ABSTRACT
Investigative mapping is not only a tool to represent a city’s identity, but also can expose it more fully in order to help preserve and/or heighten it. Through insight into the city, gained from drawing it in detail, one can help project its future as a reflection of its varied current and past self, Chasing the City through investigating all of its complicated and compromised beauty. Rather than attempting to draw the ideal city as it should be, mapping can explore cities as they really are—flawed, idiosyncratic, synthetic, and vacillating associations that refuse to be pinned down through generalizations or measured against the unattainable. Understanding place-ness as evidence of locational identity, one can begin to accept the inseparability of colliding and inflecting contextual layers as manifestations of unique urban ecologies composed of numerous influences and components—all of which are continuously changing. Such a setting gives a stage for particular urban relationships that build the character and reveal the qualities of place. Through mapping the awkward, misunderstood and colliding strata of a city, one can begin to literally draw its actual place-ness and potential. The awkward map avoids redrawing that which is formulaic, pre-supposed, or stereotypical. Rather, it chases the city by drawing out the moments which reciprocate the inimitable and identifying qualities that comprise its vital awkwardness.
