Counterpoints: A Bay Area Atlas

In the spring of 2017, the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project - a data visualization, data analysis, and oral history collective documenting Bay Area gentrification struggles -  launched a regional Atlas project to depict contemporary Bay Area displacement and its various causes and effects. Its name is Counterpoints: A Bay Area Atlas of Displacement and Resistance.  




We’ve been working to represent the facts of displacement through interactive mapping and other avenues since 2013, and this seemed like the next step. We want to use Counterpoints to help develop conversations about the issues we work with and to help exhibit the importance of creative map-making in talking about the issues our region faces.


Counterpoints will encompass geographies ranging from Vallejo to Santa Cruz in an effort to tell a regional story of gentrification, particularly as it is racialized and classed. The Atlas will also take a historical approach, bringing together a decolonial approach to mapping the colonial and racialized histories upon which contemporary gentrification transpires.




We have divided our content and aspirations into several chapters, which include:

  - indigenous/colonial histories
  - evictions 
  - migration/relocation
  - public health, public housing, and environmental racism
  - land speculation
  - the gentrification-to-prison pipeline
  - transportation infrastructure and economy

Each chapter will contain a timeline, oral history, mode of resistance, and an explanation of relevant policies to the issue.



Click here to learn more about our Narratives of Displacement Project

While we are producing much of the work amongst AEMP members, we are also inviting outside scholars, cartographers, activists, and researchers to contribute content to Counterpoints. Allowing the project to further the scope of our own research, and to take deep theoretical approaches, as well as broader geographic scales.




We hope that Counterpoints will help to:

  - Enhance public education around the subject of eviction and gentrification within and beyond the Bay Area by providing visuals and content in a printed and online atlas.

  - Provide an interdisciplinary platform for scholars, activists, and art practitioners to collaborate, and thereby: Produce insights into the dynamics, consequences, and experiences of displacement, particularly in a regional lens

  - Identify new ways to produce maps, narratives, images, and histories that are rooted in scholarly methods and critiques but able to speak to audiences beyond academia

The Atlas project will be completed by the autumn of 2018. Over the course of 2017, AEMP will build its editorial board, curate maps, and produce texts.


https://www.antievictionmap.com/video-1-1/


As a project of the San Francisco Tenants Union, the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP) (http://www.antievictionmap.com) performs research and gathers oral histories centered on the issues of gentrification, eviction and displacement in the Bay Area, and presents this material through highly visual, interactive and accessible online media and public events. The purpose of this work is to educate the public and to support the activities of other agencies working on behalf of housing equity in the region.


The foundational underpinning of the AEMP is to inform, empower and activate individuals who are negatively impacted by housing inequity and displacement and to support the work of organizations working in this space. By excavating pertinent data and producing accessible, powerful visualizations of this abstract information connected with individual stories-of-struggle, the AEMP re-orients and repositions power in the community and in the hands of those who are working to restore housing equity in low-income communities and communities of color.



Our Atlas project members include: Adrienne Hall, Aidan Thawley, Alex Schafran, Aloka Narayanan, Austin Ehrhardt, Deland Chan, John Stehlin, Carla Wojczuk,  Erin McElroy, Finley Coyl, John Stehlin, Magie Ramirez, Manissa Maharawal, Maria Acosta, Marko Muir, Mary Shi, Savannah Kilner, Terra Graziani.