Detroit Geographic Exploration Institute: Map, sensitive notation, and activism to make visible the spatiality of marginalized communities

Abstract

This paper addresses how marginalized communities organized themselves to raise awareness and try to resolve the issues that were ignored by local authorities, even though they harmed and conditioned their ways of life. This is done through the expeditions and maps created by the Detroit Geographic Exploration Institute, founded by geographer William Bunge and young African American activist Gwendolyn Warren after the racial uprisings of 1967. First, the concept of radical geography is analyzed as the academic branch that is sensitive to these situations, followed by an analysis of the institute’s work through a series of cartographies that meticulously describe the sensitive notation implemented in maps of uprisings, rat bites, or children being hit by cars in neighborhoods inhabited by African American populations. The paper aims to reclaim sensitive cartographic analysis, activism, and local policies as urban and architectural tools for seeking spatial justice in stigmatized territories.