Mapping Feral Streets

Stumbling on the edges of the mapped world, I walked purposefully in the middle of roads, craving knowledge of the streets, with a GPS in my hand. Chanting road names like a mantra and scribbling rogue roads onto paper, I attempted to help with the OpenStreetMap project during the weekend of the Southampton Mapping Party.

I found there was plenty to discover, the maps becoming fluid and growing in a way that seemed almost organic, like the world is new again and no-one knows where they are or where they were. Sometimes I was asked if I was lost and I never knew how to answer that.

Sometimes I noticed road names that were damaged - one only had the letter 'D' left on a sign, as if the residents/vandals of that area had renamed the street themselves. Sometimes there were traces of former road names or perhaps just mistakes, and that reminded me of Reports of Certain Events in London by China Miéville. The story includes reports of sightings of viae ferae (feral streets), such as Varmin Way, that appear for a while in different towns, as if they were just visiting, before they vanish again. Perhaps some of the streets that I noted have disappeared already.