A book of maps illustrates the past and present of Ferguson.
How well do you know the area you live in? Are you pretty much navigating exclusively with the help of your phone’s GPS, or could you direct a wayward stranger who asks you for directions to the grocery store, the highway, or wherever they are trying to go? When we build familiarity with a specific town, neighborhood, or region, our minds build a map of that place, which can have more to do with functionality than objective reality. Which is to say, we don’t necessarily need to know the exact distance from our door to the corner coffee shop. Our minds take in a version of geographic facts that serve to get us from point A to point B, but when we’re given an opportunity to see the same familiar landscapes from a new vantage point—an airplane, let’s say—we might find that our mental map is missing a few details.
Something similar can happen when we look at maps of a place. A traveler’s atlas shows one view of the major roadways and thoroughfares, while a satellite map can define the architecture and infrastructure in a given area. One map may seem to give a wildly different impression of a place compared to another. In her new book, Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA, Patty Heyda, a Washington University professor of architecture and urban design, presents dozens of maps of Ferguson, each one revealing new information and deepening the reader’s understanding of the area.
After the events that transpired in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s killing in 2014, Ferguson became a symbol as much as it is a place. Radical Atlas seeks to challenge our collective understanding of Ferguson in the same way as viewing Missouri from an airplane would broaden ones mental map of the state. As stated in the book’s introduction: “This atlas aims to deny simplified narratives of ‘Ferguson,’ the 2014 events and the place that have been reduced into stories of poverty and police violence.”
The maps contained within Radical Atlas include everything from the types of zoning and lot sizes allowed to be built in specific parts of the community to the amount of funding the schools there receive compared to other nearby districts. Radical Atlas also illustrates St. Louis’s growth over time and how Ferguson came to be what is referred to as a “first-ring suburb”: an older suburb that is closer in proximity to the city center than newer suburban developments. A related series of maps in the book shows how federal policies that condoned racially discriminatory mortgage lending led to more pronounced segregation in the area. These maps help the reader understand how organic factors like watersheds and the systemic forces of urban planning give definition to a community.
The overwhelming amount of information contained within Radical Atlas (to say nothing of the research that must have been required to create it) is belied by its highly digestible illustrations. Part of the book’s thesis is that Ferguson is emblematic of a certain kind of community in America and that the woes and triumphs present there are similar to those found in towns of similar ilk. It stands to reason that the better one understands Ferguson, the better one understands America. There is no doubt that this book imbues its readers with a better understanding of a specific Missouri community.
RADICAL ATLAS OF FERGUSON, USA Patty Heyda, 312 pages, nonfiction, Belt Publishing, paperback (8 by 10 inches), $34.
This article was originally published in the March/April 2025 edition of Missouri Life.
