Jakob Winkler

In my thesis project, Critical Cartographies of Change: Resisting Urban Renewal through Radical Mapping, investigate the causes and consequences of ongoing state-led internal forced displacements of residents through urban renewal policies in New York City. Urban renewal has been a major tool in forcefully displacing entire communities and producing uneven geographies differentiated along the lines of class and race. Government-sanctioned maps have played a fundamental role in legitimizing uneven forms of development, often creating the "problems" that urban renewal set out to solve. Through a critical cartographic intervention I aim to unveil the political, economic, and social factors driving this policy and its ongoing impact on the form of our city. The first phase of my project takes the form of a printed atlas. In the tradition of critical cartography, I include typically invisible information on the maps wider audience in a series of atlas presentations where the audience is invited to modify the maps, allowing for collective production of critical spatial knowledges that can add to the production of a more equitable city. See more on issuu .