CARTOGRAPHY AND VISUAL CORRESPONDENCES THOUGHT AND REALITY OF MODERNISM IN EUROPE AND CHINA

Abstract

With the coming of the second industrial revolution in England, great changes took place also
within the European society, in particular a new concept of urban planning, and an early form
of soil gentrification came to light. The middle class had finally won a place in politics, while
academics invited the governments to review the entire landscape of human relationships
through the eye of Modernism. Europe then engaged in a civilizing mission, transplanting
factories and thoughts worldwide.
Considering the modernist movement from a transcultural perspective we thus aim to
analyze the development and implementation of the theories into the practice, as to underline
the differences and convergences among some places on a global level. We look in particular
at Europe and China as a flourishing urban milieu, with the Chinese city of Chongqing as
basis to study the turning points between ancient and modern society in China, and Paris in
France as the place in which the ideas of urbanization, social regulation, and sanitation have
come into being in their very first stage.
We focus our discourse on the divergence between cartography and reality, putting
emphasis on the concept of visual utopia. Through the analysis of some Chongqing old maps
it will be finally possible to appreciate the Chinese peculiar cartographic methods, and the
subsequent assimilation of the European ‘scientific’ methods of cartographic survey in China.