"maps and graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world."

This is true, and mapping is much more important than that. With each mapping, every time, THE WORLD IS MADE ANEW. With each mapping a new world is created. Mapping allows us to make known and visible what would otherwise remain invisible and unknown. To put it simply, to pursue mapping in an exploratory mode is to design. They are one in the same practice.
It is the inventive capacity of representation that enables thinkers of all discipline--whether the products of geographers, cartographers, historians, scientist--to have revelatory descriptions and constructions of reality. Therefore, WE MUST HAVE NEW MAPPINGS FOR THE IMAGINATION OF THE WORLD TO ADVANCE. We must have new mappings to participate in that imagination of a world anew. We must continuously reveal previously unnoticed, invisible, or misunderstood characteristics of the world.