Political Geography Now sequential maps of Syria: Area of fighting and territorial control in Syria’s civil war. Map by Evan Centanni, starting from a blank map by German Wikipedia user NordNordWest. License: CC BY-SA Text summaries are included with each update.
This is how an emergent movement of citizen- cartographers uses the possibilities given by the interactive realm of Web 2.0; this is how they seek actual deliberation, an egalitarian access to democratic rights and means to express their presence, interests and vision of reality. What gains recognition in cyberspace has impact on the economic, cultural, political, social situation of the offline world. No longer can the centre make unilateral decisions about the local. Citizen maps belong to a stream of ways and means used to establish a new world; they are an exercise for re-establishing a public agora, forgotten by neoliberal lifestyles for whom the notion of representation seems comfortable enough, but which no longer provides accuracy or action. Citizen-cartography is a tool that serves the excluded, ignoring the big declarations of the great political players. As such, these maps attempt to show certain reality. They don’t claim salutary properties, rather they present an important, desired and needed contribution to systemic change. c
Map 1, 1 February 2012 Map 8, 28 December 2012 Map 10, 25 June 2013 Map 11, 22 August 2013 Map 12, 15 December 2013 Map 12.1, 28 January 2013
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6 Political Geography Now is the project led by geographer Evan Centanni, whose mandate is to ‘chronicle changes to the world’s countries, borders and capitals, as well as real territorial control in conflict zones and disputed territories’. www.polgeonow.com
Evan Centanni
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