As those who know me well know, I love maps: I like to see them, I like to make them and I like to use them to give answers to complex questions. I like the fact that you can create maps about almost anything. But surely, what I like most about them is that they are unique tools to show unnoticed realities that help to understand all types of phenomena. Some common (and, to some extent, hackneyed) examples of such maps are those used to explain the spread of diseases1, the distribution of energy consumption, social inequality, or gentrification.
Let me propose an exercise: close your eyes for a moment and imagine a person devoted to science and research. Almost certainly, you may have visualized a middle-aged man in a white robe and glasses who is doing “things” in a laboratory or in front of a computer, probably to solve a problem related to health, the environment or making a process more efficient. If I have “read your mind” it is not because you are a predictable person, but because that is (with small variations) the most frequent image about scientists.
During the last few years, I have hardly shown any activity on this website. This is because they have coincided with periods of considerable intensity, especially in terms of work. I already wrote about one of the main reasons, and today I would like to write about another other one: Accessible Zaragoza, the collaborative mapping project of aspects related to urban mobility and disability that I devised in the academic year 2015-16 within a chair at the Universidad San Jorge and in which I have been working as a principal investigator since then.