Description
Spatial data visualizations by Laura Kurgan, professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she directs the Center for Spatial Research (formerly Spatial Information Design Lab). Her most notable work, "Million Dollar Blocks" (2006, with Eric Cadora), maps incarceration spending back to the city blocks where incarcerated people live — revealing that some single blocks in Brooklyn cost the state over a million dollars per year in prison expenditure. Kurgan's book "Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics" (2013) examines how satellite imagery, GPS, and digital mapping reshape our understanding of space. Her work consistently interrogates the politics of who maps, what gets mapped, and whose perspective spatial data serves.
