Reflections on story mapping-Experimenting with an alternative digital medium for collective learning and community-based planning’for special session ‘Community-based planning and social innovation’AESOP

摘要: Adopting a perspective on planning that embraces contradictions, ambiguity and even conflict, as key tenets of community involvement and social innovation, requires a critical reconsideration of relevant mediums for communication and learning. Whilst the production of maps and plans is commonly recognised as a fundamental feature of planning practices, their use in collaborative planning processes often proves problematic. This raises the following question: is there a role to play for mapping practices in enabling community-based experimentation and innovation? Over the last years, we have experimented in two instances with story mapping (Story Maps software), as an alternative digital medium for narrating the city. Via story mapping, we created an environment for researchers, students and local stakeholders to develop projects together and engage directly, and on an equal footing, in dialogues about selected themes. The first involved an Action Research event looking into the challenges of public space and densification in the city of Amsterdam. The second used the context of a planning theory course, in which we reflected on a development area in The Hague. In both instances, story mapping was used to stimulate alternative narratives of, learning within and between cities. Our main ambition was thus to provide a platform for structural collaboration and knowledge co-creation, as well as to explore in what ways such an alternative form of mapping contributes to collective learning and community-based planning. In the paper, we reflect on the story mapping experiments and our own positionality as action researchers/teachers, to …