_The need for the Handbook of Urban Transformation arose out of the ‘Glossary of Urban Transformation’, a series of workshops undertaken by Crossmopollinate, in collaboration with the [Urban Transformation and Placemaking] (https://spacetoplace.org/) project at the University of Heidelberg supported by the DAAD. These workshops, intended to create a rhizomatic glossary of terms that deal with the notions of Urban Transformation as encountered by the various disciplines that deal with urbanity, such as anthropology, urban planning, geography, transcultural theory, art history, architecture, and cartography—moving beyond a linear, grid pattern of meaning-making towards an associative mycelium-like assemblage._ _The glossary serves as the first chapter of the Handbook of Urban Transformation. Our goal is to seek the possibility of co-producing knowledge through a more locally situated, community-based structure. The glossary thus became a starting point for us to think about a methodological framework that paves the way for reshaping our lived spaces. We intend to create an open-source handbook that functions as a manifesto, a journal, a catalog, and a pedagogic tool. The Handbook seeks to abstract, democratise and decolonise mapping, while being critical of the historically contested mode of documentation. Making mapping a form of community expression and participation will serve as a method of charting not only spaces but also their sociopolitical implications. The structure of our collective, which comprises a diverse yet interconnected set of disciplines inherently supports mapping as a method that brings in the several layers of being in the city. We wish to thereby challenge the existing modes of authorship of maps and put the community in the center of authorship._