WHY USE IT?

Community mapping provides equitable development practitioners with accurate and unique information, effective visual tools, and the ability to understand and share their own experience in the context of their changing environment.  Community mapping is powerful because of its capacity to democratize information-both what is recorded and who has access to it. When presented well, maps have the power to convey complicated information and relationships in a straightforward, accessible manner, enabling non-experts to participate meaningfully in community planning and advocacy.

This section contains over 20 examples of successful mapping projects, most with sample maps, to illustrate how communities use mapping to support equitable development.  The maps were developed over the past decade, from 1992-2002. These examples are organized into five categories:

Quick Reference Guide: Community Mapping Examples

Documenting, Monitoring, and Analyzing Neighborhood Change.   back to top
A primary use of community mapping is understanding and communicating detailed information about neighborhood conditions.  Several projects monitor property data as indicators of a community's health, watching for high concentrations of tax delinquencies, code violations, and utility shutoffs, which can indicate areas that are in distress.  With this knowledge, practitioners can either provide assistance to current owners or acquire troubled properties.

• Monitoring property parcel change: early warning systems.  Some of the most advanced analytical community mapping projects use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to track and display detailed property information at the parcel level.

Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles, Chicago NEWS, MAP Milwaukee, and the Philadelphia Neighborhood Information System are some leading examples of early warning systems that are accessible to the public through the Internet.  Built upon massive databases, they allow users to identify properties that are vacant, not code compliant, and/or in danger of foreclosure. This data can provide early warnings about neighborhood decline. These systems compile their databases from city tax records, building departments, the Census, public utilities, and other municipal data sources.

• Targeting resources for maximum impact .  Displaying housing and real estate data by geography is a powerful tool for assessing how to target resources to maximize community revitalization.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, a community mapping application revealed that at-risk properties were not concentrated in a few neighborhoods, but actually dispersed throughout the entire city.  Using this information, the local community development corporation chose to focus its housing assistance program on housing needs throughout the entire city, instead of only on properties in the most impoverished neighborhoods.

• Building a shared understanding of current conditions. Community mapping plays a key role in establishing the baseline understanding of neighborhood conditions that is critical for effective community planning.

In Buffalo's West Side neighborhood, a resident planning process to build consensus around revitalization priorities used community mapping to provide residents with information on demographics, land-use, and housing conditions.  Based on a shared understanding of this information, participants were able to agree about where to focus revitalization efforts and create a comprehensive neighborhood plan.

Identifying Development Opportunities.   back to top
Community mapping is often used to identify development opportunities for affordable housing and commercial real estate.  Community mapping can be used to strategically target new development and redevelopment in low-income communities.

• Identifying and reusing vacant land.  As infill development and brownfield reuse rise to the top of many equitable development agendas, community mapping will play a key role by identifying vacant properties.

In Philadelphia, the New Kensington CDC worked in a community with over 1,000 vacant and blighted lots.  Using an in-house GIS application (supported by the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations), in addition to a comprehensive citywide system offered by the University of Pennsylvania, the CDC identified and reclaimed 60 percent of those vacant parcels over a five-year period.

• Preserving existing, and creating new, affordable housing.  Using community mapping to highlight the jobs/housing imbalance within a city or region is a powerful step toward being able to locate new housing near employment opportunities.

In Atlanta, the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP) used GIS to map income and salary data relative to the cost and affordability of housing. The group used the results to advocate with city and county officials for more affordable housing.  ANDP's Mixed Income Communities Initiative (MICI) uses community mapping to identify development opportunities for housing, businesses, and social services that will promote a mixed-income neighborhood.

• Determining markets for commercial real estate ventures: attracting new development .  Community mapping assists community practitioners in understanding market share and aggregate income by geography.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, community groupsused community mapping to demonstrate to potential real estate developers the aggregate income within a three-mile radius of a new K-mart the groups were proposing.  By displaying aggregate income rather than median family income, they were able to demonstrate the strong buying power of central city neighborhoods.  Other groups from Milwaukee used mapping to demonstrate the discrepancies between population density and grocery stores and pharmacies, in an effort to attract more commercial development into previously underserved neighborhoods.

• Linking development opportunities to transportation systems.  Community mapping is often used to better integrate community revitalization efforts with transportation planning and development.

In New York City, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance used the Community Mapping Assistance Project (CMAP)-a service of New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG)-to demonstrate the importance of New York City's waterfront for environmental, economic, and political purposes.  A series of maps was prepared to illustrate how ferry service routes are connected to economic development and social services.

Expanding Community Support Systems.   back to top
In addition to directly supporting equitable development initiatives, community mapping projects have strengthened community support systems by fostering new partnerships, creating new opportunities to acquire data, and clarifying the boundaries of target neighborhoods.

• Catalyzing new community partnerships .  Due to the technology and data expertise needed to develop complex community mapping projects, new partnerships have been formed to use and collect data for community development purposes.

In many cities, including Milwaukee, Oakland, Richmond, and Minneapolis, GIS has influenced the way community organizations track and share data.  In Oakland, the GIS application developed by the Urban Strategies Council brought together 19 agencies and set the foundation for integrated approaches around education and health service delivery.  This network of organizations with shared values and a vision for change was able to use the data and maps to advocate for children, youth and families.

• Displaying neighborhood boundaries.  Many cities loosely define neighborhood boundaries, sometimes making it difficult to strategically target resources and programs for revitalization.

The Oregon Hill neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia, is six blocks by three blocks. Before the Richmond Neighborhood Indicator Project, it was very difficult to access data about this distinct area, as opposed to by census tracts or legislative areas.  Community mapping allows organizations to select specific and relevant boundaries to their neighborhoods, at the parcel or block level, and compile data for those areas. This makes it easier to target resources and evaluate the impacts of revitalization efforts.

• Obtaining previously unavailable data . Community mapping often helps groups get access to data that were previously unavailable by creating a larger market for this data and encouraging collaboration among users.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, several community based organizations were independently requesting the same data from the county assessors office for their GIS projects.  The county was unable to service all of the data requests, and local groups were wasting resources on duplicate efforts.  By forming a data-sharing collaborative, the community groups were able to acquire timely, relevant, and affordable data.

Organizing and Advocating for Policy Change.   back to top
Community maps are effective organizing tools because they engage residents in the process of gathering, analyzing, and presenting information about their neighborhoods.  Community maps provide a way for stakeholders to get specific about what exists in a community and what they would like to see, and can provide a vehicle for discussions with broader groups.  Several groups recalled that after creating and sharing maps, they were taken more seriously and included in processes that were not open to them before.  Using maps to communicate with decision makers poses two key advantages: (1) It communicates a large amount of information in a relatively simple and compelling format, and (2) it conveys that the users are savvy about data and technology and have important information about their neighborhood.

• Linking community benefits to development subsidies. By conveying land use and economic information in a simple-to-read map, advocacy coalitions have secured community benefits from large developments.

The Figueroa Corridor Coalition for Economic Justice needed an effective education and organizing tool to respond to the proposed development of an entertainment, hotel, and retail complex adjacent to the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.  Organizers created a poster-sized map of the neighborhood surrounding the proposed new project, illustrating ownership patterns and development "hot spots."  Using the map, community groups successfully negotiated a landmark community benefits package from the developer which included investments in affordable housing and parks, a local hiring requirement, and even parking provisions for residents, a first for a low-income neighborhood.

• Reforming policies that cause neighborhood instability .  Maps have helped low-income communities win policy reform around absentee landlords and land banking by speculators.

In Providence, Rhode Island, The Providence Plan (a planning and community development intermediary with an advanced GIS application) teamed up with Rhode Island Organizing Project (a statewide organizing effort comprised of congregations, labor unions, and community groups) to win legislative changes that promote neighborhood stability.  The project team used GIS to map properties-on a parcel level-that were sold through tax sales and to identify properties that had had multiple owners and frequent turnovers.  The maps helped community members identify one root cause of instability: speculators were buying tax delinquent properties through auctions and allowing them to remain vacant.  By quantifying the problem through maps and data, community groups were able to convince legislators to pass new state legislation that includes the following:

• Municipalities may turn titles over to local CDCs for $1.
• Individuals owing taxes cannot purchase titles.
• The tax title purchaser is responsible for the condition of property.

• Connecting community organizations and residents to elected officials. Legislative decisions at the local, state, and federal levels affect community building activities.  One valuable component of community mapping is the ability to display information and data relative to legislative or administrative districts.

In 2000, the Community Mapping Assistance Project launched the Who Represents Me Webapplication that enables anyone with a New York City address to easily find and contact the public officials who represent them at all levels of government, from city council to state legislature to Congress (as well as borough president, mayor, governor, and president). This site enables community groups, activists, the media, and any concerned citizen to easily find and contact their representatives on issues from transit to good government.

Tracking Program Success and Sharing Outcomes.   back to top
Mapping can help communities hold themselves and others accountable by comparing predicted outcomes with actual ones and providing mechanisms to monitor development.

• Expanding the awareness and reach of equitable development .  Maps have proven useful in helping multiple audiences better understand equitable development.

In Kansas City, the local LISC affiliate, a community development network of 17 CDCs, and the University of Missouri, Kansas City have partnered through a GIS initiative to build widespread awareness of equitable development issues.  As part of this initiative, the partners are conducting an original house-by-house inventory of housing conditions in the core of Kansas City. The primary goal of the initiative is to use maps based on the inventory to strengthen and preserve affordable housing in the low-income communities in Kansas City by building new coalitions, attracting resources, and evaluating current community development programs.

• Displaying project outcomes in a meaningful way .  Community maps and accompanying data are useful for monitoring outcomes, improving the perception of the neighborhood, and reporting to funders.

The Oregon Hill neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia, was facing rapid gentrification, and the local community development organization required an additional $20,000-$30,000 subsidy per housing unit to complete a rehabilitation project.  Oregon Hill used maps of changing demographics (increasing numbers of residents with college degrees, increase in household income), home prices, and rates of sale to convey to local funders the level of displacement and the need to increase the subsidies.

• Raising and maintaining funding and resources .  The ability to display neighborhood data by geography helps to maintain project accountability and track foundation investments.

In Philadelphia, local funders were evaluating the outcomes and successes of community development activities as part of a strategic planning process to determine future funding.  The Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations relied on community mapping to display the location of development projects and their impacts.  These maps helped secure funding for future community development projects.