Deep Mapping

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I’m investigating our material urban
spaces as infrastructures for mediation,
and I’m proposing that archaeological
tools, like excavation and mapping,
might help us to acknowledge and
understand our smart, mediated cities in
the longue durée.

Mattern Preface xvi

Plato. Detail from Raphael’s The School of Athens.
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That “area of local intercourse” is an
infrastructure—a structure that
undergirds communication and
communion.

Mattern The Deep Time of Urban Mediation 8

Gorgias. Reconstruction in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.
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Street Blockages in Saint Louis.
Image Credit: Michael R. Allen for NEXTSTL

What we ultimately nd is that our media histories are deeply

“networked” with our urban and architectural histories and that, in many
cases, these cultural and technological forms are mutually constructed.

Mattern Infrastructural Entanglements 12

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Members of the Young Americans for Freedom picket the
St. Louis of ces of IBM to protest its engagement with
communist countries in Europe. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

But speculative methods do at least allow us to acknowledge our media

cities as multisensory and to appreciate that these myriad sensory
registers are integral to mediation. Speculative models allow us to
imagine, if not posit de nitive claims regarding, what our historical media
cities looked, sounded, and felt like—and how urban politics might have
been exercised through these empirical and affective registers.

Mattern The Deep Time of Urban Mediation 8

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fi
 Members of the Young Americans for Freedom picket the
St. Louis of ces of IBM to protest its engagement with
fi
communist countries in Europe. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

“
By presenting multiple infrastructures simultaneously, the deep section
allows designers to explore them in relation to one another and to
imagine how our future systems could correspond to the paths laid out by
their predecessors.

Mattern Deep Mapping and the Media City 28

COVID-19 Hot Spots. NYT
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Today’s urban form is perhaps best
expressed not through a two-
dimensional map but via the remixed
iPod playlist, the database
documentary, and a live feed of data
accessible via the smartphone. 

Mattern Deep Mapping and the Media City 30

Medium Design cover. Designed by Ayham Ghraowi.
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These examples demonstrate the value of
mapping as a method and of thinking of
the map itself as a medium to which we
have to apply our critical faculties.
Infrastructure, in its material and spatial
dimensions, lends itself particularly well
to mapping.

Mattern Deep Mapping and the Media City 49

Image from The Mapping Singularity Is Near. By Ro Gupta
Deep Mapping