An Elusive Infrastructure

This paper investigates the practice of participative mapping by examining the creation of a geographic database on cycling facilities. By exploring OpenStreetMap discussions, the authors draw up an inventory of problems that amateur cartographers encounter with regard to description. Prior to the stabilization of categories, the contributors’ doubts reveal an elusive urban infrastructure that contrasts with the system which is ordered and structured by public policies. These doubts crystallize around three levels of resistance to the creation of a database: first, in discussions, cycling infrastructure seems to be heterogeneous and changing; second, it is organized in versions that are difficult to link up to one another and, third, it is updated in users’ practices that are difficult to break away from. By limiting the analysis to problems of description, this paper highlights a particular aspect of the contributors’ experience—open-ended collective inquiry. In parallel with a perspective that favors agreement, the role of procedures in debates, or the contributors’ motivation, this approach serves to document the phase of doubt and trial characterizing exploration as such, before order is established.