Maps of imagination: a city metaphor

Maps are metaphors and tools to explore the way we see the world. They are also a way of interpretation, charged with visual empathy, an expression of cognitive and symbolic control of reality. The map is capable of producing positions that can specify the places represented at multiple levels and bring out new consciousnesses of identity belonging. The urban landscape, likened to a palimpsest, is the stratification par excellence of past, present, and future. Maps are a method of representing infinite possible data including places, times, and people. That is why they have no real disciplinary framework: visual communication, computer science, art, and geography contribute cross-culturally to the representation of a map.