Rob Kitchin

Cognitive maps: what are they and why study them?

Abstract It is often implicitly assumed by researchers that their readers understand what cognitive map and cognitive mapping are, and their justification for study. This paper differs in this respect by explaining explicitly the ‘what’ and ‘why’ questions often asked, demonstrating cognitive mappings multidisciplinary research worth. First, it examines questions concerning what cognitive maps are, the confusion inherent from the use of the term ‘map’, and the usage and reasons for alternative expressions. Second, it examines the theoretical applications or conceptual research, concerning cognitive maps role in the influencing and explaining spatial behaviour; spatial choice and decision making; wayfinding and orientation; and the cognitive maps utility and role as a mnemonic and metaphorical devise; a shaper of world and local attitudes and perspectives; and for creating and coping with imaginary worlds. Third, it discusses cognitive mappings practical and applied worth, concerning the planning of suitable living environments; advertising; crime solving; search and rescue, geographical educational issues, cartography and remote sensing; and in the designing and understanding computer interfaces and databases, especially Geographical Information Systems (GISs).

Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts

This article examines how the availability of Big Data, coupled with new data analytics, challenges established epistemologies across the sciences, social sciences and humanities, and assesses the extent to which they are engendering paradigm shifts across multiple disciplines. In particular, it critically explores new forms of empiricism that declare ‘the end of theory’, the creation of data-driven rather than knowledge-driven science, and the development of digital humanities and computational social sciences that propose radically different ways to make sense of culture, history, economy and society. It is argued that: (1) Big Data and new data analytics are disruptive innovations which are reconfiguring in many instances how research is conducted; and (2) there is an urgent need for wider critical reflection within the academy on the epistemological implications of the unfolding data revolution, a task that has barely begun to be tackled despite the rapid changes in research practices presently taking place. After critically reviewing emerging epistemological positions, it is contended that a potentially fruitful approach would be the development of a situated, reflexive and contextually nuanced epistemology.

Big data and human geography Opportunities, challenges and risks

We are entering an era of big data – data sets that are characterised by high volume, velocity, variety, exhaustivity, resolution and indexicality, relationality and flexibility. Much of these data are spatially and temporally referenced and offer many possibilities for enhancing geographical understanding, including for post-positivist scholars. Big data also, however, poses a number of challenges and risks to geographic scholarship and raises a number of taxing epistemological, methodological and ethical questions. Geographers need to grasp the opportunities whilst at the same time tackling the challenges, ameliorating the risks and thinking critically about big data as well as conducting big data studies. Failing to do so could be quite costly as the discipline gets left behind as others leverage insights from the growing data deluge.

Code and the Transduction of Space

Abstract The effects of software (code) on the spatial formation of everyday life are best understood through a theoretical framework that utilizes the concepts of technicity (the productive power of technology to make things happen) and transduction (the constant making anew of a domain in reiterative and transformative practices). Examples from the lives of three Londoners illustrate that code makes a difference to everyday life because its technicity alternatively modulates space through processes of transduction. Space needs to be theorized as ontogenetic, that is, understood as continually being brought into existence through transductive practices (practices that change the conditions under which space is (re)made). The nature of space transduced by code is detailed and illustrated with respect to domestic living, work, communication, transport, and consumption.

The Researched Opinions on Research: disabled people and disability research

Thirty-five disabled people with a range of physical, sensory and mental impairments were interviewed about (1) their experiences of research; (2) their general opinions concerning research; (3) whether they thought research had served/was serving disabled people well; (4) how research on disability should be conducted; (5) who should conduct research on disability; and, finally, (6) what they would like to be researched. In this paper, the results of aspects two to five are reported. It was found that the opinions of disabled people mirror quite strongly the recent arguments forwarded by disabled academics concerning the need for emancipatory and empowering research strategies. In particular, the respondents articulated a need for inclusive, action-based research strategies, where disabled people are involved as consultants and partners not just as research subjects, There were few arguments, however, for an exclusive approach, where disability research would be conducted solely by researchers who were themselves disabled.

Towards geographies of cyberspace

This article uses two cyberspatial technologies, namely, the Internet (the global network of connected computers), and its close cousins, intranets (closed, private corporate telematic networks), to illustrate the ways in which geographers have engaged, and could engage, with studies of cyberspace. Virtual reality technologies are not discussed explicitly as, in the main, they are still at an exploratory and experimental stage. The article has three central aims: first, to introduce cyberspace and its implications to a wider geographical audience; secondly, to provide a critical review of current empirical and theoretical work relating to cyberspatial technologies by geographers; and, thirdly, to introduce geographers to the current debates and empirical research of scholars from other disciplines and suggest how geographers can build upon and advance these studies. An agenda for future research is outlined and an approach in which to ground future studies is forwarded. It is argued that spatiality is central to understanding cyberspace.

Cognitive Mapping: Past, present and future

1. Cognitive mapping Rob Kitchin and Scott Freundschuh2. Collecting and analysing cognitive mapping data Rob Kitchin3. Levels and structure of spatial knowledge Barbara Tversky4. Cognitive mapping and spatial decision making Tommy Garling and Reginald G Golledge5. Route learning and way finding Edward H. Cornell and C. Donald Heth6. Understanding and learning maps Robert Lloyd7. Understanding and learning virtual spaces Patrick Peruch, Florence Gaunet, Catherine Thinus-Blanc and Jack Loomis8. Micro and macro spaces Scott Freundschuh9. Cognitive mapping in childhood David Uttal and Lisa Tan10. Ageing and spatial behaviour in the elderly adult K.C. Kirasic11. A view of space through language Holly Taylor12. Sex, gender and cognitive mapping Carole Self and Reg Golledge13. Cognitive mapping without visual experience Simon Ungar14. The future of cognitive mapping research Rob Kitchin and Scott Freundschuh

‘Outlines of a world coming into existence’: pervasive computing and the ethics of forgetting

In this paper we examine the potential of pervasive computing to create widespread sousveillance, which will complement surveillance, through the development of life-logs—sociospatial archives that document every action, every event, every conversation, and every material expression of an individuals life. Reflecting on emerging technologies, life-log projects, and artistic critiques of sousveillance, we explore the potential social, political, and ethical implications of machines that never forget. We suggest, given that life-logs have the potential to convert exterior generated oligopticons to an interior panopticon, that an ethics of forgetting needs to be developed and built into the development of life-logging technologies. Rather than seeing forgetting as a weakness or a fallibility, we argue that it is an emancipatory process that will free pervasive computing from burdensome and pernicious disciplinary effects.

Placing Neoliberalism: The Rise and Fall of Ireland's Celtic Tiger

In this paper we provide an account of the property-led boom and bust which has brought Ireland to the point of bankruptcy. Our account details the pivotal role which neoliberal policy played in guiding the course of the countrys recent history, but also heightens awareness of the how the Irish case might, in turn, instruct and illuminate mappings and explanations of neoliberalisms concrete histories and geographies. To this end, we begin by scrutinising the terms and conditions under which the Irish state might usefully be regarded as neoliberal. Attention is then given to uncovering the causes of the Irish property bubble, the housing oversupply it created, and the proposed solution to this oversupply. In the conclusion we draw attention to the contributions which our case study might make to the wider literature of critical human geographies of neoliberalism, forwarding three concepts which emerge from the Irish story which may have wider resonance, and might constitute a useful fleshing out of theoretical framings of concrete and particular neoliberalisms: path amplification, neoliberalisms topologies and topographies, and accumulation by repossession.

Knowing and governing cities through urban indicators, city benchmarking and real-time dashboards

Since the mid-1990s a plethora of indicator projects have been developed and adopted by cities seeking to measure and monitor various aspects of urban systems. These have been accompanied by city benchmarking endeavours that seek to compare intra- and inter-urban performance. More recently, the data underpinning such projects have started to become more open to citizens, more real-time in nature generated through sensors and locative/social media, and displayed via interactive visualisations and dashboards that can be accessed via the internet. In this paper, we examine such initiatives arguing that they advance a narrowly conceived but powerful realist epistemology – the city as visualised facts – that is reshaping how managers and citizens come to know and govern cities. We set out how and to what ends indicator, benchmarking and dashboard initiatives are being employed by cities. We argue that whilst these initiatives often seek to make urban processes and performance more transparent and to improve decision making, they are also underpinned by a naive instrumental rationality, are open to manipulation by vested interests, and suffer from often unacknowledged methodological and technical issues. Drawing on our own experience of working on indicator and dashboard projects, we argue for a conceptual re-imaging of such projects as data assemblages – complex, politically-infused, socio-technical systems that, rather than reflecting cities, actively frame and produce them.