennai, India” by Nityanand Jayaraman (University of Waikato), “Mapping to Instigate Action, Mapping for Interaction” by Omar Khaled (CLUSTER), and “Mapping in Common: Tactical Cartographies and Collective Action” by Ana Méndez de Andés (Urban Commons Research Collective). Panel 5 was moderated by Mona Harb (Beirut Urban Lab, SoAD, AUB).
The closing keynote presentation by Gautam Bhan (Indian Institute for Human Settlements), titled “New Directions for Southern Urban Praxis”, was moderated by Alan Shihadeh (Dean of MSFEA, AUB).