Sometimes, making a difference doesn’t require a huge budget, new technology, or incredible innovation. Sometimes you just need to notice a need and look at existing services and equipment. This is what happened and is still being perfected in suburbs of Seattle, with the creation of specific bus routes to get people from various neighbourhoods to mountain trails, where they can enjoy nature and get some exercise. When you think about it, it’s pretty obvious that it’s a kind of service that should exist elsewhere, and that “transit agencies need to ensure that whatever their limitations, people can access public lands with public resources like transit.”

At the height of lockdowns around the world, a number of people moved to smaller cities or villages, in some cases simply to find more space, in others to move back with parents or in cheaper places. Some had the privilege of a second home, while others moved ‘for good.’ Such a movement happened in Italy, temporarily revitalizing some long suffering and shrinking villages. Now there are new villagers, mayors, and other politicians hoping they can use the opportunity to keep this new life around.

Three strong trends that are appearing all over the world in multiple domains: What gets mapped or measured gets noticed. What doesn’t, “disappears.” Adjacent idea; various entities, like large corporations and some government instances try to obfuscate issues and information to dissimulate parts of systems. Data is everywhere, being collected everywhere, and often seized or made private when it should have been public and transparently available. In this piece at MAS Context, Olga Subirós explains how these three trends and other factors interact and why it’s important for citizens to create and collect cartographic evidence of invisible cities.

Quick preamble: I love everything about this story. It’s probably an understatement to say that there’s been a lot of failure across the Americas and much of the world when it comes to governments taking part in the wellbeing of indigenous peoples, when it hasn’t been outright malfeasance.