Mapping New Geographies

Abstract

The 2022 protests in the parliament grounds in Wellington, New Zealand emerged in response to the government mandates and lockdowns following the covid-19 pandemic, continued for 24 days, led to violence and unprecedented disruption to the capital city of New Zealand. The public taking their frustrations into the streets signifies two seemingly contradictory societal transformations, the shrinking capacity of democratic institutions, and the resisting agency of the public space in challenging the dominant politics. As noted by the French philosophers Jacques Rancière we have been habituated to understand democracy in the form of parliamentary process of repetition, however what can guarantee the permanent democracy is the continuous emergence of the fleeting subjects that occupy the street in a sporadic manner. While scholars have extensively examined these protests across diverse disciplines such as misinformation and social media, media studies, public policies, and social movements, the spatial dimension of this demonstration has not been explored yet. Moreover, analysing the contemporary protests is not possible without considering the role of digital media and technology by the public. Digitally augmented protests in urban spaces are a significant tool for social movements to become visible, gain public support, reach their demands and foster structural change. This paper presents the findings of an ongoing transdisciplinary research (bringing together disciplines of architecture, urban design, law, criminology, and computer sciences) in order to address the current decline in trust of democracy, and it aims to investigate the role of architecture and urban space in supporting the formation of a movement proclaiming the right to democratic institutions . In doing so, the first objective is to find and map the dynamic, digitally-enhanced and multi-layered geographies of this protest; and secondly to analyse their spatial (both physical and digital) relationship to the existing democratic institutions.