Description
This paper conceptualizes Parish Mapping as an ethical and political counter-model to the technocratic rationalities underpinning the ideology of the smart city. Whereas the discourse of smart urbanism privileges efficiency, quantification, and surveillance as markers of progress, Parish Maps foreground a place-based epistemology rooted in local knowledge, affective attachment, and collective responsibility. As participatory cartographic practices, Parish Maps invite communities to re-inscribe their lived environments through narratives of care, memory, and belonging, thereby challenging the data-driven abstraction that defines contemporary spatial governance.
The study identifies four thematic interfaces between Parish Mapping and the smart city paradigm: (1) participatory planning and citizen agency, (2) the socio-cultural dimensions of spatial data, (3) community-based knowledge production within the “smart people” component, and (4) social sustainability as an ethical horizon.
First, Parish Mapping demonstrates how local actors can be reintegrated into decision-making processes often monopolized by technical expertise. Second, it redefines spatial data not as neutral information but as a repository of collective memory. Third, the “smart people” dimension is reinterpreted through Parish Mapping’s recognition of vernacular and experiential knowledge as legitimate epistemic resources. Finally, the notion of social sustainability is expanded to include care, solidarity, and ethical spatiality—dimensions frequently marginalized in smart city narratives.
Methodologically, the paper employs a comparative content analysis between Parish Mapping case studies and London’s smart city policy frameworks, particularly the Smart London Plan and Smarter London Together. Using MAXQDA software, visual materials (parish map exemplars) and policy documents are thematically coded to examine how local mapping practices articulate alternative spatial ethics vis-à-vis neoliberal models of urban governance.
The paper ultimately argues that the participatory and place-based ethos of Parish Mapping constitutes a viable framework for reimagining post-smart urban futures—one grounded not in technological determinism but in relational ethics, local autonomy, and the rehumanization of spatial knowledge.
