About | TransforMap
►http://transformap.co/about
TransforMap works towards an online platform to visualize the myriad of alternatives to the dominant economic thinking on a single mapping system. It will give everyone the opportunity to map the initiatives, communities, projects, worker-owned, self-managed, democratically organised companies and other institutions dedicated to meeting people’s needs, serving the common good and/ or contributing to a sustainable way of life.
TransforMap will/ can show all the places, spaces and networks that work on fostering cooperation and deepening human relationships through (co-)producing, exchanging, contributing, gifting and sharing, for a free, fair and sustainable world.
TransforMap invites all existing mapping initiatives to cooperate and co-create maps based on an open pool of data, a common taxonomy, free software and standardised APIs. It is published under an Open Data License.
Our world is transforming. There are old and new alternatives all over the planet. TransforMap will show you how to get there.
This was the short description. You are invited to read the long one also.
TransforMap - a not so short introduction - Welcome on Board / About - transformaps
▻https://discourse.transformap.co/t/transformap-a-not-so-short-introduction/239
The challenge
Today there is no map that allows anyone to easily identify and directly benefit from transformative social innovations, either in their neighborhood or globally. While a new economy based on horizontal collaboration for the common good is emerging with the mushrooming of practices like sharing, repairing, bartering, co-producing, co-using, commoning, Transition initiatives, etc. – most of them aware of the limits to growth and the finiteness of natural resources – it is extremely hard to get an overview of this global transformation.
For common people and citizens as well as for researchers, these initiatives are often invisible: information is stacked in thousands of (sometimes) cryptic websites or an impressive number of (recent) maps – mirroring the different silos the communities and networks seem to be locked in.
Hence, almost every mapping initiative is mapping in non-connected layers – we have collected here around 200 maps connected to ideas of socio-ecological transformation. That is, for each field (e.g. urban gardening) we have scores of maps that are developed in parallel, in each region anew, based on different taxonomies (i.e. ways to categorize initiatives and allow filtering) and which repeat the same effort again and again. Tragically, there is no way for users to navigate from one to another or get an idea of what this “mushrooming of social innovations” actually looks like and how powerful they already are. Additionally the maps’ data is often locked in by Terms of Services from proprietary mapping platforms (namely: many mapping projects use Google Maps; that is, they give up their sovereignty over their data).
This setup has a two-fold effect: it leads to the constant reproduction of the silos mentioned above and it neither enables the adoption of alternative productive and creative processes or social practices, nor spurs synergies between the huge diversity of movements. As a result, many initiatives are abandoned when the initial energy runs out and the “the plenty of alternatives” remain marginalized, invisible. However, through a distributed, collaborative mapping effort, based on free and open platforms and technologies, the different communities of the socio- ecological transformation can overcome these shared problems.
The TransforMap answer
TransforMap is a collaborative answer to this challenge and its complexities. It aims to co-develop with users (common citizens as well as representatives of the different movements) the necessary tools and standards for free and open crowd mapping that allows for aggregating all those mapping initiatives in one map that can be navigated by neophytes. TransforMap is being developed by, and offers the opportunity to display ALL initiatives that belong to communities of practice approved by the wider TransforMap community.
#cartographie @b_b
