Mental urban representations: maps, video and
narratives of emotional geography (Représentations
mentales de la ville: cartes, vidéo et narrations de la
géographie de l’émotion)
Maurizio Memoli∗1
1
Università di Cagliari (DICAAR - UNICA) – via Santa Croce, 67, 09124 - Cagliari, Italy
Abstract
It is not always easy to draw a mental representation of one’s own city, that is, a map
(a video, a storytelling, etc.) including its most representative elements. There are many
obstacles. The question, with its intimate-like features, is somehow fascinating, and invites
to interpret the city through one’s own eyes. A representation (a map, a video, a story)
of all known and loved places within an urban space, hand-sketched and by heart, allows
eternalizing subjective impressions resulting from both the perception and the awareness
acquired. Any mental representation is a journey taken within a metropolitan universe and
observed themes and uses which differ depending on one’s own look. According to these
principles, the exercise of ”drawing” a ”mental image of the space” reveals the possibility
to make three main themes substantial: representation, perception and interpretation. The
geographical representation basically makes reference to ”a structural order and an already
given logic” (Garroni, 2005: 150). It is a tidy logic, in my opinion, as for its space knowledge
and its personal daily usage, but also in its political and collective images. The perception
of a metropolitan reality offers, nearly in a classical way, spatial emotional sensual readings
linked to a subjective visual, tactile, sound, olfactory and just mental sensitiveness (Lynch,
1964). An emotional geography materializes such sensory reflections into a ”basic”, although
apparently poor, representations and the interpretation.
The geography of cities as a personal narrative cartography is inevitably partial but offer
a methodology aimed at making sense of individual and emotional representations of the
geographical space. Such representations of geographical spaces in general, and of urban
settings in particular, build a multidimensional transfiguration of urban identity: the urban
experience represented by emotional and imaginative ties leads to a reinvention of the material form, the images and the meanings of the city space.
The aim of this paper is to discuss representations of urban spaces arising from mental maps,
narratives and video-images, understood as cognitive tools unveiling citizens’ strategies related to the emotions and affects that link people and places (Bochet, Racine, 2002).
Keywords: Mental maps/images/video/narratives/representation/Salvador de Bahia/Cagliari/Marseille.
∗
Speaker
sciencesconf.org:eugeo2017:152426