Malmö has, in many ways, become a symbol for the failures of Swedish “integration” policies. During the city-wide shootings perpetrated earlier this year, the Swedish government reproduced a xenophobic image of the city’s immigrant population by pointedly sending the Minister of Integration to the “notorious” neighborhood of Rosengård. Was this not a further scapegoating of the neighborhood’s inhabitants through a reproduction of a particular imagined space of the Other? In this paper, we seek new experimental geographies that go beyond critique and enable people to reclaim these spatial imaginaries. As both authors currently live in Malmö, this project represents a self-reflexive engagement with our city. Utilizing a web-based application, we hope to allow alternative mappings to be seen, muted stories to be heard, and new conceptual spaces to emerge.

Inspired by the field of experimental geography, this paper explores ways of facilitating and participating in the production of alternative spatial narratives. To that end, we consider the potential of web 2.0 based open-source mapping applications in contrast to more conventional public participation GIS (PPGIS).  By remaking the prefabricated and predefined PPGIS tools into something user-appropriated and open-ended, we see counter-mapping as a playful source of counter-action against prevalent geographical imaginations. If we understand mappings as ontogenesis rather than ontology, as Kitchen & Dodge (2007) have argued, then maps are to be considered an integral part of the political and poetic production of everyday urban space. The practice of mapping, in other words, does not so much provide information about a city, as it is an integrated and intimate creative act of a city.