the land of oz

It is an autumn Sunday evening, and I approach an escape from the mundane, a green oasis within the concrete jungle: Oz Park. This park is truly an intersection of people of all shapes and sizes, ages and incomes, races and cultures. Foreign tongues float through the air around me. I notice three brothers and their father play a game of soccer. Next to them, a baby girl toddles over to pet a puppy. Dozens of strollers are strewn about the park, evidence of the many young families that seek refuge at the park. More evidence can be heard from screaming children who run around, excited and overwhelmed by the towering playground. A group of guys laugh as they shoot hoops together at the basketball court. Two old men in caps chat on a nearby bench. I begin to let my guard down and fully immerse myself and lose myself in this safe haven. Where am I? I am still in Chicago, yet the atmosphere is calm, and there is an overarching sense of freedom. Oz Park may as well be the Land of Oz itself. There is something truly magical in everyone holding a right to exist in this space.

• How do Krygier & Wood define a map? How is a map related to the world it depicts?
• How does your understanding of Chicago change (or not) after hearing about and viewing the maps in the Folded Map project?
• In your response, relate to the two questions to each other: Why do we make maps? How are maps political? How do this week’s readings relate to previous readings?

Krygier and Wood define a map as an affirmation that something exists in a certain place, a proposition. Maps are related to the world they depict in that they reveal information about the world that the cartographer wishes to reveal. Maps, therefore, cannot be completely objective or void of any biases. After viewing the Folded Map project, I realized that I have my own biases about Chicago that may not tell the full story of each neighborhood. The Folded Map project revealed that people who share the same address on the both the north and south sides of the city are normal people. Even though their surroundings differ, they all live in the same city. I have gotten rid of my previous prejudices against the south side, because its overall negative reputation diminishes from the good of each individual who may reside there. As this example proves, maps can impact the way we see the world, causing us to make hasty generalizations or wrong assumptions. Maps are made for the purpose of affirming locations, yet the maps we look at have the potential to manipulate the way we think. Maps are political because they often support an argument about a community, whether it is intentional or not. This reading, similar to previous readings, shows that the story of a community cannot be interpreted from above or beyond the community. To really know a place, we must go and immerse ourselves within it, creating our own tie rather than settling for what someone else tells us.