Metropolitan Cartography as a tool for the metropolitan approach to complexity: the Ugandan key study

Metropolitan experts have to improve the competence on shaping and building the metropolis and establish a wise metropolitan resistance to take care of the fragile territory for the right to the city, the right to the landscape, and the right to the lifestyle. Open data and open source maps, free and up to date, are the essential tools to reach the aim. The metropolitan approach to complexity is the methodology to practice on the field of action of the metropolitan region. We aim at communicating the need for a metropolitan vision, moving away from a traditional goal of pure efficiency, leading to the improvement of new competence to achieve the wellbeing of the citizens living in the metropolitan area. Considering that the Data governance will become more and more relevant for the civil servants to build the necessary maps to understand the multi-scale metropolitan complexity, the Metropolitan Cartography Project for Uganda is aimed at building both the competence of acquiring the methodology and skill of mapping to serve the specific needs and context of the metropolitan region in Uganda. The MSLab and the Data Analysis and Mapping Laboratory of the DAStU (Politecnico di Milano) have been developing “the practice of the metropolitan discipline,” to train architects, urban designers and planners to produce open source “maps” as meta-projects for shaping and reshaping the metropolitan environment. It also allows the practitioners to use the maps as a tool to localise the new metropolitan infrastructures and projects according to the multiple factors of the complex metropolitan territory. The maps will be defined according to the Indicators, which are based on Sustainable Developing Goals. The relationship between the indicators will verify the potential projects of selected city council. The metropolitan cartography provides the Scenario Maps of metropolitan projects, defining the measures, scales, and impacts on the territory. The analysis using the Metropolitan Cartography provides concrete visions and possibilities in the urban and architectural scale, clarifying the missing local scale that needs to be realized as projects made of physical shape and quality space.