The Malleable City

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The 1836 map of Moscow was not intended for navigation or orientation. It was primarily a instrument of education. Published by Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, a London organization that aimed to educate the working class. Founded in 1826, the society issued a variety of educational publications, such as the "Penny Cyclopaedia" and the "Penny Magazine". This mapintended to represented the city of Moscow as only one of the fragments of the imagined cultural space of (educated) working class. It can be seen as a carefully curated window to Moscow, transparency of which could rarely be put to test by its intended working class audience. As such, the map uses representational techniques that are reductive and direct. The knowledge about Moscow offered is subsumed into three graphic elements of the map: a plan (form), a cityscape (view), and an icon (image).

The Malleable City