Mapping Urban Mnemonics for a Non-Anthropocentric Future-Making

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Burcu Nimet Dumlu

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Abstract.

 

Urban mnemonics describes how the built environment holds, evokes, and shapes personal and collective memory. Memory is not static or stored, but formed through ongoing engagement with materials, spaces, and environments. From this perspective, memory-making is a shared process between human and nonhuman actors, where traces and meanings emerge over time.

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Cities are shaped by the interaction of materials, technologies, environmental forces, policies, and social and emotional atmospheres. These elements do not merely support memory but actively participate in its formation. Materials age, respond to natural forces, and evoke sensory experiences, giving them agency in how memory is created and sustained.

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This research develops a multi-layered mapping approach to trace these co-created mnemonics, revealing how urban environments resist complete representation while supporting imagination and knowledge. By understanding memory as material and relational, the work proposes more ethical, sustainable, and inclusive ways of imagining urban futures that extend beyond human-centered perspectives.

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Keywords: affective materialities; memory mapping; nonhuman agency; relational ontologies; urban mnemonics