Administration of Spaces - A Primer of GIS: Fundamental Geographic and Cartographic Concepts - page 233

ADVANCED ISSUES IN GI AND CARTOGRAPHY Administration of Spaces

Chapter 12

Administration of Spaces

This chapter covers the key roles of administrative GI and maps in creating
and maintaining the world as we know it, both globally and locally. Defense,
commerce, and taxation are key government activities that require or benefit
from clearly conceived and communicated GI and maps. Maps and geo-
graphic information are involved in almost every government activity.
After considering the impact of culture on GI and maps in Chapter 11,
we can see that geographic information and maps for administrative activi-
ties and governmental policies are important. In a representative democracy,
many social relations are regulated politically; thus, those social relations can
be represented in the form of geographic information and maps, which
means that geographic and cartographic representations also have a political
character. Even attempts to maintain political “neutrality” in mapmaking can
still have a political character in situations where there is no legitimate “polit-
ically neutral” point of view. An attempt to remain neutral here possibly nul-
lifies one of the principal roles of geographic representation, which is to
help policymakers in making better decisions.
A second political dimension of geographic representation is that we
“create” nature in the choices we make for representing natural objects.
Deciding how to represent nature—and how to define it—is an important
political activity that often involves the administration of spaces. From spot-
ted owl protection to administrative regulations regarding the definition of
protected plants and species, the geographic representation and carto-
graphic representation of the “natural” world plays key roles in how people
understand and act in the world.
Chapter 11 examined the different cultures and misuses of geographic
representation and map representation; this chapter turns to cover the
empowering role and uses of GI and maps for administrations. It starts with
an overview of how GI and maps have become key references for the organi-
zation of all social and economic activities. Administrative, especially govern-

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