An alternative image of the city: maps by migrants to explore contemporary urban landscape

Abstract

This paper presents the result of an empirical study on mapping three Italian cities from the point of view of migrants during the first period of their stay. It aims at exploring an emerging issue in the contemporary government of a city that is increasingly inhabited by transitory populations: the relationship of its new inhabitants to the urban landscape. Drawing upon a method introduced by Kevin Lynch, 150 maps of the ‘landfall city’ came to life; in the first part the research method and its first application in Milan are presented; in the second part other two surveys, in Rovereto and Bologna, are introduced within the project “Migrants Mapping Europe”, aimed at incrementally building an European map of the present that brings to surface the meaning and forms of the transitory living conditions in the territories of contemporaneity.