WEGENWERKEN - Mapping as caring for, about and with the slow city

The WegenWerken project was a proposition to explore slow roads as spaces where people would gather around the question of sustainable mobility - both those who live around these roads, as well as others who might be affected by or interested in this question. Slow roads are not the first concern that comes into people’s minds when they think about their city, but it is something that they increasingly appreciate and care for. We followed Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s (2017) call to discuss what could be the matters of care. Across different stages of WegenWerken, we used maps as a tool in mediating between a careful attention for the particularities of people's everyday experiences with slow roads and the process of vision-making on a broader scale. To reflect on how these maps helped us articulate slow roads as matters of common care, we start by thinking with Tronto (2015) on the complexity of caring, and what she proposes as the first two phases of care: being attentive - by caring about, and being responsible - by caring for.