Has anyone geographically mapped assets or used photo-mapping in conjunction with ABCD?
I'm working with a community of folks doing an inventory of associational life and the physical landscape. They're curious about using photo-mapping to create a community map of places where people connect to each other.
This seems to me to be a very natural fit with ABCD, so I'm curious if others have experience with this.
The HealthyCity project has developed some nice tools for this. Check out their toolbox at http://www.healthycity.org/toolbox. In particular the Participatory Asset Mapping toolkit should be very helpful to a project like this.
The West Sacramento Youth Resource Coalition did a project with UC Davis that produced a Google map of photos of their community. It was very effective at elevating the youth voice in the city's planning process. There is a nice summary and some pictures of that project here: http://daviswiki.org/Research_on_West_Sacramento
Ron
Stephanie - we used geo mapping for assets for an ABCD based project in Westchester Co., NY. It was conducted by the county Department of Senior and Adult Services, and trained college undergrads who conducted on the ground community asset maps during summer break. Also had some geo-mapping for a project in Montgomery Co. PA, also run by the county Senior Services department.Confirm Lisa;s observationabove that once you map it physically the patterns and gaps really pop out.Allowed us to identify and area in the middle of Montgomery Co. we dubbed "The Great Plains" becuse of the dearth of services, etc. if you want some additional info, Michael Marcus (also ABCD faculty) and I would be happy to discuss and access to some of the reports, etc. please contact me at my work email jmigliaccio@metlife.com. Best wishes-- John
Hi Stephanie, This is a very interesting topic to me and I have developed an interactive Google Map that can be used for participatory mapping at: http://trails.zgroks.com/index.html. It uses Google JavaScript API version 3, and some PHP along with JavaScript and stores the user-added data in a MySQL database. It is easy to add to and to flag markers for removal, and creates permalinks to itself that can posted to Twitter.
It includes a Guestbook that users can upload photos to. Presently this application has been used to collaboratively select count locations for the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Documentation Project in Rochester, New York and to serve as a way point for the distribution of information. But it can also be used to crowd source information such as the location of community features or the placement of geographical markers referencing existing conditions.
Update - this site: http://grok.zgroks.com/index.html - is being developed to serve as a community-based asset map for Rochester, New York. It will be developed consistent with the methodology described in HUD's Neighborhood Networks Asset Mapping Guide. The site does and will provide the ability for anonymous users to add to the map/database. The fields, categories, and icons are still being developed but the goal is to maximize participatory input to the map and the underlying MySQL database. The map includes base layers that can be toggled that utilize Google Fusion Tables to depict Vacancy Rates and Population Density at the Block Group Level (2010 Census Redistricting Files) obtained from http://www.communitycommons.org.
