Emanuela Casti

Professor Casti elaborated the theory of cartographic semiosis in 1998, when she also published her first theoretical book L’ordine del mondo e la sua rappresentazione, translated into English in 2005 under the title Reality as Representation. The semiotics of cartography and the generation of meaning. Casti’s theory lies within the fold of the research area called “postmodern cartography” inaugurated by John B. Harley in 1989 and developed in the first decade of the 21st century with contributions by Emanuela Casti, Jeremy Crampton, Martin Dodge, Rob Kitchin, John Pickles, Denis Wood. The underlying assumption of postmodern research is a questioning of the objectivity and neutrality of maps, and more specifically a questioning of the scientific nature of Euclidean metrics. Accordingly, maps are not seen as straightforward “mirrors of reality”, but rather as instruments through which reality is shaped.[2] Casti’s key contribution lies in having embraced this initial assumption as a springboard for articulating a theory able to investigate the construction and the communicative mechanisms of maps. By shifting the focus of interest from maps as tools for mediating territory to maps as operators which actively affect the range of activities one can implement on territories, Casti’s theory earmarked the areas in which action is needed in order to take control of the communicative outcomes of mapping. Assuming a symbiosis between territory and mapping, Casti conclusively defines maps as complex denonational acts, on the basis of which individuals appropriate territory intellectually and symbolically order the world. Maps should be taken as instances of a “metasemiosis" - or “second-level semiosis”, for even though they are based on territorial semiosis they also deploy signs, names, symbols which convey messages and meanings quite independently of the intentions of those who first produced them.

Professor Casti explores the transition from a topographic mapping, created by government agencies, to open cartography, collaboratively produced by the people (and linked to a new idea of Chorography). The latter has the potential to become a highly workable concept, to be used as an operator for assisting citizens in thinking and designing their own living space and in understanding the current world. Specifically, Casti argues that, by virtue of its highly interactive features, new digital mapping (specifically WebGIS) opens up new scenarios, and poses cybercartography as a privileged discipline for recovering and promoting the social significance of territory in all its forms (landscape and environment).

The SIGAP strategy (Geographic Information Systems for Protected Areas /Participatory Action) is a research methodology that adopts cartographic semiosis and tests its actual range of application. It takes up concepts presented by international agencies - such as "sustainability", "conservation" participation” - and turns them into operational tools for territorial and environmental planning. Tested in various national and international contexts with regard to a variety of issues (migration, environmental protection, landscape planning, tourism systems, urban regeneration, etc.), the SIGAP methodology deploys the typical range of geography-based competences in the field of applied research. As such it involves all stages of analysis: the adoption of a theory informing land methodology; interaction with local inhabitants for the reading of data; construction of interpretative models and their cartographic visualization.[3] In each of these stages, cartography takes on different capacities depending on the goal to be pursued. The final product is an interactive multimedia system GIS which becomes as an invaluable tool for field research, for the implementation of intervention strategies, for the processing and circulation of data. Participatory mapping systems play an essential role in this context, because they can recover the role of local communities and produce cartographic representations that take account of local interests. According to the technology involved and the level of participation entailed, these systems may include: i) participatory mapping, carried out by local communities at the request of an external party; ii) Community Integrated GIS - or CIGIS, built and operated by actors outside the community but including data collected through participatory methodologies; iii) Public Participation GIS - PPGIS), made and used directly by local communities in an exchange with local administrators or supervising agencies. The latter, based on WebGIS technology, fall within the realm of "cybercartography" or “open” digital mapping systems that allow users to interact, by promoting social projects and processes (Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre).

Casti uses the phrase “s-Low Tourism” to underline the absence of a clear conceptual break between the notion of slowness and the notion of speed. In fact, her acronym refers both to "slow" as a prerequisite for a mindful experience of territory, and to low-cost airlines that have revolutionized the way we think about air travel, as something different from a journey, something based on speed and safety. On the one hand, air travel has increased, is more intense, and usually covers a shorter period of time: it underlies a current lifestyle, whereby tourist destinations are no longer analyzed on the basis of conventional indicators. At the same time, though, the notion of sustainability applied to territorial planning has amply shown that tourism is a driving force for local communities, which conceive and present their own space not only as a holiday destination but as a place to be experienced in its social, cultural and environmental features. In a leap of perspective, tourism ceases to be a mere driving force for economic development and becomes an opportunity for regional regeneration, with a view to producing social development through the recovery of a sense of place, that is to say of the key value of territory. This is a kind of regeneration that focuses on the cultural and natural resources of territories, now made available online to a new type of tourist who is steeped in information technology and accustomed to new modes of travel. This new tourist-traveller looks for a travel experience based on slow appreciation, on ecology-conscious, environmental and green mobility. Yet, at the same time, mobility has to be fast for travellers to be able to experience more theme-based destinations that share comparable cultural features. At the local level, this new tourism is based on the enhancement of small enterprise projects, of smart technology, and of citizen participation. Internationally, it must be based on a synergy between public and private institutions, aimed at promoting common policies to develop tourism and accessibility.

The method comes from a monitoring study on disused and obsolete areas (buildings erected between 1950 and 1980) in Lombardy.[4] It relies on three assumptions: the symbiosis between land-regeneration and urban restructuring; a shift of focus involving “cities” no longer seen as territorial structures but as sites that embody an ecological lifestyle; the prospect of circular restructuring of disused and discontinued areas, with the active participation of local inhabitants. Operationally, this method aims at replacing outdated buildings (in terms of safety, energy saving, new forms of living, and sanitation) with new buildings that meet current living needs and at the same time reclaim wasted space. In fact, while maintaining the same volume for buildings, the RIFO method also expands the use of underground space and thus envisions a reduction of the surface taken up by covered areas, with the possibility of freeing up land for later use as parks and green areas. RIFO envisages a circular process of demolition and reconstruction for obsolete and disused areas, and so entails the relocation of inhabitants who live in old tenement buildings within the same district. Such short-range relocation aims at inclusive restructuring by implementing participatory strategies in the stages of planning, ensuring an active role for local inhabitants the whole process of demolition and construction.[5] A participatory methodology - the SIGAP Strategy[6] - retrieves the spatial capital, that is to say the set of knowledge and skills of inhabitants who actively operate the places they inhabit. SIGAP also sheds light on the use of space assets found in public RIFO areas (public services, accessibility, natural heritage); it detects priorities and critical issues (pollution factors, need for green spaces, social distress and safety) and recovers the layered values attributed to the sites.

• Reflexive Cartography. A New Perspective on Mapping, Elsevier, Amsterdam, Oxford, Waltham - MA, 2015 (original ed.:Cartografia critica. Dal Topos alla Chora, Guerini Ed., Milano, 2013).
• Reality as Representation. The Semiotics of Cartography and the Generation of Meaning, Bergamo University Press, Bergamo, 2000 (original ed.: L'ordine del mondo e la sua rappresentazione, Milano, Unicopli, 1998).

Among her contributions and articles in English and French:

• “Cartographic Semiosis: Reality as Representation”, in: Jacques Lévy (ed), A cartographic turn: mapping and the spatial challenge in social sciences, EPLF Press/Routledge, Losanna, 2016, pp. 135–165.
• “Mapping otherness”, in: Jacques Lévy (ed), A cartographic turn: mapping and the spatial challenge in social sciences, EPLF Press/Routledge, Losanna, 2016, pp. 207–231.
• "Une recherche participative pour la valorisation culturelle et la promotion touristique du patrimoine mondial: les plans gravés du Valcamonica (Italie)", in: Gravari-M. Barbas, Jacquot S. (ed), Patrimoine et Développement au défi mondial du tourisme durable, Presses de l'Université du Quebec, 2014, pp. 271–298.
• "Participatory Mapping and environmental conservation in Western Africa: the SIGAP Strategy", in: E.K. Boon, L. Hens, G. Oviedo, Management of National Parks and Biodiversity Conservation in Africa, Kamla-Raj Enterprises, Delhi, 2012, pp. 157–172.
• “Le paysage comme unité de planification du Parc Arly: la falaise du Gobnangou”, in: E. Casti, Yonkeu S. (ed), Le Parc National d'Arly et la falaise du Gobnangou (Burkina Faso), L'Harmattan, Paris, 2009, pp. 17–48.
• with F. Burini, "Cartographic cataloging and filing: towards a new definition of the colonial mapmaker", in: E. Liebenberg, P. Collier, Demhardt I. (eds), Proceedings of the Symposium of the International Commission on the History of Cartography in the 19th and 20th centuries, Portsmouth University, Portsmouth, United Kingdom, 10–12 September 2008, ICA Commission on the history of cartography, Pretoria, 2009, pp. 1–12.
• "Sémiologie visuelle et cartographie. La construction d'une sémantique de l'Ailleurs ", in: Costantini M. (eds), L'Afrique, the sens. Représentations, configurations, défigurations, L'Harmattan, Paris, 2007, pp. 77–106.
• "State, Cartography, and Territory in the Venetian and Lombard Renaissance", in: D. Woodward, GM Levis (eds), The History of Cartography, Vol. 3, The University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 874–908.
• "L'icônisation cartographique en Afrique coloniale", in: J-P. Bord, P. R. Baduel (ed.), Le cartes de la connaissance, Karthala-Urbama, Paris-Tours, 2004, pp. 419–435.
• The "Cartographie” entry, in: J. Levy, M. Lussault (ed.), Dictionnaire de la géographie et de l’espace des sociétés, Belin, Paris, 2003, pp. 100–101.
• "Les ateliers' culturels» de l'Ailleurs: the cartographie colonial Afrique de l'anglaise ", in: M. Colin, E. R. Laforgia (ed.) L’Afrique coloniale et postcoloniale dans la culture, la littérature et la société italiennes, représentations et témoignages, Presses universitaires de Caen, 2003, pp. 15-40.

• “A reflexive cartography and environmental conservation: a model of participatory zoning”, in: Global Bioethics, and. mail 16 May 2014.
• "Cartographic technologies for territorial governance",in: ESPACESTEMPS.NET, 2012.
• “Le tournant proxémique : de la représentation à la spatialité cartographique”, ESPACESTEMPS.NET, 2012.
• “WebGIS Semiosis: Building a Plural Space”, in: Trans. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften, n. 17, February 2010.
• "Towards A Theory of Interpretation: Cartographical Semiosis ", in: Cartographica, vol. 40 No. 3, 2005, pp. 1–16.
• "The Analogical and Digital systems in Euclidean Cartography: the colonization and iconisation of Africa", in: Diskussionsbetraege Zur Kartosemiotik Und Zur Theorie Der Kartographie, vol. 4 No. 3, 2001, pp. 15–28.
• "Mythologies africaines cartographie dans la française au Tournant du XIXème siècle", in: Cahiers de Géographie du Québec, Université Laval, Quebec, vol. 46 No. 3, 2001, pp. 429–450.