12/20/2011

THOUGHTS ON COMMUNITY MAPPING A SHORT NARRATIVE

Rodger Barrett | Lire Botes | Alexis Glaberman

Property Condition Mapping

Contents

Thoughts on Community Mapping

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2 Participatory Mapping and GIS ..................................................................................................................... 2 GIS ............................................................................................................................................................. 2 Participatory Mapping .............................................................................................................................. 2 Stakeholder Engagement Strategies for Participatory Mapping .................................................................. 2 TDA (Trenton Downtown Association) ......................................................................................................... 3 GIS Applications for Community-Based Research and Action ...................................................................... 3 Public vs. Participation .................................................................................................................................. 3 Neighborhood Mapping and Evaluation: A Methodology for Participatory Community Health Initiatives 4 Benefits of Neighborhood Mapping and Evaluation ................................................................................ 4 How Mapping is used for Community Health Initiatives: ......................................................................... 5 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 5

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Thoughts on Community Mapping Introduction

This project seeks to better understand the role that property conditions play in the City of Trenton as well as provide an invaluable tool for the city. Our intentions are both immediate and long term. As we map the property conditions they serve to locate problems for the city to fix and provide a record of changes over the long term to allow us to better understand the effects of our interactions with the city we live in. Although we are some of the first to do this, we want to make sure that we set an example for other communities nationwide. By better understanding not only property condition mapping, but Public Participation Geographical Information Systems (PPGIS) as a whole, we can strive toward creating a system that will maximize efficiency as well as produce a better result. Because we care about Trenton we are committed to bettering it and hope that you too will share this passion with us. Please take the time to read the short, but informative article below on the topic of PPGIS and community mapping.

Participatory Mapping and GIS

GIS
Geographical information systems (GIS) encompass a wide area of systems that are used to link databases to geographical points as well as analyze the data. GIS is used in almost every industry in the nation and as such can be extremely powerful and extremely complicated to use. Only very recently have technologies been created that allow almost anyone to create powerful GIS. This revolution assisted by technologies like Mappler has moved the ability to research and change the world around them from desktop computers to smart phones that almost ubiquitously room our streets. This decentralization of GIS has solved several problems as well as created a few of its own.

Participatory Mapping
Participatory mapping was once the stuff of dreams of very recently has come into its own right as a successful strategy for gathering data to be used in a GIS. These PPGIS are very useful but can be extremely costly. Most importantly they can help to identify stakeholders, the people financially involved with, who play or live around, or who are legally responsible for community resources. From a theoretical standpoint PPGIS also raise a few questions that need to be answered.

Stakeholder Engagement Strategies for Participatory Mapping

Stakeholders are the beneficiaries of participatory mapping, but with their help the process can go much smoother. Participatory mapping can be used to create, gather, identify, inform, evaluate, facilitate, assist, empower, conduct, and educate. Through participatory mapping the stakeholders can gain an understanding of the tools and begin to take control of their own neighborhood. The main challenges are that outsiders coming into communities need to build relationships and trust and in many cases community members may not be accustomed to reading maps and aerial images.

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Thoughts on Community Mapping TDA (Trenton Downtown Association)

TDA is a non-profit organization dedicated to making New Jerseys capital city a more competitive location for business owners, and a more engaging center for workers, residents and visitors. It recently received 200,000 dollars state grant and plans to start a surge of tourism projects. The grant will help the association publish a visitors guide to the city, a restaurant brochure, a walking map, and support publishing costs of a guide currently produced by the Trenton Historical Society (Candice Frederick). Undoubtedly, TDA is spear heading Trentons road to attracting people to the city.

GIS Applications for Community-Based Research and Action

GIS tools were used to analyze telephone survey data to identify the residents perceptions of physical and social conditions in each ESCA. We used the traditional method of aggregating and summarizing survey responses at the ESCA level with descriptive statistics and bar charts. However, GIS tools made a unique contribution in allowing us to look at the geographic distribution of responses within each ESCA. In any community initiative, a fundamental task is defining what boundaries comprise a neighborhood. For YWC!, the Design Team consulted with local leaders who identified a meaningful way to define neighborhood locally the Elementary School Catchment Area (ESCA). Although the community targeted for this effort was a small town, it had 16 ESCAs and most people could associate their neighborhood with their local elementary school. This definition was also useful for programming and evaluation purposes. It formed a potential organizing structure for implementing neighborhood-based strategies, and some forms of neighborhood data including education and economic indicators were available by ESCA.

Public vs. Participation

PPGIS is supposed to be a more accessible version of traditional GIS. Better understanding the concepts underlying Public Participation will help its practitioners. Defining goals for public participation helps to ensure that a GIS accurately represents its population. We must clearly identify the population that the project is soliciting information form as well as the means in which we interact with them. There are three accepted categories of what constitutes the public: The people directly affected by the GIS People who can add value in the form of information and knowledge. People who are influential in the decision making process.

In Delineating Public and Participation in PPGIS by Marc Schlossberg and Elliot Shuford they ask the following questions of the populations which they are trying to map: 1.Who are potential beneficiaries? 2. Who might be adversely affected?

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Thoughts on Community Mapping

3. Have vulnerable groups been identified? 4. Have supporters and opponents been identified? 5. What is the relationship among stakeholders? By asking these questions decision makers must think about who they involve in the public participation process. In a similar fashion we can also define the level of involvement in relation to the people participating the figure below illustrates the complexity of the involvement of different groups of people. We can see from the chart that informing decision makers as much easier than trying to get the random public to adopt citizen control. As we move further towards the higher complexity the project becomes more heavily focused on public participation. Our project hopes to attract both affected individuals as well as interested observers to join in partnership with local community organizations to make a change in the neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Mapping and Evaluation: A Methodology for Participatory Community Health Initiatives
Benefits of Neighborhood Mapping and Evaluation
Mapping is a good way to study community setting and how they change over time. Additionally, mapping is used to describe community assets and structural, epidemiological and social features. It is also a good was to address issues within a community such as violence, neglect and substance abuse. Community mapping benefits neighborhoods by giving community members the opportunity to learn though experience and get involved in researching what types of issues reside in their neighborhood. It also gives these members a voice in deciding what improvements need to be made to their community.

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Thoughts on Community Mapping

How Mapping is used for Community Health Initiatives:
Neighborhood mapping can be very useful in locating disease incidents and origins. By collecting the proper data and the use of geographic information systems (GIS), the locations of these disease stricken areas can be plotted on a map. A map of such would greatly benefit community members in the prevention of illnesses. This type of map can also be useful in terminating the origin of the disease as to prevent further outbreaks or epidemics. An example of successfully using a health conditions map is, when John Snow plotted the locations of cholera. With his map, he was able to track where the disease was originating. From there, a prevention plan was created for the at risk neighborhoods. Mapping can also be used to find correlations between areas with poor housing conditions and health issues like low birth weights and asthma.

Conclusion
As you can see establishing an effective model for community mapping that involves public participation is both challenging and rewarding. By following the guidelines and research laid out here we hope to develop the most effective mapping solution possible. We also hope that this writing will influence the way others participate in mapping as well as inform the public of our intentions and methodologies with which we plan to actualize this project.

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