We argue that by participating in theseactivities, youth began to understand real and abstracted urban space differently, whichafforded new opportunities for imagining and showing their futures within that space

We thought of these activities as a form of ground truthing,5asking youth tocompare their on-the-ground experience with what was shown on a map, and encouragingthem to consider how changes to the map could better support their needs or interests.

While ground truthing involved critical reflectionon the adequacy of urban infrastructure for bicycling, the analysis of personal time geog-raphy invited stories about adolescent life and how acquiring a bicycle might create newopportunities for activity.

Questioning the veracity or completeness of official maps and mapping tools, bycomparison with what youth perceived or experienced on a daily basis, contributed toemerging practices of counter-mapping as our study progressed.

In contrast, highly critical, past time accounts of how the city neglected or even harmedWoodbridge (e.g., building an interstate highway through residential and commercialspaces) had little uptake in planning processes that were oriented towards analysis ofexisting conditions for future development.

Studies of how youthperceivespace are an important part of the children’s geographyliterature. These studies have been concerned with issues of young people’s environmentalexperience and mobility, looking at how and where young people spend their time acrossthe course of a typical day and what attributes of the geography are important to youth

were interleaved with bike building

Cecil worked with us for three major reasons. First, he hoped to learn new and betterways of teaching Workshop patrons how to read maps and choose appropriate routes forcycling before leaving home. Second, he hoped to see infrastructural changes in theneighborhood that would support youth on bikes, and he knew about our study ofWoodbridge planning and ongoing relations with city planners. Third, Cecil wanted toknow if his patrons were actually riding their bicycles once they took them home.Our purpose was to complement the Workshop by designing activities that would inviteyouth to participate in practices of counter-mapping, and to engage with new forms ofspatial literacy as they thought about how their personal mobility was supported orimpeded by the infrastructure of urban space.

collecting information about community assets,•making maps or new map layers that reflect these assets and aspects of personal use ormobility, and•using these maps to make and justify claims for use and development of assets in thefuture.

Carissa described three bikelanes she hoped the city would build

using gears to climb hills

William’s more contemplative comparison ofstreets that were relatively safe and quiet, but slow for cycling because of ‘‘weaving in andout,’’ with streets that were straighter and faster for riding but more dangerous because oftraffic

Ahead was an intersection with a green light and separated turn lanes

a Workshop in which youth learned tobuild bicycles out of discarded or donated materials

Weeks 1 & 2:Youth told stories of their neighborhood activities, alternating betweenhand-drawn and computer maps (Google MapsTM) of the surrounding area;•Weeks 3 & 5:Youth used GarminTMhandheld GPS devices both to draw on thesurface of the city (e.g., Carissa and Leah drew the word ‘‘LOVE’’ over a 5-block areathat included their homes; see Lauriault and Wood2009) and to complete aneighborhood geo-cache concerning the spatial history of buildings and parks in theWoodbridge neighborhood;•Week 4:Youth compared commercial maps of the neighborhood with their experienceswhile biking from Woodbridge to a downtown park (a safety ride, described below),while adults recorded the activity using GoProTMhead cameras;•Weeks 3 & 4:Youth kept a written time-diary while carrying a GPS data logger(TrackstickTM) to record personal mobility over two five-day periods, before and afterbuilding a bicycle, and they then analyzed personal time geography visible in thesetracks (described below); and•Week 5:Youth used internet mapping tools in Google MapsTMand Google EarthTMtobuild and present map layers of desired attributes (e.g., Carissa’s desire layers, used toillustrate counter-mapping earlier in this paper).

youth participants were consistent with Harvey’s (2008) observation that in making orimagining the city, we are also making and imagining ourselves

As they came tounderstand technologies for mapping more fully, they also began to question what wasshown (and not shown) on maps.

As we expected, the safety ride led to a critical reflection onthe extent to which maps supported riding, but also to a discussion of whether the city, itsroads, and cultural amenities were arranged in space to support mobility and access foryouth on bicycles

We were guided in the study by Soja’s (2010) concept of ‘‘spatial justice’’ as a way tointervene in the spatial relationship youth had with their neighborhoods, so that they mightimagine new, more equitable possibilities for that geography

hese residents learned totalk over the surface of maps in ways that closely matched the spatial thinking andrelevancies of professional planners

Potentially, youth counter-mapping could have conse-quences both for ‘‘on the move’’ experience and for official versions of city neighborhoods

Hart demonstrated that children’s mobility was self-directed in a rural com-munity, and they learned about their environment by traveling through and negotiating howthey would use it together.

Second, spatial literacy is an important component of civic engagementsince many democratic processes of urban development rely on representations of spaceand residents’ sustained reflection on experiences within lived spaces.

Youth were given a map with a destination and resting place labeled (waypoints in Fig.2)during a bicycle safety tutorial and before setting out together on bikes. In the safetytutorial given by Cecil, the ride had rules and consequences, by analogy to a ‘‘final exam.’

we asked adolescents to carry GPS tracking devices withthem for 2 weeks,

asking youth tocompare their on-the-ground experience with what was shown on a map, and encouragingthem to consider how changes to the map could better support their needs or interests.

relations between lived activity andrepresentations of that activity in the city visible,

new forms of spatial literacy as well as delicate aspects of identity work

New Mobility Invites Thinking Across Scales

learning to operate a bike safely and for collectivelydetecting and fixing kinks in the bicycle before the youth took them home. But the ridingformation was also something worth learning about (i.e., how to ride together in the city).

Nothing beatsgetting your feet dirty and your hands dirty and getting into the mud, finding outwhat’s there in person, and just reacting to it. And that is, really, the highest sci-ence (Bob Firth, personal communication)