ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to clarify why maps have been so important to community politics in inner-city Vancouver. Community activists vowed not to participate in a number of planning exercises targeted at the area, thus invalidating the entire process, until the maps were redrawn. The formation of the community centre in which the May meeting was held, as well as the community spaces which the maps sought to represent, evidenced a respatialization of government that has been unfolding throughout North America since at least the late 1960s. The remapping of 'skid road' was both a tool and an event in the conflicts through which communitized forms of urban government crystallized in Vancouver. The complexities of competition and negotiation between and among the various participants, including civic staff, were virtually erased by the apparent objectivity of the mapping process.
