Spatial Memory

Originally developed to provide a free, open source map to the public, OpenStreetMap allows users to annotate locations in a way that promises to incorporate local landscape, history, and culture in a way lacking from most online maps.  By glossing a basic physical map, contributors to the collaborative project can not only provide more detailed information about the terrain and logistics of travel (such as the location of of postal drop boxes and–for what it’s worth–cattle grids) but have an opportunity to sketch out land use patterns and features that play a role in community life.  Through user editing and annotation, maps display old town commons, historic homes, and other features, allowing travelers to get a quick overview of a place’s character in addition to knowledge of a web of roads.  The layers of information have the potential to offer a better sense of how places evolve, showing spatial relations between a wider range of buildings, landforms, and land uses rather than a crude search result listing one particular type of business.

This sort of wikimapping comes at a propitious time, given concerns about the cultural and social effects of internet maps.  While Google’s invasive street shots have received a good deal of attention, geographers and historians have found a more subtle flaw in the images churned out by Google, Mapquest, Yahoo, and others.  The practical, prosaic, results showing major streets and a pinpointed address make landmarks invisible, stripping the map of any connection to history and culture.  This flaw in the map as a data management tool influences perception, gradually alienating landscape from experience by turning it into something you pass through rather than recognizing its role in local life, and denying the subtleties and complexities of place and travel.