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Shawn Whitehorn Jr. CCA M.Arch Research Lab Fall 2011 Instructor: Neal Schwartz The initial interest of this investigation lies within representations of the urban fabric such as narratives, paintings, publishings, particularly in cartography. Cartography has shaped the way we perceive and conceptualize the world around us since the hieroglyph on papyrus in ancient Egypt; it freezes the intangible into a reality only existing at the mercies of its symbols.The power of cartography has shaped the way in which we conceptualize the natural, the built, the rural, and the urban. Reproductions of these conceptualizations through cultural, social, and political cartography have and continue to allow the digestion of space into symbols, symbols into maps, and maps into meaning.
And this is what maps give us, reality, a reality that exceeds our reach, our vision, the span of our days, a reality we achieve in no other way. We are always mapping the invisible or the unattainable or the erasable, the future or the past, the whatever-is-not-here-present-to-our-senses-now and, through the gift of maps, transmutting it into everything it is not...into the real, into the everyday. (Wood p 15) 1

These representations ultimately become the impetus for processing urban environments' physicality and systems while producing meaning both temporal and permanent, factual and fantasy. Early urban cartography such as the architecturally ubiquitous Nolli map, by architect and surveyor Giambattista Nolli, is a historical reference as to how one understood interior and exterior, locale and region, and density and sprawl. The map is often argued as successful in that it deploys differentiation through black and white contrast as a means of allowing the viewer to process figure from ground. The figure ground representation of the Bufalini Map of 1551 also serves as a case of how the city is understood through centrality and the organization of districts.

Nolli's map of Rome,1 source: msa.mmu.ac.uk

Bufalini Map of Rome, 1551 source:nolli.uoregon.edu

Contemporary cartography and the use of the map has surpassed historical contexts in they are not two or three dimensional representations, but also digital and virtual forms of storing embedded information about systems, populations, and the relationships between the two. Geographic Information Systems [GIS] technology has transformed the static map into an active web of realtime topographical information, a means for mapping underrepresented settlements, a statistical resource, and an even integral tool mapping foreign territory in times of post-disaster relief. Embedded within this technological cartographic tool lies the potential to reinvent urban landscapes once limited by traditional tools of mapmaking. Pivotal moments in American history such as the Homestead Act, railroad construction, the Industrial revolution, mass immigration resulting in population growth, and urbanization all produced significant complexity of urban systems in cities. While the swell and complexity of urban centers produced many economical, social, and political opportunities, it also created a need for assessing perceived or factual risks that arose from urban development. Not only were risks associated with the built environment in demand for assessment, but also the
1. Harley, J.B.The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001

risks associated with the natural environment such as seismic risks as the Great Earthquake of 1906 and the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 caused significant loss of life and structures. The city of Oakland serves as a testbed for investigating ,collecting, interpreting, and reproducing these maps of risk from the early 20th century to 2010. The goal of this action is to uncover the sources of disparities and spatial anomalies that may exist in Oakland as a result of the influence of these maps.

Timeline of Maps of Risk, Oakland, California One of the earliest examples of cartography of risk is the Sanborn Map. The Sanborn map was the first map to engage, collect, and map data of the city by assessing information such as locations of windows, doors, and materiality of buildings, distance to other buildings and fire hydrants, location of sprinkler systems, local bodies of water,and other information regarding communities in detail.The original map was produced for fire insurance companies to assess the potential risks involved in underwriting policies, but has evolved into a tool used by many fields and practices. Mapping risks in American cities had proven to be a success through the Sanborn Map and perhaps served as precedent to other inquiries of risks associated with urban communities.

N. Kaighn Avenue Sanborn Map, Camden, NJ source: City of Camden In the 1930's , World War 1 activities and population growth stimulated a need for FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and private sector to invest billions of dollars in residential and commercial development. While this created a need for investment, it simultaneously created a need for a tool of risk evaluation. This tool would essentially determine the investment and disinvestment in zones of most American cities. The Home Owner's Loan Corporation [HOLC], a segment of the Federal Housing Authority [FHA], commissioned 229 American cities to produce residential security maps that would serve as a reference for positive and negative return on investments based on assessment of socio-economic, built, and cultural environments.
Confidential Residential Security Maps for all major U.S were prepared by the Home Owners Loan Corporation with special assistance from competent local real estate brokers and mortgage lenders, believed to represent a fair and composite opinion of the best qualified local people 2

Redlining, a term coined in the late 1960's by community activist and Northwestern professor John McKnight 2, is a method of evaluating and classifying communities for investment risks and securities, particularly active between the 1930s and 1950's 3. The Home Owner's Loan Corporation [HOLC], a segment of the Federal Housing Authority [FHA], commissioned 229 American cities to produce residential security maps that would serve as a reference for positive and negative return on investments based on assessment of socio-economic, built, and cultural environments.

Richmond, VA Redline Map, 1935

Philadelphia Redline Map 1932

source: T-Races [Testbed for the Redlining Archives of California's Exclusionary Spaces]
2. HOLC Division of Research and Statistics Appraisal Department, San Diego October 20, 1936. 3. http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu

The map is an amalgam of red, yellow, blue, and green hues signifying potentially hazardous to prime zones of real estate. Red zones were neighborhoods that carried undesirable populations or infiltration of these populations, particularly Negro, Latin, and Oriental 4. Within these odor filled communities from local factories, wage earners, clerical workers, and shopkeepers lived in older, low property value homes of which only about half owned. In addition, unstable salaries, high rental demand causing inflation, and very limited availability of mortgage funding were common in these zones. Yellow zones were expiring neighborhoods characterized by infiltration of undesirable populations, the lack of restrictions and homogeneity, and minimal access to educational facilities. The clerical workers, white collar employees, and shopkeepers that lived in moderately valued properties differed from the previously mentioned residents in that these areas were zoned for single family residential development unlike the dense housing of the red zone. Blue zones consisted of minor executives, office workers, artisans, and storekeepers who often enjoyed attractive homes located near educational facilities, shopping centers, and local and San Francisco transportation systems. No concentration of ethnic groups and ample mortgage funding for existing and new construction differs this zone from the red and yellow zones. Green zones were zones where mostly professional and business executives enjoyed mansions positioned in prime real estate areas characterized by lush landscape and views to the San Francisco Bay. Concentrations of ethnicities as well as rental demand were obsolete while mortgage funding and even the opportunity of maximum loans with 10-15 year amortization, which were unheard of previously, were ample. All of these descriptions were used not only by the Federal Housing Agency [FHA] and the Home Owner's Loan Corporation [HOLC] but private investors, small business owners, even grocers sought these maps for gauging investments.

Oakland, Berkeley, and Alameda Residential Security Map, 1937

source: Oakland, Berekely,and Alameda Residential Security Map, http://salt.unc.edu/T-RACES/, 2009

4. Area description language from Oakland Residential Maps by the City of Oakland; inspector: Ralph Prentice, 1937

Red Zone, Residential Security Map, 1937

Yellow Zone, Residential Security Map, 1937

Blue Zone, Residential Map, 1937

Green Zone , Residential Security Map, 1937

all maps produced by Shawn Whitehorn

While the risks that were associated with historical redlining were often based on investment activities the map still retains significant value in the gauging risks and securities in contemporary urban investments. Environmental issues that result from industrial development such as toxic emissions and the creation of brownfields serve as a serious risk that, historically, only those that could afford to be concerned had alternative options. In concert with maps that define environmental risk, the use of liquefaction risks maps have also been highly reproduced as the need to assess zones that present risk due to weaker soils have become an increasing issue due to historical accounts of loss and structural failures as a result of earthquakes.

Oakland Liquefaction Risk Map

source: Liquefaction Hazard Map, http://earthquake.usgs.gov /regional/nca/alameda/2009

This map shows the liquefaction hazard in the communities of Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, and Piedmont for a magnitude 7.1 earthquake on the Hayward fault. The map predicts the approximate percentage of each designated area that will liquefy and show surface manifestations of liquefaction such as sand boils and ground cracking. Liquefaction is a phenomenon that is caused by earthquake shaking. Wet sand can become liquid-like when strongly shaken. The liquefied sand may flow and the ground may crack and move causing damage to surface structures and underground utilities. The map depicts the hazard at a regional scale and should not be used for site-specific design and consideration. Subsurface conditions can vary abruptly and borings are required to address the hazard at a given location. 5

More contemporary risks such as the presence of methamphetamine labs and foreclosures that were not considered risks during the era of redlining. While the production of a methamphetamine map is produced by the Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA], the risks associated with living in proximity affect a myriad of investment concerns relating to violent and property crimes. Using violent and property crime reports from 2010 and illustrating them through gradients representing density allowed for the investigation of relationships between these maps and historical maps of risk. These reports are also often used by investors for gauging areas of safety for development.

5. Northwestern Alameda County Liquefaction Hazard Maps .http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca/alameda/ , 2009

Property Crime Density; Oakland, 2010

source: Infoalamedacounty.org
produced by Shawn Whitehorn

Violent Crime Density; Oakland, 2010

source: Infoalamedacounty.org
produced by Shawn Whitehorn

Through examining historical to contemporary maps of risk, revealed are stagnant, unsafe, underdeveloped, and isolated zones that have existed in the same locales since the production of residential security maps in 1937. Why have these areas remained the least desirable over a span of over 70 years? Why are have these zones seen the least transformation proportionate to the remaining regions of Oakland. These findings become the basis for making the argument that while these maps of risk have been tools to represent and influence the development of the city, the have also become counter-productive impetuses for perpetual marginalization in the city of Oakland.

By understanding how cartography identifies and draws margins of space, this work seeks to develop mechanisms of resistance from within. In seeking ways to subvert the influence that these maps of risk have on the development of the urban communities, understanding how these tools, strategies, and techniques are deployed by cartographers becomes integral in a counter-strategic exploration.
There is a difference between describing the physical results of power in the landscape and addressing the time based relationship between space and power on a strategic and tactical level. By understanding what strategies power uses to affect space, control it, possess it, it is then possible to contemplate counter-strategies to undo coercive spatial practices and to restore spatial agency. (Findley p 39)

Cartography Experiment 1: Using personal perceptions of risks associated with moving through the city of Oakland, experimental maps embedded with personal apprehensions were produced to understand mapmaking processes of marginal zones. The first two maps were produced based on risks associated with vehicular motion through the city such as substantial patrolling by CHP [California Highway Patrol] and the Oakland Police Department or the photo enforced intersections. These zones were deemed risks in that the potential for citation and costly fines when exceeding suggested speed limits were substantially present and experienced in these zones.

6.Findley, Lisa. Building Change: Architecture, Politics, and Cultural Agency. New York: Routledge Publishing, 2005

By overlaying these perceived risks while driving in Oakland, emerged a new map in which the amalgamation of these apprehensions produced new zones of vehicular risk represented in a language similar to the previously cited residential security maps [red zones.]

The following two maps were produced based on non-vehicular motion through the city such as pedestrian and bicycle modes of transportation. The risks associated with these maps are based on high activity of pedestrian and bicycle accidents as well as solicitation of homeless residents of Oakland. These zones were deemed risks in that potential bodily harm at unsafe intersections as well as unpredictable and in some cases, unsafe interactions more often occurred.

By overlaying these perceived risks while walking or biking in Oakland, also emerged a new map in which the amalgamation of these apprehensions produced new zones of non-vehicular risk represented in a language similar to the previously cited residential security maps [red zones.]

In executing this exercise, does the power of cartography begin to emerge not only as a tool for expressing motive and desire, but a tool grounded in political coercion and universal language. J.B. Harley's, The New Nature of Maps, he supports this argument of embedded power of cartography.
Cartographers manufacture power. They create a spatial panopticon. It is power embedded in the map tex. We can talk about the power of the map just as we already talk about the power of the word or about the book as a force for change. In this sense, maps have politics. It is a power that intersects and is embedded in knowledge. It is universal (Harley p 79)

7.

Harley, J.B.The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001

Cartography Experiment 2 The nature in which risks transform the demographic occupation of Oakland became a focus of this secondary experiment. Using the risk that was associated with the historical residential security map such as the infiltration of African American, Asian, and Latino populations I became interested in the movement of these groups and the shifting of the boundaries and zones of these groups. Using census data, maps were produced highlighting this movement over a 30 year period. Orange zones represent African American communities, fusia zones represent Latino communities, and green represents Asian communities.

The purpose of this investigation is to not only further exercise mapmaking techniques but to observe the shifts in boundaries of these zones. Initial thesis interests were grounded in disparities that happened across physical boundaries such as interstate highways and transportation systems and in producing this map, the interest of the boundary re-emerges as a site of cultural and racial margin. More interesting, what happens when these shifting boundaries produce zones of overlap and intersection? Could these zones of overlap reveal sites of tension, conflict, or even potential intervention? Cartography Experiment 3: The purpose of this experiment was to map and highlight these zones of overlap as an inroad into potential sites of investigation in which an architectural proposal for the spring semester could emerge.

Through continued experiments that overlay transformations of risk within the city of Oakland does the hope of securing a site for investigation, proposal, and product exist. New, projective maps of space can potentially define a marginal zone in which architecture can operate simultaneously shifting the cartography of risk for a specific neighborhood.The hypothesis is not just that architectural program, siting, and form relocates urban risk, a strategy of contemporary urban models, but that is also can operate to reconceptualize the nature of risk itself.

References: Wood, Dennis. The Power of Maps New York: Guilford Press, 1992 Findley, Lisa. Building Change: Architecture, Politics, and Cultural Agency. New York: Routledge Publishing, 2005 Harley, J.B.The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001

"Residential Security Maps" http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu. n.d. Web. 2011.

HOLC Division of Research and Statistics Appraisal Department, San Diego October 20, 1936. "Oakland,Berkeley, and Alameda Residential Security Maps." http://salt.unc.edu/T-RACES, T-RACES, n.d. Web. 2009.

Northwestern Alameda County Liquefaction HazardMaps. Http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/nca.alameda, USGS, n.d. Web. 2009 Violent Crime Hotspot Summary for 2010.InfoAlamedacounty.org, County of Alameda, n.d. Web, 2011 Property Crime Hotspot Summary for 2010. InfoAlamedacounty.org, County of Alameda, n.d. Web, 2011