Abstract
The smart city paradigm operates on data representation, meaning that communities not included in official datasets are not represented and therefore do not exist politically. This condition of systemic exclusion demands an ethical design intervention, mixing cartography, visual communication and graphic design. Our paper presents a dual methodological approach that constitutes a cartography of care. This methodological framework visualises undocumented functional dynamics, providing a data-driven basis for urban planning that reflects the actual, lived usage of the city. First, we introduce ethnographic projection, a participatory design methodology that creates protected representation within existing GIS systems. Second, we present chorematic visualisation, a cartographic technique for abstraction that converts quantitative data into primary geometrical structures. This visualisation serves as an analytical stage that explains excluded phenomena such as shadow labour routes and community care networks, which technological mapping ignores. This process is showcased through undocumented migrant workers in Tel Aviv.
Keywords
Systemic Design; Care; Counter-Cartography; Chorematics; Protected Representation
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.691
Citation
Mero, R., Ventura, J., and Keller, E. (2026) The spectral right to the city: Cartographies of care through ethnographic projection, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.691
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
The spectral right to the city: Cartographies of care through ethnographic projection
The smart city paradigm operates on data representation, meaning that communities not included in official datasets are not represented and therefore do not exist politically. This condition of systemic exclusion demands an ethical design intervention, mixing cartography, visual communication and graphic design. Our paper presents a dual methodological approach that constitutes a cartography of care. This methodological framework visualises undocumented functional dynamics, providing a data-driven basis for urban planning that reflects the actual, lived usage of the city. First, we introduce ethnographic projection, a participatory design methodology that creates protected representation within existing GIS systems. Second, we present chorematic visualisation, a cartographic technique for abstraction that converts quantitative data into primary geometrical structures. This visualisation serves as an analytical stage that explains excluded phenomena such as shadow labour routes and community care networks, which technological mapping ignores. This process is showcased through undocumented migrant workers in Tel Aviv.