Leah Meisterlin

Critical Distance: Notes on GIS from the Ground
Leah Meisterlin
Assistant Professor, Urban Planning, Columbia GSAPP

Pulling from current and recent research, this talk reflects upon existing and emerging tensions between urban life and the spatial data created to represent it, between the city’s material condition and the GIS deployed to model it, and between sociospatial practices on the ground and the maps we draw from above. Its central hypothesis includes a reevaluation of Distance—whether between points in space or between the map and its reader—as a measure of urban life and a means of systematic representation.

The Lectures in Planning Series (LiPS) is an initiative of the Urban Planning program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

All lectures are free and open to the public; refreshments are provided. For more information or to make program suggestions, email lipscolumbiaplanning@gmail.com.