Cultural Mapping and Digital Public Engagement in the Future North

Abstract

Arctic landscapes and communities are undergoing massive changes in the context of globalisation, technological advances and climate change. Interdisciplinary research methods involving public participation are increasingly used to harness community strengths and negotiate these dynamic forces, as diverse sets of knowledge are invaluable in understanding a fuller cultural landscape in more robust detail. Further expanding the field, location-based digital tools are increasingly used in urban planning as complementary civic forums to those of brick and mortar. This research incorporates ethnographic methods in a collaborative PPGIS mapping design experiment to investigate how digitally enhanced forms of participation contribute to future place-values and envisioning. The human imagination is captured by examining how local voices emerge and how engagement is expanded in communities in the Norwegian-Russian border region.