The ‘Analogue City’: Mapping and Acting in Antwerp’s Digital Geographies

Abstract

This article discusses digital geographies by tracing, mapping, and revealing a series of spaces bounded by a multiplex digital infrastructure. By proposing ‘descriptivism’ as a complementary approach to digital mapping, this work discloses the city of Antwerp as the intertwining of visible and invisible networks. The ‘Analogue City’ is the title of both a design workshop and of a collective act of mapping that progressively reveals the city of Antwerp as a set of different spaces of information flows. By engaging the notion of mapping as object and practice, this work describes the production of a multi-scale and multi-space representation, as a process of collective and performative cartography. Through the combination of different scales, spaces, and mapping techniques, the city of Antwerp is unfolded as the result of security, mobility, and social networks. As a mapping operation, the ‘Analogue City’ is a threefold object: (a) an interactive, intentionally large map; (b) a series of mapping interventions throughout the city; and ultimately (c) a temporary exhibition.