2 min.
A vast experience in “informal” education of youth and solid partnership networks in various countries have allowed the Lunaria Association to experiment with an innovative tool promoting youth participation on the web.
An open source software has permitted the creation of a “Young Mappers Team”, a group of 100 young immigrants and natives in seven large cities, who can redesign the urban spaces in their city on www.youmap.eu.
Moreover, the two-year project also entails meetings and exchanges among the young designers, who will meet for ten days in Ankara and Istanbul.
In the audio clip Giulia Cortellesi, Head of the “Migration and Youth Policy” Department of Lunaria, explains the role of participated cartography in social inclusion and participation processes beginning with the very different realities of Rome, Madridi, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin and Ankara.
The YouMap: Young Urban Cartographies project will participate in the 5th edition of the international Global Junior Challenge competition in the “up to 29 years old” category
From the Project Description:
“The city has been analysed, perceived and interpreted on the basis of its role as a social space in which to create relations, identify opportunities, find educational and work opportunities and become active subjects, capable of transforming the urban space in relation to one’s needs. These issues are analysed in connection with the particular condition of youth living in suburbs or of migrant origin and their peculiar relation with the urban space, in terms of both geographical and symbolic distances, economic accessibility, ease of movement, availability of cultural, educational and work opportunities. The use of appropriate tools and methodologies (city maps, urban plans, meetings and interviews with privileged witnesses, mapping existing spaces and areas to be reclaimed, etc.) has allowed these youths to plot “dense” maps that go beyond the mere cartographic and naturalistic representation of an urban space and become representations rich with areas composed by the very relations that represent, modify or wish to transform them. YouMap may be viewed as a project that, through the meeting of youths with different cultures and economic backgrounds, attempts to redesign the city from a cooperative approach that promotes social cohesion and a greater awareness of one’s role as a citizen".
