Cities 140 (2023) 104435

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Cities
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities

Invisible networks: Counter-cartographies of dissident spatial practices in

La Jota Street, Quito
Víctor Cano-Ciborro a, b, Ana Medina c, *
a
The New School Urban Research Group, The New School, 66 W 12th St, New York, NY 10011, United States of America
b
The Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Av. de Juan de Herrera, 4, 28040 Madrid, Spain
c
Faculty of Architecture and Design, Directorate-General Research, Universidad de Las Américas, Vía A Nayón s/n, UDLA Park, 170124 Quito, Ecuador

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Cities are defined by more than just their buildings and streets; it is the spontaneous situations that occur in
Global South quotidian places that give them a sense of urban life. When inhabitants provoke relations built on dissidence and
Counter-cities resistance, they are constructing strategies that defy the official establishment, resulting in a new type of city.
Quito's public space
This article examines the invisible networks of La Jota Street, located in the south of Quito, Ecuador, as a
Informal occupations
Latin American cities
paradigm of what is a Latin-American counter-city. We analyze the hidden and often disregarded urban pa­
Counter-cartographies rameters that shape this kind of territory by using counter-cartographies, a novel graphic methodology based on
research-by-making. In La Jota, this method consists of tracing the everyday spatial practices of inhabitants in the
corridor's urban form of narrow streets and passages. Key findings of this study include: an urban theoretical
framework that goes beyond the examination of morphology to incorporate active, conflicting, and sensitive
notions such as resistance and dissidence mainly in Global South cities; the production of counter-cartographies
based on bodies, occupations, and affects as evidence of spatial constructions against the state apparatus designs;
and potential implications to design strategies that include and respond to the actual lived experiences of
inhabitants.

1. Introduction
La Jota Street, situated in the Solanda neighborhood of Quito,
Ecuador, challenges traditional modes of analysis, theory, and repre­
sentation of cities. These modes often rely on urban planning, regulation
and oversimplified binary concepts, such as formal–informal, legal­
–illegal, permanent–temporary, or public–private relations, that fail to
capture the complex and nuanced realities of La Jota urban conditions
— a space that, instead, fluctuates at multiple intermediate and extreme
positions that defy “the status quo of urban studies” (Oldfield, 2014, p.
8).
This research mobilizes Foucault's concept of ‘counter-city’ (Fou­
cault, 1995) to explore the conflicts and power dynamics inherent in the
often-overlooked invisible socio-spatial networks that shape notions of
counter-cities in Latin America. These networks are mostly operating on
public spaces and become tangible when banal and quotidian objects
and activities are exerted by ‘missing’ people (Simone, 2014): blankets
placed on the ground, chairs and tables on sidewalks, very ingenious
light infrastructures on streets or walls, enormous loudspeakers in the
middle of the street, urban music blared from tuned cars, clothing shops
or pharmacies, vendors shouting the special offer of the day, the smell of
street food, the smoke of street-side barbeques, stray dogs looking for
food, children running between stalls, narrow passages where a hushed
type of sex work takes place, teenagers scrawling graffiti, or the con­
spicuous passivity of a man seated on a park bench waiting for a drug
deal while scanning for police.
La Jota Street is a place that lets us make visible, and theorize, the
genuine informal spatial constructions that challenge the established
political and official structure in the city's configuration. Hence, with an
aim towards deepening, expanding, and visually representing the
concept of counter-city, we address three key research questions in this
article: 1) What specific resistances and dissident spatial practices define
La Jota Street as a Latin American counter-city? 2) What are the benefits
and limitations of counter-cartographies as a method for visualizing
urban spaces shaped by invisible relationships between inhabitants and
their surroundings? 3) How can parameters such as resistance, dissi­
dence, occupations, bodies, and affections be incorporated into the
urban design process for contested spaces in the Global South?

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: canocibv@newschool.edu, vm.cano@upm.es (V. Cano-Ciborro), anagabriela.medina@udla.edu.ec (A. Medina).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2023.104435
Received 31 October 2022; Received in revised form 11 April 2023; Accepted 7 June 2023
Available online 22 June 2023
0264-2751/© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina
This article will address these questions in a structured six-part
format. Firstly, we will conceptualize counter-cities to present the
literature review. Secondly, we will provide the background of La Jota
Street as a relevant case study. Then, we will explain the data collection
and cartographic method implemented. Fourthly, we will provide a
detailed review of the findings and results (counter-cartographies) to
reveal the different strategies used by inhabitants to survive in this
territory. Fifthly, we will have a discussion on dissidence, resistance,
bodies, occupations, and cartographies in our approach to the concept of
counter-city for Latin American cities. Finally, we will present the
conclusion that emphasizes the findings, limitations, and future research
directions of the framework around counter-cities and counter-
cartographies methodology.
2. Conceptualizing counter-cities
2.1. Cities of forces, bodies and affections
The comprehension of space as an ever-evolving production
(Lefebvre, 1991), considering the various relational particularities of its
inhabitants, distances us from a predetermined and oppressive view of
the city, and instead embraces a much more uncertain, temporary, and
conditional outlook (Watson, 2014). This shift leads to an urbanism that
is harder to quantify, assess, or regulate, and at the same time, it has
been increasingly gaining traction in the fields of human geography,
urban planning, and architectural scholarship over the past two decades.
To this extent, Everyday Urbanism (Chase et al., 1999) as a concept,
points out the importance of acknowledging daily routines and mundane
concerns in urban environments. Likewise, what has been called ‘Guer­
rilla Urbanism’ (Hou, 2010) unveils the scalability of the subaltern ac­
tions, the shift between the visible and the invisible, and the relation
between the everyday and the resistance. And, too, Subaltern Urbanism
(Roy, 2011) is sensitive to the apparently voiceless inhabitants
–especially in spatial aspects– of the periphery and other overlooked
parts of cities. Loose Space (Frank & Stevens, 2017) focuses on the ‘un­
ruly’ by four spatial terms: Appropriation, Tension, Resistance and
Discovery. Finally, Gang Urbanism (Cano-Ciborro, 2017) delves into the
particular spatial constructions developed by bands to survive in the
roughest parts of the “city”.
Addressing the city with such a sensitive approach, the concept of
conflict converges as a “collision of forces” where multiple agents and
entities shatter (Holston, 2012). Here, forces are understood as power
and counterpower relationships (Deleuze, 2014; Foucault, 1978). While
not entirely invisible, these forces are extraordinarily subtle and ‘affect’
bodies, resulting in a hardly predictable response (Spinoza's notion of
‘affection’), that usually disregards patrons, rules, or external con­
straints. Affections are those forces that define and mobilize bodies. As a
result, the urban realities enacted by conflict — what we term the ‘urban
parameters’ of forces, power, body, and affection — are the generators
of counter-city. It is not by chance that Foucault was one of the first to
theorize this term: “power is mobilized; it makes itself everywhere
present and visible; it invents new mechanisms; it separates, it immo­
bilizes, it partitions; it constructs for a time… a countercity” (Foucault,
1995, p.205).
When we document La Jota residents' and visitors' daily spatial
practices, we find that, contrary to normative assumptions, their actions
frequently challenge dominant power structures and contribute to the
construction and visibility of their own city. For this reason, we include
the concepts of ‘resistance’ and ‘dissidence’ in our analysis of La Jota as
key notions. While resistance is defined as forces or counter-powers that
refuse to be exhausted by the state apparatus (Foucault, 1978), dissi­
dence warns us of a resistance's sensitive condition; a resistance that is
built from those invisible affections and hidden spatial networks
(Rancière, 2010).
2
Cities 140 (2023) 104435
2.2. Counter-cities, south and north
According to geographers Susan Parnell and Sophie Oldfield (Parnell
& Oldfield, 2014), urban studies often fails to address the most pressing
contemporary global urban problems because many studies overlook
rapidly growing cities where traditional authority, religious identity, or
informality are as important to understanding urban narratives as
modern urban capitalist public policy. From this position, Ananya Roy's
(Roy, 2014) academic current argues that the future of urban develop­
ment lies in cities such as Shanghai, Cairo, Mumbai, Mexico City, Rio de
Janeiro, Dakar, Johannesburg, Singapore, and Dubai. Rather than treat
Global South cities as exotic places for testing European urban theories,
some scholars aim to see them as places where contemporary urban
theory and practice can be developed. This shift challenges the
assumption that Global South cities are only valuable for ethnographic
fieldwork, and instead positions them as vital sites for generating
innovative urban strategies (Ahlert et al., 2018).
The Global South should not be perceived simply as a geographical
term encompassing everything south of the equator. Rather, it should be
seen as a concept that strives to highlight aspects that have been his­
torically neglected in urban theory and practice such as: a temporal
dimension that differs significantly from that of northern cities (Cal­
deira, 2017; Roy, 2014), urban music genders (Garcia & Frankowski,
2020), extreme informality (Zapata Campos et al., 2022), distinct social
relations (Simone, 2014, 2004); a sense of community and militancy
(Santoyo-Orozco, 2023), informal or manufacturing economies associ­
ated with ‘politics of stealth’ (Benjamin, 2014), absence of institutional
governance (Mabin, 2014), lack of freedom for women and stigma on
the homosexual population (Watson, 2014), and probably the most
studied and pertinent in the last decade: the post-colonial condition
(Lara & Hernández, 2021).
These situations, and their multiple bodies and scales, are not
exclusive to Global South counter-cities, however strictly or loosely
defined. They may also occur in the Global North, though they are
nevertheless distinctive of the South (Parnell & Oldfield, 2014). Ac­
cording to Carlos Vainer's warning (2014), it is important to prevent any
form of epistemological nationalism or chauvinism while deconstructing
the coloniality of knowledge. Instead, we open the possibility to explore
how findings, theories and practices derived from the chosen case study
can be employed, augmented, or evaluated in other urban situations
despite their geographic location. As an example of comparative studies
(McFarlane, 2010),1 Alan Mabin relates to “what is going on in the
periferias de Sao Paulo can be useful for telling stories of life and thinking
about urban practice in the outskirts or grande couronne of Paris, at least
in general terms” (Mabin, 2014, p. 26).
These comparisons end up displacing us to counter-cities of the
Global North, which mark towards new or dissident forms of urban
governance through formal and informal actions and structures
(Swyngedouw, 2007). For instance, there are studies on the experiences
of urban segregation and stigmatization among the Roma community in
Hungary, African-American populations in US urban ghettos, and
different generations of Africans in Parisian banlieues (Angélil & Siress,
2012; Málovics et al., 2019; Méreiné-Berki et al., 2021; Wacquant,
2010). Similarly, emerging forms of civic participation and activism in
governance have been observed in Seoul (Seo, 2019), informal street
markets in London (Kelley, 2020), and counter-urbanization from im­
migrants in Copenhagen (Andersen et al., 2022). Hitherto, conflicts,
especially socio-spatial, cause cities to resist the otherness.
1
Here we follow McFarlane's notion of comparison also quoted by Alan
Mabin: “‘comparison’ not just as a method, but as a mode of thought that in­
forms how urban theory is constituted”.
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina
2.3. The invisible and excluded
Nigel Thrift's Non-Representation Theory (Thrift, 2004) makes it
essential to acknowledge the existence of “invisible and excluded”
phenomena. This research aims not only to describe these phenomena in
literature but also to analyze them graphically through mapping the
spatiality of the invisible networks that form the notion of counter-city
in La Jota Street. This approach aligns with the concept of counter-
mapping, as coined by Nancy Peluso. Counter-mapping is a radical
tool used to represent ‘invisible’ situations that are often far from the
hegemonic power and are associated with economically–deprived or
socially marginalized groups (Peluso, 1995). Since Peluso's initial
framing, there has been an “explosion of radical/counter/feminist/neo/
DIY/participatory/indigenous/you-name-it map projects,” (Kim, 2015;
Krygier & Wood, 2005) the ‘critical’ mapping suggests that these ways of
representations chalenge the power dynamics, and links invisible and
excluded bodies, relations, actions, or parameters (Awan et al., 2011;
Cano-Ciborro, 2021; Cobarrubias & Pickles, 2009; Medina, 2018).
Through the creation of cartographies, the disciplines of geography,
architecture, and urban design provide powerful tools for activism.
Occupying public space in a dissident way can help make the com­
plexities and potentialities of these spaces legible, particularly for de­
signers. In addition, these visualization techniques can provide
opportunities for locals, including everyday residents, to gain a better
understanding of mobility and to know places informally by moving
through them on a daily basis, as opposed to relying solely on official
maps such as GIS (Fox, 1998). This activist strategy empowers margin­
alized groups by granting them a voice in shaping the built environment
and by challenging the dominance of elitist structures of power. We can
create more inclusive and equitable cities by recognizing the signifi­
cance of local knowledge and spatial practices.
3. La Jota, paradigm of counter-city in Latin American
Quito is a complex city conditioned by a number of physical and
human geographic factors. It is situated in the Andes mountain range
where it is wedged into a steep valley that forces it to extend along a
north-south axis, it is surrounded by twelve volcanoes, and it is at sig­
nificant seismic risk (Yépez, 2014). Its 2.7 million inhabitants (INEC,
2022b) cohabit between both formally regulated urban areas and
informal practices –both in urbanization and in commercial activities–
and in gullies and gorges.
Historically, formal urban development and infrastructure have been
concentrated in the north part of Quito, while in the south, families with
limited economic resources were pushed to find land or housing in the
informal market, provoking vast zones of irregular settlements (Carrión,
1981). The lack of housing for low-income and poor families became a
visible and immediate problem for the government and the municipal­
ity, a social phenomenon that coincided with the 1970s Ecuadorian oil
boom (Carrión & Erazo Espinosa, 2012). With new oil revenues coming
into the country, several large-scale social-housing and infrastructural
programs were financed by public and private institutions that also
made use of international development funds (Kueva, 2017). One of
these plans was ‘Solanda,’ in the south of Quito. Built during the 1970s
and 1980s, the Solanda's plan2 (Fig. 1) was envisioned as a ‘model’
2
Solanda's plan was funded by the foundation Mariana de Jesús in agreement
with the National Housing Board [Junta Nacional de Vivienda], the Ecuadorian
Banking House [Banco Ecuatoriano de la Vivienda], the Municipality, and the
International Development Agency [AgenciaInternacional de Desarrollo AID]
(Rodríguez, 1990).
3
Cities 140 (2023) 104435
housing project for the region, notable especially for its use of ‘pro­
gressive dwelling plots’ –unfinished houses for low-income families3
(Rodríguez, 1990).
After ten years of planning, negotiation, and design work, the
neighborhood finally began receiving its first residents in 1986 (Kueva,
2017). Of the 5.600 houses planned, 4.212 were incrementally deliv­
ered.4 To complete the construction of their half-completed homes,
residents relied upon new indebtedness, mingas,5 and support from rel­
atives (Rodríguez, 1990). Some new owners destroyed the houses
entirely or partially to occupy the entire plot, including the front garden.
Owners often built additional floors to rent as apartments for extra in­
come or for family expansion (Ramón Navarrete, 2017), resulting in a
vertical growth that exceeded the official plan. Currently, it is possible to
find four, five, and even six-story constructions in an area that formally
permits only a three-story maximum, multiplying the narrow access to
the inside blocks. Solanda's residents are connected not only by socio-
economic factors but also by political, cultural, identity, and ideolog­
ical dimensions. This has resulted in a diverse and heterogeneous
neighborhood where community relationships are important, and over
time, networks of affections have been built.
3.1. A dissident public street
La Jota (literally, “The ‘J’”) has emerged as the most intense com­
mercial street in Solanda. Officially named after José María Alemán, it is
the only street that crosses the neighborhood entirely from north to
south (Fig. 2) with approximately 1.2 km length. It crosses fifteen blocks
and eleven secondary streets. More than 350 shops line the corridor on
the ground, second, third, and fourth floors. The commercial character
of La Jota intensified during the late 1990s and 2000s, when Ecuador
suffered a banking crisis6 and hundreds of thousands of people were
forced to migrate. A subsequent spike in remittances from these emi­
grants flowed back into the country, with especially important impact
on working-class neighborhoods such as Solanda. As a result, the micro-
and small-scale economy grew relatively stronger in terms of greater
local consumption spending, increased vertical construction activity in
the commercial corridor, and proliferation of commercial and
3
Initially, the plan was intended to be assigned to the poorest population;
instead, the dwellings were acquainted by low-income families that somehow
had a fixed income and a creditworthiness (Rodríguez, 1990), a requirement
from both public and private investors.
4
The sector 1 was the first to be occupied. Nevertheless, the Municipality
does not have any record on how this process took place. Over time, people
started populating the neighborhood, following the original plan distribution
and layout but not the architectural housing guides.
5
Minga has its origin from the Quechua language, and it relates to the process
of some Andean communities to do a collective agricultural work for the benefit
of the community. Currently, minga is a social process that includes neighbors,
family members, relatives, and friends to do some collaborative work for the
benefit of the neighborhood or a neighbor (MINGA, s. f; Sletto et al., 2020).
6
On March 8, 1999, then President Jamil Mahuad declared a Banking Hol­
iday, which stated that citizens' savings would be frozen for 24 h; but three days
later, he signed a new executive order that froze savings for 365 days. Savers
could only withdraw balances of up to a maximum of 2 million sucres or up to
USD$500. This action froze the deposits of more than one million people that
did not see their money again. After the announcement, the Ecuadorian cur­
rency was devalued by more than 50 %, the highest in the 20th century in
Ecuador. Ecuador was going through a crisis that began in 1998: the anteced­
ents being the floods caused by the El Niño phenomenon that year, the collapse
of oil prices between 1998 and 1999, and the international financial crisis that
began in Southeast Asia in 1997. Due to the Bank Holiday, the highest per­
centage of migration in the history of the country was registered: 903,974
people between 1999 and 2000 left for the USA and Europe, according to the
National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) in its Statistical Registry of
International Entries and Exits. Source: Wambra, https://wambra.ec/23-ano
s-feriado-bancario-ecuador/.
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina Cities 140 (2023) 104435

Fig. 1. Quito map highlighting Solanda neighborhood.

Source: Authors.

4
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina
Fig. 2. Solanda map highlighting the La Jota commercial strip.
Source: Authors.
residential space for lease (Herrera, 2002).
With many working-age parents migrating abroad, young people and
children were often left in the custody of their grandparents or relatives,
disrupting the traditional nuclear family structure and causing teenagers
to gather with others their same age (Herrera et al., 2005). Many young
people created bands or gangs that altered Solanda's quotidian life,
including the social, aesthetical, and generational aspects (Ramón
Navarrete, 2017). Some of them started painting graffiti on walls and
playing rap music in parks and alleys, while others began to consume
drugs in nightclubs, karaoke, or backstreets.
In 2011, the municipality called a design and construction compe­
tition to build “La Jota Boulevard” (Salazar, 2012). The architects in
charge claimed that the multiple stores adapted to the original dwellings
5
Cities 140 (2023) 104435
and the street vendors caused negative social effects, such as insecurity
for the neighborhood and a lack of urban continuity that “contribute[d]
to pollution and anarchy” (BAQ, 2012).7 Hence, the project included a
4.000 sqm commercial plaza, located in the northern part of La Jota that
would relocate the once-informal vendors in new formal stands, erasing
the sense of informality. Nevertheless, today, while there are indeed
vendors using these designated stands, informal vendors remain. Other
aspects of the redevelopment project included widening sidewalks,
cable trenching, urban improvements for disabled people, installation of
benches, planter boxes and lighting posts. New car restrictions were also
7
https://arquitecturapanamericana.com/revitalizacion-urbana-calle-jose-ma
ria-aleman-la-jota/.
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina
implemented such as parking on both sides of the street and diverted bus
routes. A program of aesthetic improvements too intervened on build­
ings' façades by painting them colorfully.
After the construction of the boulevard, the municipality trumpeted
that the project provided better pedestrian circulation, that it gave
dignified public space in the new commercial plaza, and that it pro­
moted the development of social and entrepreneurial activities within
the neighborhood and the city (Agencia Pública de Noticias de Quito,
2013). However, the project did not meaningfully consider social dy­
namics and the economic reality of Solanda's inhabitants and the actual
commercial character of La Jota, in which formal and informal eco­
nomic activity has been central to the neighborhood's roots. Moreover,
locals rarely identified La Jota as a ‘boulevard’, in the grand sense the
term implies (Gallegos & Zárate, 2014). Rather, they continued to refer
to the corridor as a commercial street. Shops' owners have a certain
bitterness towards the boulevard as customers cannot park their cars on
the street and there are no parking lots in the area.
The most recent pandemic-era economic crisis has increased the
number of informal vendors all over Quito,8 especially in La Jota, and
has been spurred further by recent in-migration from Colombia and
Venezuela. This migratory wave has led to disagreement, conflict, and
tension in the traditionally more homogenous demography of Solanda
and La Jota.9. Currently, the street is vibrant, during the day and espe­
cially at night, which contrasts drastically with the ‘normal’ Quito's
daily routine. In La Jota, people can find medical centers, nightclubs,
hairdressings, gyms, restaurants ranging from Arab, Colombian, Peru­
vian, Venezuelan, or Ecuadorian typical food, fast food, clothing stores,
pharmacies, ice cream shops and, simultaneously, and informal vendors
that move along the sidewalks. During mornings, people, mainly
women, walk by La Jota to buy groceries, while other passers-by buy
prepared food like breakfast and beverages. In the afternoon, students
and workers approach the street on their way back to their houses,
usually from Monday to Thursday, but it is during Fridays and the
weekends that there is more affluence of diverse people, due to the
variety of entertainment activities particularly attractive to young peo­
ple. On the weekend evenings, the number of people and activities in­
creases, and cars stop on both sides of the street regardless of the
restrictions, causing conflicts to pedestrians when crossing the street. To
mend this situation, the municipality installed fences on both sides of the
sidewalks in 2018 to prevent people from crossing the street and to limit
the number of informal vendors. Nevertheless, vendors frequently place
their goods directly on those same fences, appropriating them as stands
to their benefit rather than encumbrance. Most recently, during our visit
in August 2022, we found the fences removed and vendors again placing
their products on plant boxes, walls, corners, streets, sidewalks, light
poles, on mobile cars, etc., —appropriating infrastructure wherever
available, regardless of the city's intentions.
The impact of such diversity in people, activities, and places, and the
resistance and dissidence applied by residents, provokes La Jota to set up
a complex network of actions in public spaces. These activities go
beyond formal plans or official spaces, bringing instead spatial practices
–dissident and resistant– of social cohesion that legitimize local pro­
cesses to respond to their own spatial needs.
8
According to data from INEC (2020), the average monthly income before
the pandemic was $302, which decreased by approximately 46,36 %, obtaining
an average income of $162 after the pandemic. It should be noted that this
income is lower than the unified basic salary and the basic household provisions
(INEC, 2022a).
9
Solanda's original plan estimated 20.000 inhabitants, but by 2010 the
population was 80.000, and currently it is over 100.000 people, with a large
presence of people from countries like Colombia, Cuba, and Venezuela.
6
Cities 140 (2023) 104435
4. Methodology
4.1. Collection data, research-by-doing & parameters to cartography:
Bodies, occupations, affections
In order to produce counter-cartographies of La Jota that took into
account the nature of socio-spatial conflict, we required a method both
critical and alternative to traditional techniques of participatory map­
ping. The result was a mixed method approach: we focused group data
collected from in-situ observation and informal conversations to resi­
dents and visitors, in order to make visible and comprehensible potential
hidden or dissident spatial practices; and gathered data used to generate
and categorize parameters, values, and facts with the purpose to produce
the counter-cartographies.
The visits for the observation and conversations, needed to concen­
trate on the socio-spatial constructions. For that purpose, we visited the
neighborhood six times and at different hours, between February,
August, and October 2022, highlighting the evening visits that yielded
the most data on invisible and dissident spatialities. In every visit, we
recorded eye-level videos and took pictures; in some cases, we took 360
pictures and videos, and in two visits we recorded drone videos at 50, 70
and 100-meters altitude at night (Fig. 3). We acknowledge that the
socio-economic and leisure sections of the population represent diverse
types of public, different activities and spatial practices, as well as
restricted practices in the evenings.
We video-recorded casual conversations and informed about it to
informal vendors, shops' owners and employees, residents and property
owners, passers-by, and customers. In total, we talked to21 people. We
addressed open-ended questions to encourage respondents to freely
express their insights; although we asked one closed question to all the
people interviewed: do you live in the neighborhood? In total, 13 people
responded yes. These conversations let us capture the context and
experience captured (Kvale, 1996) from them, to produce a more real­
istic and naturalistic data befitting in-depth communication, used in
social studies (Abell et al., 2006), and gather a perception of how public
and collective spaces are used. However, this data depends on how the
interviewed feels at the moment of the conversation and whether it
could be relevant or not for the research.
This approach gave us information to critically represent and
broaden, through cartographies, La Jota's spatialities, developing a
“research-by-making” method as Laura Kurgan (2013, pp. 13-14), Eyal
Weizman (2017), and Joseph Heathcott (2019) have presented in their
works. In addition, this ‘cartographic making’ is linked to the concept of
‘ethnographic drawing’, defined by Kaijima et al. (2018) as: “a method
of observing and drawing architecture and urban space from the view­
point of the people who use it, rather than the architects and planners
who are involved in its construction”, since these sort of drawings “[m]
ore than just transmitting building data, (…) allow us to uncover re­
alities that would otherwise remain unseen by those who experience
them”. Thus, in our goal to uncover those realities in La Jota, we produce
counter-cartographies for three main parameters, often disregarded yet
crucial, urban aspects: bodies (the non-normative inhabitants who
challenges the status quo of public spaces); occupations (the temporary,
ephemeral and actions, transactions or events that defy the urban reg­
ulations) and affections (the invisible –or at least not acknowledged–
networks between those bodies, occupations and spaces).
5. Results: La Jota Counter-cartographies
We frame La Jota's southern half –between José Abarcas Street and
Av. Solanda– as the most active stretch to create counter-cartographies.
Through two apparently innocuous urban forms: 1) sidewalks, and 2)
interior pedestrian passages, we depict socio-spatial situations as dissi­
dences and tools for counteraction (Fig. 5). As a result, in what Henri
Lefebvre refers to as ‘representations of space’, connections between
places, people, actions, and things (Lefebvre & Enders, 1976) become
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina Cities 140 (2023) 104435

Fig. 3. Drone view of the La Jota Street at night. August 16, 2022.
Source: Authors.

Fig. 5. The La Jota commercial strip emphasizing.

Source: Authors.

7
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina
visible in these counter-cartographies.
5.1. Counter-cartography 1. Sidewalks as an informal market
This first cartography shows the spatial and temporal versatility of
inhabitants to occupy sidewalks and parts of the road in the most active
area of the strip: La Jota and J. Barreto street junction. This space is
occupied at different scales by mostly unlicensed vendors. They make
stock visible by occupying not just the horizontal and vertical surfaces,
but also the scarce urban furniture, the sidewalks, parts of the streets,
and the depth of the passage.
As shown in Fig. 6, there are several types of occupations. The
sidewalk is used as a support for commerce, setting up blankets to
display merchandise, chairs, tables, or more intricate light structures.
Walls become the ideal location to place products as they are under
obscenely brilliant signs from shops, which attracts everyone's attention.
The existing urban furniture is the support or base of their goods. These
vendors use light poles to mount or tie up their merchandise, or they use
a mannequin to highlight clothing under the public light. The concrete
planters are often used as a place to set up book sales –or other
products–, or seating for customers who buy food and want to eat as
there are no benches on the street. All these unintended situations
produce an invisible affective network, which is essential to analyze and
recognize La Jota's true urbanism.
This counter-cartography primarily employs two color palettes. The
blue palette is associated with all planned and legal constructions;
whereas everything in pink tones is unplanned, ephemeral, informal,
and defies the legality of the state apparatus. As seen in the geometric
legend and pointed out in the methodology, the counter-cartography is
built by three spatial constructions: bodies, occupations, and affections
(Fig. 7).
The non-normative bodies are divided into two categories: Human
and non-human bodies defined by their actions and capacity to act
rather than by their appearance (Deleuze, 2008). The human bodies
emphasize the tension of La Jota residents (color intensity). A street
vendor who works without a permit or occupies too much space risks
having his goods seized (intense red color). Members of various gangs
stand guard on the corners of J. Barreto Street (expanding field of vision
Fig. 6. Atlas of the La Jota informal spatial constructions/occupations.
Source: Authors.
8
Cities 140 (2023) 104435
and tension in form of arc). Similarly, the non-human bodies –cars in this
counter-cartography– violate the law by parking in prohibited areas; but
what is essential for this analysis is that they generate a network of af­
fections through their powerful loudspeakers that attract attention
(shockwaves) from inhabitants and visitors. And when tuned, these
vehicles become a symbol of identity and recognition within the
neighborhood. In this case, non-normative bodies inhabit La Jota be­
tween two extreme positions: secrecy and acknowledgment.
The occupations are determined by everything that is informal and/
or ephemeral (pink lines) as well as those stable and seemingly formal
constructions (blue lines). We draw attention to the formal structures
(blue) used by a specific person or action (superimposition of pink). This
is the case with the planters that, as seen in the central left section, are
used as a place to sit, eat, or gather next to a popular local fast-food
restaurant that often has long lines. The presence of graffiti (thin red
rectangle) on some of the walls is also noteworthy. The point of greatest
complexity in the counter-cartography is the light infrastructures
assembled daily by informal vendors. We can see seven different ty­
pologies linked to their goods (notation aims to convey this flexibility)
ranging from small tables and chairs (less than one meter in length) to
spaces built by various timber boards (more than 4 m long). The counter-
cartography highlights stalls that serve food and have umbrellas
(discontinuous circular lines) or lightweight structures to protect clients
from the common, extreme, and unpredictable rain, sun or wind in
Quito. To the visitor's eye, the layout of all these soft infrastructures on J.
Barreto Street looks chaotic; however, this arrangement results from the
vendors' negotiated occupancy patterns. This multiple evidence shows
that this urbanism is developed independently from the official laws and
regulations.
Affections are invisible relational networks that provoke and
generate various urban actions essential in the counter-cartography
(represented by circles, arcs, and broken lines). There are sound sour­
ces (circles with expansive waves) in the stores such as loudspeakers,
that attract customers with music or loop recordings of the sellers
themselves ‘shouting’ the offers, but also in the informal stalls, where
vendors repeat the stock and its price like a mantra. The smell (two
expanding circles) is typical of smoky barbecued street food. Similarly,
La Jota is brimming with luminous billboards that illuminate the street
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina Cities 140 (2023) 104435

Fig. 7. Counter-cartography: bodies, occupations, affections in the street.

Source: Authors.

9
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina Cities 140 (2023) 104435

and attract customers' attention (arc of circumference within the circle). 70 cm deep– corridor to enter the house or a staircase to go to the upper
Over these more sensory lines or “sensuous city” (Low, 2005), surveil­ levels. Some other houses do not have this small space but only a wall.
lance (arcs of dashed lines) emanating from gang members is depicted. Public lighting is generally poor or inadequate. Electric wires and
Multiple instances demonstrate how La Jota's resistance and dissidence lighting poles sometimes are part of the buildings' façades. However,
are built from sensitive and invisible networks. more than the morphology and land use on each passage, we perceived
that two of the fourteen passages share specific dynamics and modes of
relationships that increase intensity in their interior through dissident
5.2. Counter-cartography 2. Interior pedestrian passages
practices –all done at night.
Although the data collection offered us precise situations and spatial
The relationship between the interior pedestrian passages and La
practices developed in different passages, we will not specify the exact
Jota Street is often off-limits. These narrow passages (14 alleys where
location or building where some activities, especially the illegal ones,
mostly only pedestrians can access, sometimes covered by bridge-houses
happen. This is with the purpose of protecting the identity, security, and
and locked by gates on one or both sides) usually become hidden spaces
privacy of La Jota inhabitants and spaces where controversial actions
where inhabitants, if possible, can come and go at any time. They cross
take place (Fig. 9).
blocks and reach inner plazas, parks, parking lots, courts, or play­
During the evenings, residents occupy the passages in a very tem­
grounds, which would make them be seen as residual spaces, but in
poral way. It is intrinsic that inhabitants displace from La Jota to the
Solanda they are part of a network structure where people occupy in
inner block to reach their houses, and fewer walk from the interior to­
dissident ways. To make these relationships visible, we differentiate the
wards the street. However, when locals stay, it is more like they occupy
types of passages by the number of shops they have in their interior:
these passages. At certain bars, for example, employees place plastic
Type 1: only houses with fences or walls. Type 2: houses and less than 2
chairs on the side of the passage either for themselves or for customers
shops in its interior. Type 3: houses and more than 2 shops in its interior.
that do not want to be inside the bar. Something similar happens in the
In addition, the distinct colors on each passage show whether the
case of restaurants, which tend to place a small folding table in addition
passage is open, has an open gate, or has a closed metal door and only
to chairs or, in exceptional moments, entire sofas that interrupt the
inhabitants have the key. Such intricate entanglements are part of what
normal pedestrian flow. There is always music playing, if not by passers-
Schumacher (1986) calls the ‘ambiguity’ of spaces where space is
by, then by people in apartments on upper floors or from inside shops
neither absolutely private nor absolutely public. Similarly, Gehl (1987)
–bars, tailoring, shoes-makers, etc. Taking advantage of the noise and
argues that the physical environment has a variant impact on the level of
the number of people that look for nightlife entertainment, there are
liveliness and social activities require a certain number of people using
some hidden spots inside shops that only regular customers can access.
those spaces every day. Life between public and private in the passages
In some passages, there are bright-light-shops' signboards placed on the
varies from soft to hard –whether they have a gate and if they are type 1,
side of each wall or traversing the passage's width, and they go all the
2 or 3. Thus, it is the residents themselves that design through control: if
way till reaching the inner block. Other passages have entrances covered
the gate is open, people can get inside and use the passages, the blocks'
up by bridge-houses and metal doors, in which shops' owners place small
interior, and continue through the neighborhood (Fig. 8).
signs advertising their services or products. Some of the spontaneous
The passages are between 1.5 and 2.0 m wide, and most of the houses
occupations usually involve light structures that could be assembled and
are three to four floors but there are also two and six floor houses. Some
stored easily or that are light enough to bring them inside or outside the
of the dwellings have metal fences and an exceedingly small –less than

Fig. 8. Atlas of the La Jota passages.

Source: Authors.

10
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina Cities 140 (2023) 104435

Fig. 9. Counter-cartographies of passages Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3.

Source: Authors.

11
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina
inner shops or houses.
The bodies in the passages act like collectives or small groups, but
because the time inhabitants spend in the passages is relatively short
compared to La Jota Street, we define them as temporal non-normative
bodies. Some groups, especially young people, generate spatial practices
in the passages and inner blocks that could not be done in other places in
Solanda. They play loud music through a mobile speaker that they carry
with them; some of them drink alcohol and smoke; and some others
skateboard or cycle around. There are some young families that walk
around the park or bring some food bought in La Jota Street to eat on the
inner court and enjoy the music and noise. Some customers from bars
located in the passages go to the inner block, usually courts or play­
grounds that do now have much public lighting where they may look to
buy drugs. The action takes a few minutes or less, seconds, and the buyer
and seller disperse through the different passages that deposit them from
the inner block. Also, outside some shops, especially those that are
closed at night, it is possible to see people— inebriated — sitting or
sleeping. The inner blocks are sometimes used by young gangs or bands,
and by blocking the entrances to the passages that connect them to the
main street with their bodies, their members find a way to control the
area. Despite the narrowness of the passages, residents of houses or
apartments almost never look from inside their houses towards the
passages. It is like they try to avoid any eye or voice contact with the
passages' bodies.
However, there is an inherent connection between passages and shop
workers. Sometimes entire families are working informally at the pas­
sages' entrances: kids call out to people on the street to offer a product
–shoes, clothing, and the like– while parents, aunts, and uncles handle
the actual exchange while sitting on plastic chairs. As they stay there for
hours, these connections become affections with other vendors –formal
or informal. Also, as the evenings are loud and actively intense, the at­
mosphere is usually dynamic and inhabitants are aware of others: when
there is a potential customer, they come close to this person and try to
sell their goods or services; if there is a visitor, they let him/her continue
with their walk but checking if they might need anything at any
moment; if they seem lost or if they try to find something; and in­
habitants usually shout or raise their voice because of the noise. Due to
the demographic diversity in La Jota, there is a strong network of af­
fections as social groups tend to gather for work purposes or leisure.
These affections canalize small entities that act as a collective, and at
night they look after each other, especially inside the passages.
6. Discussion: resistance and dissidence, counter-cities and
counter-cartographies
La Jota's counter-cartographies reveal a city model in which resi­
dents have subverted official planning at all scales –from domestic to
urban– in order “to appropriate, adapt, or create spaces of their own,
often outside or at the border of the regulatory domain, in ways that are
distinct from the production of institutional public space” (Hou, 2020, p.
120).
The gap between the 1976 Solanda masterplan project and the re­
ality of 2022 is not only physical –houses have changed their
morphology and increased their number of floors–, but also ideological.
As Ananya Roy sharply states: “The limitations of urban upgrading are
the limitations of the ideology of space. In such policy approaches, what
is redeveloped is space, the built environment, and physical amenities
rather than people's capacities or livelihoods” (Roy, 2005, p. 150). Un­
derstanding urban spaces, particularly those like a marginal commercial
corridor on the outskirts of a capital city in Latin America, involves
much more than a simple collection of buildings and physical amenities.
As Kim Dovey and Kasama Polakit, following the ideas of Gilles Deleuze
and Felix Guattari, pointed out about Bangkok streetscapes: “Space is
not a stable framework within which things or subjects exist but is
constructed through flows of desire between them” (Dovey & Polakit,
2007, p. 116). These flows of invisible, but extremely pertinent relations
12
Cities 140 (2023) 104435
(through concepts such as desire, affection, or forces), appear when
static objects, forms, regulations, and norms are insufficient to describe
a singular space, street, neighborhood or city. Space ideology is not only
objective, but also bodily and affective. The city is what happens in or
around those objects and rules; actions that are extremely complex,
irreverent, dangerous, or pleasurable. Invisible and influential networks
are critical subjects in counter-city research from the perspectives of
resistances and dissidences, which delve deeper into their subtle nu­
ances and methods of representation.
6.1. Triggering and generators of counter-cities
To establish a clear relation between the notions of resistance,
dissidence, and counter-cities, we include Foucault's state of counter-
city, where power (counter-power) is mobilized to make certain situa­
tions visible through new mechanisms that put the status quo in tension
during an apparently ephemeral period. It is evident that La Jota, and a
large portion of cities worldwide, would meet all these conditions.
Hence the importance of clarifying how and what causes this urban
process.
Power is required for the existence of counter-power. It is understood
as a state apparatus that, through a variety of strategies, seeks to reclaim
practices that have escaped its control (Deleuze & Guattari, 2012). From
the urban theory perspective, we have encountered situations such as
the so-called ‘tactical urbanism’, which, following Jeffrey Hou, it is “a
normative and even fashionable component of the technocratic reper­
toire in activating urban spaces and properties (…) professionalized and
institutionalized” (Hou, 2020, p. 118). Here, the institution domesti­
cates the rebellious action and mould back into the system of neoliberal
urban development, making that initially ‘disruptive action’ part of the
so-called tactical urbanism, which is currently associated with gentrifi­
cation (Mould, 2014). Colors on sidewalks and façades, and roads with
some light and ‘green’ infrastructures –as La Jota's planter box– seem to
solve the population's deepest and most specific problems. Conse­
quently, we must move to the earlier step when it is noted the existence
of such a rebel action. Holston shows the space of insurgent citizenship:
“insurgent because they introduce into the cities new identities that may
not coincide with existing histories and planning agendas” (Holston,
2012). Insurgent bodies –rebel, subaltern, radical or non-normative ones
if we broaden the lexicon–, who build their multidimensional spatiality
beyond the hegemonic structures by “actions from below that may
fundamentally alter the shape of state power itself” (Simone & Rao,
2021, p. 159).
Following Foucault's argument, “Where there is power, there is
resistance” (Foucault, 1978, p. 95), such an operation seeks to “construct
the existing in another way”, a way which is defined as “the vindication
of a new way of perceiving, of a new field of perceptions and a new field
of affections” (Deleuze, 2015, p. 163), displaying that resistance is
inseparable from a sensitive regime, from sensitive dimensions, and
from the notion of affect. Rancière addressed this relationship between
the notion of resistance and affections or sensations; a crucial relation to
understand and analyze La Jota. He set up two ways to conceptualize
and experience reality. On the one hand, consensus, referring to
controlled power and the visible (associated with a traditional or
rational concept of city). On the other hand, dissensus is the conflict that
results from dissent or deference to sensibilities (generating one kind of
spatiality very close to our understanding of counter-cities).
“Dissensus, which is not a designation of conflict as such, but is a
specific type thereof, a conflict between sense and sense. Dissensus is
a conflict between a sensory presentation and a way of making sense
of it, or between several sensory regimes and/or ‘bodies’” (Rancière,
2010, p. 139).
Resistance and dissidence as sensitive spatial constructions are led,
as seen in the cartographies, by bodies that are usually overlooked but
that, nevertheless, build their spatiality around invisible networks of
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina
affects.
6.2. Informality, secrecy, and night-time
If we understand resistance and dissidence as trans-scalar and
totalizing concepts that guide our theoretical approach to La Jota, we
focus on three of its genuine spatial constructions that connect these
notions with the materiality of the place: informality, secrecy, and night-
time.
La Jota is distinguished by a thriving market with a rare interde­
pendence between licensed shops on the ground floor and different
levels, and temporary and informal stalls run by mostly unlicensed
vendors on both sidewalks. Here, informality is understood as “a series
of transactions that connect different economies and spaces to one
another” (Roy, 2005, p. 148). This relational process requires a very
spatial complexity that makes the notion of occupation something very
relevant. Informal occupation entails more than simply being in a
location where you should not be; informality is to take part of the
invisible relational networks that built such a singular, ephemeral, and
intense situation. Informal occupation is a proactive and operational
public space practice with the power to ‘make city’. La Jota informal
vendors are a model of this broadening concept of informality by
developing critical ways of inhabiting, whose interest lies not only in the
temporality or kind of structures they display daily, but rather in the
crucial message they convey by occupying that space: “What happened
in occupations was that design was rebelling against the institution”
(Medina, 2018), “breaking the planned order of the city” (Lata, 2022, p.
3). Informal occupation as a critique of urban planning that is discon­
nected from people's real needs or cultural aspects of the context in
which it is embedded.
The state apparatus's ‘formal’ planning is certainly visible in terms of
city morphology, but its raison d'être lies in that network of invisible
affections that remain secret. Secrecy is what shapes most of La Jota
socio-spatial constructions. As contradictory as it may appear, the secret
is what everyone is talking about and that needs to be discussed. While
such actions would be illegal in other parts of Quito, they are “allowed”
in La Jota if they occur there and do not leave the area. However, if the
criminal is caught, this permissiveness does not prevent actions from
being punished. As a result, it is undoubtedly challenging to understand
how some of these actions are carried out. In this atmosphere of secrecy
lie contraband, alcohol, drugs, gang activity, or sex work.
This sense of secrecy and clandestinely occurs at night. From 18:00 to
23:00 the neighborhood awakens and develops all its intensity, contrary
to the rest of the city, usually active from 6:00 to 19:00. Those actions
take place inside dark passages, on busy commercial streets or under the
flashy neon lights. While it is true that strategies like ‘ephemeral ur­
banism’ (Mehrotra et al., 2016) or Do-It-Yourself (Douglas, 2014) have
received a lot of attention, the study of the night has only recently
started to gain more attention (Straw et al., 2020), and its in-depth
Fig. 10. Informality, secrecy, and night-time at La Jota, February 7, 2022.
Source: the authors.
13
Cities 140 (2023) 104435
analysis can supply new insights into the approach to counter-cities.
Urban dynamics, economics, inhabitants, affects, forces, or construc­
tions are totally different at night (Fig. 10).
6.3. The new contour of realities' construction
Since power and counter-power are defined by the relationship of
forces (Deleuze, 2014), we propose ‘counter-cartographies’ as a prac­
tical methodology to analyze spatial situations that are just not char­
acterized by their forms but rather by the development of forces. Forces
generated, received, encouraged, or suppressed by bodies in extreme or
contested spatial constructions are created from a sensitive regime
typically invisible and invisibilized. Counter-cartographies reveal ob­
jects, relations, forces, affections, and ways to escape. They open a field
of possibilities to make the invisible visible, in radical and/or ignored
territories. In highly conflictive socio-spatial situations like the Arab
Spring revolution, cartographies made visible the influence of social
media and bodie's performance, through dissident practices within the
urban fabric, transforming not only the physical appearance of the city
but the activities, relationships, and temporalities (Medina, 2018).
Cano-Ciborro and Shah (2021) cartographied the Old City of Ahmeda­
bad (India) to describe how people use and appropriate its UNESCO
World Heritage Site ‘private’ spaces.
In an example more specific to the Latin American context, Radical
Cartographies. Participatory Mapmaking from Latin America (Sletto et al.,
2020) presents how indigenous communities developed concrete actions
facing the authoring practice and defending their territories from
extractivism through participatory mapping. Here, radical cartography
represents territory as a network of relations, as a cultural hearth (Chase,
2021). On this wise, Ivo Mesquita (2012) in Latin America: Another
Cartography refers to the production of cartographies as relationships
and circuits that break the fixed and limits imposed by official in­
stitutions. Latin America's territories have a sense of desire, sensibility,
and knowledge, and it entails an empowerment in the social, economic,
racial, and cultural differences by seeking a continuous exchange of
experiences. It was no accident that the Brazilian psychiatrist Suley
Rolnik, along with Felix Guattari after his trip to Brazil in 1981, wrote
Micropolitics: Cartography of Desire in 1986, tackling that “the dynamics
of the forces of resistance and creation that were then at work in the
construction of new contours of reality” (Guattari & Rolnik, 2006, p.
16).
Counter-cartography reveals the new contours of realities and forces
of resistance associated with creation –not destruction–, non-normative
bodies, and radical architectures. It transcends simple analysis and de­
velops into a tool used in the design processes, a tool for visibility and
change.
V. Cano-Ciborro and A. Medina
7. Conclusions
The complexity of Latin-American contemporary cities requires
imaginative, novel, and transdisciplinary conceptual frameworks and
methodological strategies to unveil the reality hidden behind the official
plans, docile inhabitants, and romanticized or apocalyptic stereotypes.
When inhabitants resist or push back against established structures and
systems, they often develop dissident and radical responses that we have
analyzed throughout a specific case study in a neighborhood in south
Quito, La Jota. This paper has presented three significant contributions
to the production, analysis, and critique of contested cities in the Global
South: an urban theoretical framework around the notion of counter-city
that goes beyond the mere morphology to bring up active, conflicting,
and sensitive notions such as resistance and dissidence; a proactive
methodology able to generate very detailed counter-cartographies based
on bodies, occupations and affections as evidence of spatial construc­
tions against the official apparatus designs; and potential implications to
urban planning and design of that concept of counter-cities and counter-
cartographies.
Since our first visit to La Jota, we realized the need to critique and
broaden the traditional and more conservative urban parameters,
focused on purely formal and visible spatial dimensions, to introduce
much more corporeal, affective, and changing conditions capable of
reflecting on those invisible networks that shape public spaces. As a
result, our fieldwork focused on identifying and revealing the very
peculiar and precise strategies of occupation, sale, pleasure, or addiction
that exist in these unique streets, junctions, and narrow passages. We
spatialized this data through a counter-cartographies that questions,
expands, and generates new relationships to supplement the theoretical
framework and discussion. These counter-cartographies have been
interpreted not only as a tool for analyzing the various events taking
place in the city, but also as part of design processes sensitive to popu­
lation needs for future developments.
Concerning the study's limitations, we emphasize the uncertainty
and danger of ethnographic work in contested territories. La Jota's
nocturnal activities in central and secondary streets, as well as narrow
passageways, were met with objections from residents who feared
retaliation for exposing illegal actions in the area. As a result, multiple
visits and hours of observation were necessary to corroborate the in­
formation provided by direct witnesses, though this was not always
possible. Furthermore, we encountered difficulties in representing
qualitative data through cartography. We spent a significant amount of
time creating legible graphic narratives and legends to better illustrate
our findings.
Future research can expand the application of dissidence and resis­
tance as urban parameters, leading to the development of counter-
cartographies across various contexts, scales, and temporalities. This
could include examining private spaces and incremental housing's
impact on public and private space dissolution. Additionally, compara­
tive studies with other Latin American or Global South cities, and in­
vestigations into contested situations in Global North cities such as street
markets, parades, riots, exclusion of local communities and businesses
by Airbnb properties, or segregated migrant communities within city
centers or peripheral neighborhoods could provide valuable case
studies. The use of counter-cartography methodologies in these studies
could inform urban design processes.
Finally, we argue that counter-cities are sensitive, bodily, and
dissident, or they will not be.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Víctor Cano-Ciborro: Conceptualization, Methodology, Visualiza­
tion, Formal analysis, Writing, Reviewing, Editing.
Ana Medina: Supervision, Conceptualization, Methodology, Inves­
tigation, Resource, Writing, Reviewing, Editing, Funding acquisition.
14
Cities 140 (2023) 104435
Fundings
This article is result of the project “Post-Public Space. Spatial prac­
tices based on informality” – ARQ.AMG.20.02, supported and funded by
Universidad de Las Américas, Quito, Ecuador.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Data availability
The data that has been used is confidential.
Acknowledgements
All persons who have made substantial contributions to the work
reported in the manuscript (e.g., technical help, writing and editing
assistance, general support), but who do not meet the criteria for
authorship, are named in the Acknowledgements and have given us their
written permission to be named. If we have not included an Acknowl­
edgements, then that indicates that we have not received substantial
contributions from non-authors.
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