MappiNa – Mappa Alternativa delle Città (Alternative Map of Cities) is a platform for urban communication built through collaborative mapping, aimed at creating a different image of the city through cultural and operational contribution by its inhabitants.
The project was born as an “Alternative map of Naples” and after a year of stretching in Rome, Milan and Venice Mestre becoming an “Alternative map of the city”
We know that every city has a stereotyped image which is projected outside its boundaries, but sometimes in this respect Naples seems to suffer more than any other city, in spite of the intense creativity of its inhabitants. Mappina’s intention is to intercept the variety of languages used to express the city and facilitate open readings, expressed by the multiple, variable, imaginary, diverse voices heard in the city. Mappina is founded on that hidden texture emerging as a result of the initiatives of its inhabitants, who are co-producers of change playing on experimentation and emotional symbolism, on appropriation and rooting.
To do this, Mappina addresses to the city that produces stories and images and not to the city narrated in books, postcards or travel guides: Mappina talks to people such as students, culture and art professionals etc., who, when watching this city, do not see a postcard or icon image (like a mandolin, a pizza or a Pulcinella), but reinterpret the city image starting from live everyday experience.
An image of city that the project links to the urban culture expressed in street art and street games, in unexpected encounters, in the practices of use of public spaces, in recycled and self-produced street furniture that make comfortable the city (Map of Places), in sounds and voices heard in the streets (Map of Sound), in its undefined spaces and abandoned buildings (Map of Unused) and in the possibilities of re-use (Map of Ideas), in the diversity of operators who produce culture and in the multitude of events spreading it (Map of Actor & Event). Anyone can geotag photos, videos , sounds and texts and so contribute to a new collective narrative of the city.
The goal is to reclaim the city’s ability to be a tireless factory of images and imagination, a polyphonic matrix of possible worlds, composing through daily experience a collective map to open a different look; it is an occasion giving you alternative ways to transform the city.
To this end, the project support both online and offline activities.
Open labs trigger light and low-frequency actions on urban spaces. Workshops in audio-visual mapping will be available, with missions and crossings of the space, inviting the public to explore, critically rethink, reclaim and re- imagine these territories as a place of sharing, learning and experience, and maintain and enhance them through a creative and innovative usage, even if only temporarily.
In addition, to stimulate tactics of urban regeneration and support projects of reuse and re-appropriation of urban space, the platform has created the Map of real estate owned (rented or less) georeferenced open data of the City of Naples.
Mappina in Neapolitan is the worn out kitchen rag, used and abused, but useful in the daily usage of those who take care of the house.
It is also, in Italian, a “little map”.
Building MappiNa is a bit like living in the city.