Participatory mapping is a collaborative form of cartography that focuses on the local and traditional knowledge of communities and the value of its inclusion in decision-making processes. Subverting the history of maps as a colonization tool, participatory mapping began to develop as a discipline in the 1980s with a shift from top-down to bottom-up mapping, based on the understanding that local communities have unique and expert knowledge on their own territories. The society supports initiatives in urban and rural public mapping, critical geography, storytelling, critical and feminist epistemologies.