The Satellites’ Progeny: Digital Chorography in the Age of Drone Vision

With­out being deter­min­is­tic, acces­si­ble imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy wields con­sid­er­able agency in the evo­lu­tion of archi­tec­tur­al, land­scape, and urban dis­course. In the 1920s, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of the air­plane and the draft­ing machine respec­tive­ly inspired and facil­i­tat­ed the mod­ern archi­tec­tur­al project. In the 1970s and 1980s, the ubiq­ui­tous pho­to­copi­er was a key tech­nol­o­gy enabling the sam­pling, scal­ing, and com­posit­ing that per­me­at­ed the devel­op­ment of post­mod­ern the­o­ry. With dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy cross­ing a crit­i­cal thresh­old in the 1990s, dis­course fell ever more into lock­step with tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. Advances in the usabil­i­ty, manip­u­la­bil­i­ty, and pro­cess­ing pow­er of three-dimen­sion­al mod­el­ing appli­ca­tions were cen­tral to the rapid shift from decon­struc­tivism to biomorphism.

In the 2000s, per­va­sive satel­lite imagery — ini­tial­ly through Ikonos™ and lat­er through Google Earth™ — facil­i­tat­ed the inter­pre­ta­tion of cities as organ­ic sys­tems.¹ Char­ac­ter­iz­ing urban­ism in eco­log­i­cal, rather than for­mal, terms ulti­mate­ly led to the estab­lish­ment and influ­ence of land­scape urban­ism with­in archi­tec­tur­al dis­course. Rough­ly syn­chro­nous­ly, Geo­graph­ic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems (GIS), which had hith­er­to been the domain of spe­cial­ists in geog­ra­phy, gained more user-friend­ly inter­faces, attract­ing exper­i­men­ta­tion with­in the spa­tial design dis­ci­plines. Cou­pled with increased avail­abil­i­ty of spa­tial­ized data, this tech­nol­o­gy was instru­men­tal in the renais­sance of map­ping, which the design dis­ci­plines had neglect­ed for three decades.²

In its many forms, inte­grat­ed map­ping based on wide­ly acces­si­ble satel­lite imagery and satel­lite-derived spa­tial data con­tin­ues to influ­ence con­tem­po­rary dis­course vig­or­ous­ly. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of Glob­al Posi­tion­ing Sys­tem (GPS) enabled smart phones has thus far sup­ple­ment­ed, rather than dis­rupt­ed, the pres­ence of the satellite’s over­ar­ch­ing gaze in design the­o­ry.³ This is prob­a­bly because, although smart phones dis­pense a wealth of inter­con­nect­ed loca­tion-spe­cif­ic data, the fideli­ty of this infor­ma­tion prin­ci­pal­ly suits inter­pre­ta­tion at the met­ro­pol­i­tan, rather than local, scale. That is, while these devices are cal­i­brat­ed to plot our pre­cise loca­tion in space, they are less pro­fi­cient at telling us about our imme­di­ate sense of place.

The drone’s eye

Recent­ly, imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy has shift­ed near­er to the ground as drones — the minia­tur­ized prog­e­ny of satel­lites — sat­u­rate alti­tudes below 400ft.⁴ Gyro­scop­i­cal­ly-sta­bi­lized mul­ti-rotor unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles have been avail­able to con­sumers since 2009 and have reli­ably car­ried high def­i­n­i­tion cam­eras since 2012.⁵ In addi­tion to this now famil­iar opti­cal util­i­ty, drones are also pur­posed as micro-freighters, with exper­i­men­tal pay­loads includ­ing mer­chan­dise and human­i­tar­i­an aid deliv­ery, seed and insect dis­per­sal, and fire igni­tion and sup­pres­sion. In an extreme pay­load up-scal­ing, a British hob­by­ist trav­elled in a teth­ered swarm of 54 drones, with the home­made space-frame rem­i­nis­cent of the Wright broth­ers’ first efforts.

Although this brief manned drone flight encap­su­lates our per­sis­tent desire for a per­son­al­ly (re)affirming overview of our envi­ron­ment, the prop­a­ga­tion of drone tech­nol­o­gy has pri­mar­i­ly fol­lowed a less embod­ied tra­jec­to­ry. The evolv­ing third gen­er­a­tion of con­sumer drones includes two fea­tures that are poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant to design dis­course and urban cul­ture in gen­er­al. The first is auto­mat­ed nav­i­ga­tion, which includes both the abil­i­ty to pre­de­fine vir­tu­al flight paths and the capac­i­ty to autonomous­ly track the ground-dwelling ​“pilot” from the air. Auto­mat­ed nav­i­ga­tion also enables the sec­ond nov­el fea­ture, where­by topo­graph­ic fea­tures (includ­ing build­ings and land­scapes) are opti­cal­ly record­ed in over­lap­ping detail and con­vert­ed through stereopho­togram­me­try into orthorec­ti­fied and geo­ref­er­enced three-dimen­sion­al maps.

Relin­quish­ing direct con­trol over avion­ics frees drone users to image the land­scape method­i­cal­ly in all its rough­ness and detail. Although this is in itself a poten­tial­ly ground­break­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the democ­ra­ti­za­tion and indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion of map­ping, the self-track­ing capac­i­ty most per­son­i­fies third gen­er­a­tion drones. When aimed oblique­ly down and across at the user, drones become per­son­al mir­rors in the sky, enabling oper­a­tors to wit­ness them­selves in the third per­son, act­ing out their lives with­in the near land­scape. Con­se­quent­ly, just as we turned the eyes in smart­phones back onto big broth­er and even­tu­al­ly back onto our­selves, drones as per­son­al appli­ances of van­i­ty increas­ing­ly usurp drones as insid­i­ous instru­ments of insti­tu­tion­al sur­veil­lance.⁶

Notwith­stand­ing ongo­ing cul­tur­al ret­i­cence towards the sur­veil­lant capac­i­ty of drones, the like­ly wide­spread adop­tion of this tech­nol­o­gy rais­es stim­u­lat­ing ques­tions for archi­tec­ture, land­scape, and urban­ism. What are the impli­ca­tions when the dual­i­ty of the immer­sive, hor­i­zon­tal, eye-lev­el view and zenithal satellite’s gaze is dis­solved? How will this low-aer­i­al van­tage impact our imag­ing and cog­ni­tive map­ping of urban envi­ron­ments that, since the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, have pri­mar­i­ly been pre­sent­ed to us plani­met­ri­cal­ly? How will the third per­son view alter how urban actors con­ceive of their own sense-of-place in the city? And what new tech­niques for rep­re­sent­ing and imag­ing the city will the drone’s per­spec­tive ini­ti­ate or induce?

In fram­ing these ques­tions, this essay antic­i­pates the trans­for­ma­tive agency of the drone’s‑eye view in design dis­course. This poten­tial is premised on three char­ac­ter­is­tics that dis­tin­guish drone-based imag­ing from satel­lite-derived imag­ing and map­ping. (1) Inter­sti­tial detail: Although the clar­i­ty of satel­lite imagery con­tin­u­al­ly improves, the sheer dis­tance and the large­ly orthog­o­nal per­spec­tive lim­its this per­spec­tive. The drone’s eye is capa­ble of extreme prox­im­i­ty and access­ing the under­neath and in-between spaces that remain hid­den from orbit 450 miles above the earth. (2) Near real-time con­trol: The rapid speed of the low earth orbits required for detailed imag­ing lim­it satel­lite imagery cap­ture to small pre­set win­dows. Web-based satel­lite imagery is also auto­mat­i­cal­ly fil­tered to priv­i­lege aes­thet­i­cal­ly palat­able imagery over less pas­toral imagery that may nev­er­the­less reveal more impor­tant infor­ma­tion about a par­tic­u­lar site.⁷ In con­trast, although their nav­i­ga­tion sys­tems remain teth­ered to geo­sta­tion­ary satel­lites, drones enable direct spa­tial and tem­po­ral con­trol over imag­ing. (3) Con­tent cre­ation: Design­ers engaged in map­ping gen­er­al­ly oper­ate as min­ers, sam­plers, and fil­ter­ers of satel­lite, aer­i­al, and spa­tial data pro­vid­ed by agen­cies and cor­po­ra­tions. Drones facil­i­tate direct — and usu­al­ly on site — user engage­ment in the cre­ation of opti­cal and pho­togram­met­ric content.

The bird and the satellite

From hill­tops and cathe­drals to cam­era-equipped bal­loons, kites, pigeons, air­planes, and, ulti­mate­ly, satel­lites, the eye in the sky has traced a cen­tu­ry and a half of increas­ing­ly high­er, more sys­tem­atized, and more ver­ti­cal aer­i­al vision. Mark­ing a return to low­er and more indi­vid­u­al­ized oblique view­points, the drone’s eye inter­rupts that pro­gres­sion. Pre­cur­so­ry momen­tum for this rever­sal is reflect­ed in the recent reemer­gence of the bird’s‑eye view in con­tem­po­rary media and online map appli­ca­tions.⁸ The revival of this anachro­nis­tic angle reveals lim­its to mod­ern cartography’s capac­i­ty to rep­re­sent coher­ent­ly the con­tem­po­rary post-urban land­scape and ren­der leg­i­ble the scale of every­day life.⁹ From orbit, we lose track of our place with­in seem­ing­ly undif­fer­en­ti­at­ed urban agglom­er­a­tions, which appear nat­u­ral­ized in their resem­blance to bac­te­r­i­al blooms. When zoomed right in, famil­iar fea­tures reg­is­tered in plani­met­ric forms often fail to res­onate with our estab­lished per­cep­tions of our place with­in our world.¹⁰

How­ev­er, just as drone-based imag­ing remains tech­no­log­i­cal­ly inter­twined with satel­lite sys­tems, the revived bird’s‑eye view sup­ple­ments, rather than sub­sti­tutes for, the ver­ti­cal (nadir) view. The sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship between drones and satel­lites and between oblique and nadir views sug­gests poten­tial for address­ing the lim­i­ta­tions of mod­ern car­tog­ra­phy through nov­el hybrid map-rep­re­sen­ta­tions. Enabled by two inter­linked aer­i­al imag­ing plat­forms oper­at­ing at diver­gent scales, these nov­el maps seek the dual remit of con­vey­ing both the qual­i­ties of a place and the over­all struc­ture of the city. In doing so, they poten­tial­ly address Fredric Jameson’s stand­ing call for a new aes­thet­ics of cog­ni­tive map­ping that enables the sit­u­a­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the indi­vid­ual with­in the vaster total­i­ty.¹¹

Although now three decades on, Jameson’s chal­lenge to com­bat loss of per­cep­tu­al ori­en­ta­tion in the post­mod­ern city remains rel­e­vant to con­tem­po­rary urban­ism. Indeed, this con­tin­ued sig­nif­i­cance is demon­strat­ed by the recur­rence of data-scap­ing/map­ping exam­ples that explic­it­ly or implic­it­ly lay claim to address­ing the terms of Jameson’s call. Enabled by the increase in spa­tial data, these visions seek inno­v­a­tive and enig­mat­ic win­dows into the invis­i­ble city-struc­tur­ing webs of infor­ma­tion and ener­gy. The ​“shim­mer­ing” car­tog­ra­phy that results sub­sti­tutes sol­id and fixed iden­ti­ties with flows, change, and rela­tion­al dif­fer­ences.¹² But, while effec­tive at illu­mi­nat­ing infor­ma­tion­al con­ver­gences with­in the vaster total­i­ty, urban data-map­ping projects gen­er­al­ly apply a very abstract thresh­old to the sit­u­a­tion­al com­po­nent of Jameson’s new aes­thet­ic of cog­ni­tive map­ping. ​“Sit­u­a­tion­al” is inter­pret­ed more com­pre­hen­sive­ly here as rep­re­sen­ta­tion that acknowl­edges its own selec­tive and incom­plete point of view and includes rich­ness, diver­si­ty, and a degree of mate­r­i­al imme­di­a­cy.¹³ While sig­nif­i­cant­ly dimin­ished in mod­ern car­to­graph­ic con­ven­tions, these sit­u­a­tion­al char­ac­ter­is­tics are reflect­ed in choro­graph­ic map­ping practices.

Ana­logue chorographies

In Claudius Ptolemy’s clas­si­cal ternary rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al hier­ar­chy, chorog­ra­phy is the most ground­ed of the three modes of the nat­ur­al order.¹⁴ Chorog­ra­phy is sit­u­at­ed below the Euclid­ean pro­jec­tions of geog­ra­phy and the grand struc­ture of the (geo­cen­tric) uni­verse as estab­lished by cos­mog­ra­phy. Revived fol­low­ing the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry Latin trans­la­tion of Ptolemy’s Geo­graphia, the remit of chorog­ra­phy is the local region, where it reg­is­ters fea­tures at the near scale in which human life takes place. The Greek root chôra/​choros denotes a def­i­nite piece of ground, a place. Of the three rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al orders, this root posi­tions chorog­ra­phy clos­est to the mod­ern usage of land­scape (which traces Ger­man­ic etymology).

Unlike geog­ra­phy, which eschews like­ness for the abstrac­tion and pre­cise loca­tion of fea­tures, the near scale of chorog­ra­phy per­mits a qual­i­ta­tive and sen­so­ry approach to the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties of the land­scape. More­over, where­as quan­ti­ta­tive geo­graph­i­cal meth­ods seek to elim­i­nate the vagaries of inter­pre­ta­tion, chorog­ra­phy admits the cre­ative con­tri­bu­tion of the indi­vid­ual map­per. This is embod­ied in the com­mon prac­tice of depict­ing the map­per in the third per­son with­in the representation.

Nev­er­the­less, chorog­ra­phy remains more map than paint­ing. Choro­graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tions from the six­teenth and sev­en­teenth cen­turies con­tain both quan­ti­ta­tive and pic­to­r­i­al infor­ma­tion about land. Map space is scaled and pro­por­tioned accord­ing to a com­plex scaf­fold­ing of tra­vers­es and off­sets or tri­an­gu­la­tions, whose con­struc­tions are often super­im­posed into the rep­re­sen­ta­tion. How­ev­er, unlike the car­to­graph­ic pur­suit of Euclid­ean con­sis­ten­cy, choro­graph­ic con­struc­tions do not seek to depict all fea­tures equal­ly. Despite this elas­tic­i­ty, chorog­ra­phy ful­fills the orig­i­nal sense of sur­veyable space, where the sur­vey­or is sit­u­at­ed with­in the same space that is being mapped.

Although ini­tial­ly dis­played along­side geo­graph­ic pro­jec­tions, chorog­ra­phy was usurped begin­ning in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry by the more spa­tial­ly con­sis­tent mil­i­tary cav­a­lier pro­jec­tions and, even­tu­al­ly, by the plan.¹⁵ As cities and land-hold­ings extend­ed well beyond the hori­zon — and could no longer be seen in their entire­ty from cathe­dral tow­ers or hill­tops — the prob­lem of estab­lish­ing both lim­its and con­ti­nu­ity ren­dered the scope of chorog­ra­phy inad­e­quate. In its place, geog­ra­phy filled the role of urban delin­eation through the math­e­mat­i­cal divi­sion of the earth’s sur­face from over­head. Pre­ci­sion sup­plant­ed resem­blance, as the zenithal plan-view ascend­ed over time to rep­re­sent the ratio­nal order of mod­ern city plan­ning.¹⁶ Relin­quished of the duties of mea­sure­ment and topo­graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion, chorog­ra­phy devolved into the scenic city-brand­ing panora­mas that were pop­u­lar in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry and still fre­quent tourist maps today.

Dig­i­tal chorographies

Jame­son clar­i­fies that nov­el situational/​totality map­pings should avoid return­ing to the tra­di­tion­al machin­ery of a ​“reas­sur­ing per­spec­ti­val or mimet­ic enclave.”¹⁷ Giv­en this caveat, how then is a rein­ter­pret­ed chorog­ra­phy poten­tial­ly rel­e­vant in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry? More­over, how is a rein­ter­pret­ed chorog­ra­phy — which is mate­r­i­al by def­i­n­i­tion — per­ti­nent in the con­text of dema­te­ri­al­ized urban imag­ing where GPS-satel­lite and cell phone tow­ers have sup­plant­ed bricks-and-mor­tar land­marks? The ratio­nale for re-poten­tial­iz­ing chorog­ra­phy is ground­ed in the con­tin­ued rel­e­vance in the digital/​drone age of sev­er­al tra­di­tion­al choro­graph­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics. These char­ac­ter­is­tics are explored here through three inter­re­lat­ed motifs: (1) elas­tic pro­jec­tions; (2) patch­work stitch­ing; and (3) sit­u­at­ed sensing.

Motif 1: elas­tic pro­jec­tions. Although qua­si-per­spec­ti­val exam­ples are com­mon in the his­tor­i­cal record, the per­spec­ti­val con­struc­tion of space is nei­ther a pre­con­di­tion nor an ambi­tion for choro­graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Unre­strained by a per­spec­ti­val or pro­jec­tive stan­dard, chorog­ra­phy is anal­o­gous to a high­ly mal­leable cam­era lens that con­tin­u­ous­ly changes view­points.¹⁸ This intrin­sic elas­tic­i­ty is per­ti­nent to both spa­tial cog­ni­tion and drone technology.

Spa­tial cog­ni­tion research has estab­lished the non-mimet­ic eccen­tric­i­ties of our indi­vid­ual cog­ni­tive maps. In Kevin Lynch’s renowned 1960 imag­ing study of select US cities, this dis­tor­tion was method­olog­i­cal­ly purged from the results.¹⁹ Stretched and super­im­posed across a stan­dard Carte­sian map of each city, the spa­tial wrin­kles of the sub­jects’ indi­vid­ual men­tal maps were ironed out. By con­trast, Denis Wood’s 1973 study of dis­tance per­cep­tion between Lon­don land­marks con­serves and inte­grates the sub­jects’ elas­tic spa­tial cog­ni­tion.²⁰ The non­lin­ear per­cep­tions of dis­tances are inter­po­lat­ed onto the city to cre­ate a series of warped maps that rep­re­sent each urban actor’s psy­cho-geog­ra­phy. In this regard, Wood’s study extends the Sit­u­a­tion­ists’ cre­ative exploita­tion of the gap between the sit­u­a­tion­al expe­ri­ence of a city and the rigid­i­ty of tra­di­tion­al topo­graph­ic maps.

Spa­tial elas­tic­i­ty appears to be an inte­gral fac­tor that enhances, rather than desta­bi­lizes, urban imag­ing. Nev­er­the­less, as is evi­dent in both Wood’s warped maps and the car­to­graph­ic frag­ments and flows of the Sit­u­a­tion­ists, Carte­sian plan pro­jec­tions poor­ly accom­mo­date elas­tic­i­ty. In order to retain the integri­ty of the under­ly­ing matrix, ampli­fi­ca­tion in one part must be off­set else­where with com­pres­sion or era­sure. In con­trast, choro­graph­ic space does not require bal­anc­ing with­in a uni­ver­sal struc­ture. By fol­low­ing an inter­nal sys­tem, the bespoke con­struc­tions and lim­it­ed ranges of choro­graph­ic maps are more con­ducive to express­ing elasticity.

Choro­graph­ic elas­tic­i­ty is also reflect­ed in drone mechan­ics. Unlike the sta­ble and pre­dictable glide of satel­lite arcs, drones are buf­fet­ed around in the low atmos­phere like insects. As the elec­tron­ic gyro­scopes, mag­ne­tome­ters, pres­sure sen­sors, accelerom­e­ters and sonar avoid­ance sys­tems scram­ble to keep the device aloft, the cam­era cap­tures raw imagery through a con­tin­u­ous­ly vari­able view­point. Although post-pro­cess­ing soft­ware is tasked with neu­tral­iz­ing as much of this vari­abil­i­ty as pos­si­ble, the phys­i­cal pre-process of cap­tur­ing raw imagery lit­er­al­ly embod­ies the high­ly mal­leable notion­al cam­era lens of chorography.

Motif 2: patch­work stitch­ing. As dis­tinct divi­sions between the cul­tur­al and nat­ur­al land­scape dis­solved over the cen­turies, the prob­lem of lim­its and con­ti­nu­ity dimin­ished the effec­tive­ness of choro­graph­ic map­ping. Read on their own terms, indi­vid­ual choro­graph­ic maps pro­vid­ed use­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tions of delin­eat­ed land­scapes. How­ev­er, assem­bling numer­ous over­lap­ping, elas­tic, dis­joint­ed or dis­tinc­tive choro­gra­phies into a coher­ent whole proved far more chal­leng­ing than the unlim­it­ed seam­less spa­tial cov­er­age offered by geog­ra­phy. Where­as choro­graph­ic maps reach their lim­its at a for­est, ridge, or hori­zon, geo­graph­ic (Carte­sian) maps are cir­cum­scribed only by the imma­te­r­i­al map frame, which can be infi­nite­ly extend­ed, rescaled and tessellated.

Con­tem­po­rary tech­niques for inte­grat­ing large quan­ti­ties of dis­parate­ly angled images into coher­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions sug­gest a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion to the long­stand­ing his­tor­i­cal prob­lem of choro­graph­ic con­ti­nu­ity. Dig­i­tal stitch­ing deploys algo­rithms to estab­lish com­mon­al­i­ties between images with over­lap­ping fields of view. Typ­i­cal­ly, when used to cre­ate pho­to­graph­ic panora­mas and ortho­mo­saics of satel­lite and aer­i­al imagery, the tech­nique employs blend­ing to pro­vide the illu­sion of a seam­less­ly smooth tran­si­tion between the con­stituent parts. Omit­ting this final step in the stitch­ing process retains the integri­ty of the seam (edge). When applied to chorog­ra­phy, stitch­ing seams along over­laps upholds the inter­nal dis­tinc­tive­ness of each map.

In prin­ci­ple, dig­i­tal stitch­ing facil­i­tates the com­posit­ing of per­son­al dig­i­tal choro­gra­phies, which are cap­tured through many unco­or­di­nat­ed indi­vid­ual drone excur­sions and com­pos­it­ed into a dig­i­tal patch­work. Over time, the accru­al of dig­i­tal choro­gra­phies onto this thick­ened patch­work sug­gests an over­lap­ping mul­ti-lay­er­ing process that is anal­o­gous to accu­mu­lat­ed leaf lit­ter on a for­est floor. In this metaphor, each crum­pled leaf rep­re­sents a phys­iog­nom­ic dig­i­tal chorog­ra­phy of a par­tic­u­lar ter­rain that is sit­u­at­ed loose­ly amongst myr­i­ad oth­er choro­graph­ic leaves. En masse, those leaves are not intrin­si­cal­ly fused into a sin­gle author­i­ta­tive map. Rather, the ves­tiges between choro­gra­phies offer a mul­ti­tude of over­lap­ping angles on places — over, under, and in-between.

Motif 3: sit­u­at­ed sens­ing. If the Glob­al Posi­tion­ing Sys­tem has every fea­ture on earth tri­an­gu­lat­ed to with­in a few feet, what pur­pose do maps serve? On one hand, Carte­sian map­ping con­tin­ues toward the goal of assem­bling a vir­tu­al dupli­cate of the world. Facil­i­tat­ed by high­ly inte­grat­ed GIS sys­tems and achieved by expung­ing evi­dence of its own method of con­struc­tion, the sim­u­lacrum map exists inde­pen­dent­ly of the real­i­ty to which it orig­i­nal­ly refers. This type of map­ping con­tin­ues to ful­fill the con­ven­tion­al roles of geo­graph­ic record­ing, spa­tial loca­tion and nav­i­ga­tion. On the oth­er hand, just as nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry pho­tog­ra­phy released paint­ing from mimet­ic respon­si­bil­i­ty, the release of post­mod­ern map­ping from geo­graph­ic oblig­a­tion unlocked a surge of cre­ativ­i­ty in the medi­um. Maps adopt­ed a mul­ti­tude of forms that stretch nor­ma­tive car­to­graph­ic def­i­n­i­tions, includ­ing expe­ri­en­tial and immer­sive expres­sions of every­day life-space and instru­ments of resis­tance and subterfuge.

The diver­gence of map­ping as mime­sis and map­ping as expres­sion is reflect­ed in the dis­tinc­tion between prac­tices of site (in situ) obser­va­tion and remote sens­ing. While site obser­va­tion came to be asso­ci­at­ed with the imme­di­ate and sub­jec­tive, the over­sight pro­vid­ed by (satel­lite and aer­i­al based) remote sens­ing became estab­lished as the more objec­tive posi­tion.²¹ Indeed, the con­fi­dence invest­ed in the accu­ra­cy of remote sens­ing is now so com­plete that the tra­di­tion­al car­to­graph­ic prac­tice of ground proof­ing maps through site obser­va­tion has been large­ly aban­doned. Although in part a result of the sheer quan­ti­ty of map­ping data now being gen­er­at­ed, the neglect of ground proof­ing sig­nals a deep­en­ing dis­con­nec­tion between the map as a vir­tu­al con­struct and con­cern for the ter­rain to which it pertains.

The activ­i­ties of site obser­va­tion, ground proof­ing, and — indeed — chorog­ra­phy ful­fill the orig­i­nal sense of sur­vey, where­by the sur­vey­or is sit­u­at­ed with­in the space being mapped. From that posi­tion, the sur­vey­or gains direct sen­so­ry con­tact with the site/​subject. Work­ing from the inside out, the sur­vey­or con­structs a spa­tial rep­re­sen­ta­tion fea­ture by fea­ture until suf­fi­cient geo­met­ric and topo­graph­ic infor­ma­tion has been cat­a­logued to gain a the­o­ret­i­cal ele­va­tion over (but not high above) the land­scape. In spa­tial cog­ni­tion ter­mi­nol­o­gy, this sit­u­a­tion equates to sur­vey knowl­edge, which indi­cates advanced com­pre­hen­sion of the con­fig­u­ra­tion of one’s envi­ron­ment.²²

Draw­ing on chorography’s his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tion with sur­vey­ing, dig­i­tal chorog­ra­phy sug­gests a plat­form for re-assim­i­lat­ing the strate­gic advan­tages of top-down, air­borne sens­ing with the ground­ed, inside-out field­work of site obser­va­tion. The drone’s eye facil­i­tates this re-assim­i­la­tion; the near-ground aer­i­al posi­tion com­bines the ben­e­fit of sus­pend­ed prox­im­i­ty for sit­u­at­ed near-ground proof­ing with the extend­ed range of the aer­i­al realm that is cur­rent­ly the estab­lished domain of remote sens­ing. The sit­u­at­ed sens­ing sug­gest­ed by this posi­tion enables the simul­ta­ne­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tion of both scales of Jameson’s new aes­thet­ic of cog­ni­tive mapping.

Recov­er­ing nearness

The drone’s‑eye view extends our per­son­al hori­zons to sit­u­ate us in the near land­scape. Cor­re­lat­ing this sit­u­at­ed near­ness with­in the vaster urban struc­ture impels new/​old forms of map­ping, which, I have argued, takes the form of re-poten­tial­ized dig­i­tal chorog­ra­phy. Cer­tain­ly, when we first cre­ate a dig­i­tal chorog­ra­phy, our atten­tion will invari­ably fix­ate on the sur­vey­ors (our­selves) sit­u­at­ed with­in the map. But, once this third per­son van­i­ty is sat­is­fied, our atten­tion will turn to the near land­scape, which fills out part of the map. In doing so, the era of third gen­er­a­tion drones may be less nar­cis­sis­tic than typ­i­cal­ly antic­i­pat­ed, as the drone’s‑length plac­ie (port­man­teau of place and self­ie) super­sedes the ubiq­ui­tous arm’s‑length selfie.

Recov­er­ing near­ness through dig­i­tal chorog­ra­phy does not imply nos­tal­gic retreat into the sin­gu­lar point of view of a seden­tary sense of place. Nor is near­ness con­sti­tut­ed as a mere tex­tur­al back­drop for the mul­ti­ple points of view of per­pet­u­al nomadism. Rather, it is a com­bi­na­tion of both sense of place and per­pet­u­al move­ment. Move­ment, whether embod­ied (phys­i­cal) or vir­tu­al (through rep­re­sen­ta­tion) ampli­fies the sense of place. For exam­ple, ports, although high­ly flu­id, are nev­er­the­less cus­tom­ar­i­ly very well defined places. Giv­en that we move places so fre­quent­ly — every five years on aver­age in the US — we, like ports, are both flu­id and fixed.²³ Cog­ni­tive imag­ing is the mech­a­nism by which we inte­grate this new near­ness into a more com­pre­hen­sive image of the city.

The return to the near scale that drone-based dig­i­tal chorog­ra­phy affords also poten­tial­ly serves as a cat­a­lyst for oth­er devel­op­ments in the design dis­ci­plines. After two decades of empha­sis on large-scale asso­ci­a­tions, sys­tems, and infra­struc­tures, the drone’s eye may enhance inter­est in retain­ing and incor­po­rat­ing the incum­bent near-scale qual­i­ties latent in many waste­land sites. The revival of obser­va­tion as a legit­i­mate design method is anoth­er poten­tial byprod­uct. This, by exten­sion, sug­gests the ren­o­va­tion of envi­ron­men­tal psy­chol­o­gy, which stalled dur­ing the 1970s due to the lim­i­ta­tions of its blunt, ana­logue tools. When cou­pled with recent advances in neu­ro­science, it is con­ceiv­able that envi­ron­men­tal psy­chol­o­gy will fol­low a dig­i­tal­ly-pro­pelled renais­sance with­in design dis­course sim­i­lar to the one under­gone by map­ping a decade ago.

This is not to claim that bur­geon­ing inter­est in the drone-scape will jet­ti­son the dis­cur­sive agency of satel­lite imagery and map­ping. On the con­trary, we are now so habit­u­at­ed to using satel­lite images and maps as exten­sions of our per­sons — their sys­temic abstrac­tion is so seduc­tive­ly use­ful — that the orbital view will remain fer­tile ter­ri­to­ry for design.²⁴ There­fore, just as drone nav­i­ga­tion is inte­grat­ed with satel­lite sys­tems — and both the near and far inte­gral to urban imag­ing — we can assume dis­cur­sive coex­is­tence between the two scales.²⁵ Posi­tioned with­in this alliance, drone imag­ing pos­sess­es char­ac­ter­is­tics capa­ble of trans­form­ing how we image our urban envi­ron­ments. This is sig­nif­i­cant because how we image — and hence map — our present urban envi­ron­ments influ­ences how we phys­i­cal­ly shape them over time.