Simone Morgagni

Building a representation of larger scale spaces, implies for human beings to deal with past experiences acquired either by travelling or by consulting symbolic representations of the concerned space. A particularity of these spaces is that they are structured in many ways, not just by natural elements such as mountains or rivers, but also by man-made elements. When citizens use transport infrastructures to navigate, their travel influence their mapping of the concerned metropolitan areas, as has been memorably demonstrated amongst Pittsburgh and London taxi drivers (Chase, 1983; Maguire et al., 2006). If a few studies have highlighted how mass transit networks, especially those including train and underground lines, contribute to structure residents’ mental representations of cities (Guo, 2011; Vertesi, 2008), I will share new research to show an association between peoples’ representations of metropolitan areas and the schematic maps of their respective transport networks, thus underlying how they are impacted by transit maps with a specific focus on Paris, London and Berlin metropolitan areas.