Koolmijnlaan - Mapping Radical Interdependencies

In this case study we look back at our involvement in the redesign of Koolmijnlaan road in the Limburg municipality Houthalen-Helchteren. We reflect on how we have worked there with local and supralocal collectives to re-imagine this road and its surrounding neighbourhood. Whereas the project did generate a new dynamic and evidenced a willingness to cooperate among different existing collectives, it also became quickly clear to us that we would first have to unpack a certain number of ‘deep tensions’ amongst those collectives, but also between them and the municipality, the regional governments and individual inhabitants. We will explain how we used mapping as a way to provide a platform for revealing and designing the radical interdependence between individual human and non-human actors, collectives. This case study thus brings the concept of ontologising - designing for and with radical interdependencies- into practice via mapping.