PARTICIPATORY MAPPING USING GIS

2016, School of Planning & Architecture, Delhi. With Vineet Kataria

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Innovation in GIS techniques using Cloud-based systems has allowed for a new form of interactive and collective mapping to emerge. Planners and Urban Designers can now generate, co-create and publish data using platforms such as the ArcGIS online and ArcCollector. The purpose of this course that I taught between 2015 and 2017 at the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi was to use the democratic potentials of novel GIS technologies for social and spatial justice.

Together with the students, we mapped and collated information on several self-built neighborhoods and street vendors that were under threat due to their insecure tenureship. We then published these databases as Story Maps in the public domain which could be accessed and used by the communities that we were mapping as a proof and document for claiming their 'right to the city'. 

The students also attempted to design and launch a mobile app that could be used directly by the communities to map and document their surroundings.