The Revival of Mental Maps

Recently, a team of students from the School of Information at University of California in Berkley, working on their final master project, enlisted the help of San Fransisco residents to find out how people see vs. imagine their city. The purpose of this research? To discover whether an age old process in planning, such as Mental Mapping can be combined with today’s digital mapping tools tools (ie: GIS ) to create a balance of accuracy and precision, truth and objectivity using unconventional combinations of techniques and imagination that comes from access to “local' knowledge of any respective place.

Using Mental Maps goes way back in history. Cognitive maps are a type of mental processing composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual can acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday or metaphorical spatial environment, which many professionals trained in the planning field are familiar with. There are a number of  software packages out there now support mind maps which are used to create diagrams of relationships between concepts, ideas or other pieces of information. It has been suggested that the mind mapping technique can improve learning/study efficiency up to 15% over conventional note taking in the traditional mind mapping process.

Through their Visualizing Mental Maps of San Francisco research, the Berkley students mentioned earlier, attempt to define how important it is to combine new technologies designed for accuracy and traditional used methods of probing the minds of the public who have a historical perspective of a region or community they may have lived, worked or played in over a period of time.  

The research findings from this study are presented in seven groups, which were developed by the students themselves, with less mind mapping philosophy than you would expect. From the students’ point of view, the influence of Kevin Lynch, and other authorities on the subject didn’t play much of a part in their current research due to the fact that there has been nearly 50 years since these researchers published their own findings.

That being said, the topics explored in the study are:

1. Orientation: Which way is North? It doesn't always have to be at the top of the page. Re-orient or dis-orient yourself in San Francisco.
    
2. Corridors: Where are the hearts of each neighborhood?
    
3. Barriers: Is it really that close? It's not always as simple as it looks getting from one neighborhood to another in San Francisco.
    
4. Boundaries: What neighborhood are you in? According to whom?
    
5. Storymaps: Take a tour of the city, guided by the thoughts of locals.
    
6. Game: Ready, set, go. Invisible bike race!
    
7. Gallery: Draw a map or a picture of your neighborhood, however you see the space.

The conclusion to the Berkley students’ research project seems to be that there is much about a city that can still be effective in this process by using unconventional combinations of techniques and that ‘old school’ mind mapping continues to offers great access to 'local' knowledge of a given place, that only real people with memories, imaginations and creativity can provide.

View the final Research Presentation >>