Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities – videos

The UrbanBuzz team that recorded some of the community showcase presentations during the Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities event in June, have now released the videos on YouTube. The videos are showing the posters and explanations for our work in Marks Gate, Pepys Estate and Hackney Wick. The presentations are by members of the communities, with some help from the project team.

This is the video for Marks Gate, where the focus was on community perceptions about their environment and how it can improved:

The next one shows the noise mapping work in the Pepys Estate (and I had the pleasure of assisting Caroline to explain the mapping):

And the final one shows the historical mapping in Hackney Wick:

The three videos give a good overview of the community mapping projects that were carried out within Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities, and the Environmental Justice projects with London 21 and London Sustainability Exchange .

Mapping for Sustainable Communities – presentations

The Mapping for Sustainable Communities seminar that was organised by myself together with London 21, on the 17th June, was a fantastic event that I thoroughly enjoyed. With over 100 participants, coming from academia, practice and from communities across London and further afield, it was a unique opportunity for discussion between these 3 groups which, unfortunately, is rare.

The day was fairly intensive with a series of presentations from a wide range of speakers, providing a range of views and opinions. At lunch, and especially during the afternoon workshops, there was more time for discussion and exchange of experiences. It was very satisfying to see people stand and discuss the various aspects of participatory and community mapping during the reception at the end of the day, after a heavy day of listening and talking about these issues.

The seminar covered the whole range of technical options – from paper to 3D computer mapping. It also covered various views – from the more theoretical to the practical.

As a conclusion from the day, it is clear that there is a good potential for community and participatory mapping in many aspects of life in the UK. Particpatory mapping can we be used to celebrate the wonder of places, find about their history, or identify issues that are of concern to the community. We need to take into account the local organisational and governance structures, and be sensitive to the needs of the communities within which we operate. There is an ethical dimension that should not be overlooked, but it is important to find the cases where we can make an impact with these tools and use them to make places more sustainable.

In case that you have missed the seminar, or would like to see the presentations from it, here is the outline of the day, with a link to the presentations on SlideShare:

• Muki Haklay (UCL) – Participatory mapping: a conceptual framework & Introduction to the day

• Steve Cinderby (SEI York) – GIS for Participation (GIS-P) methodology

• Duncan Fuller (Northumbria University) – Participatory Geographies and the role of mapping

• Kieron Stanley (Environment Agency) – How can we map Cumulative Impacts and aspects of environmental inequalities?

• Panel Discussion: between participation and technology – The paner included 4 short presentations: Richard Kingston (The University of Manchester) discussed aspects of the digital divide; Sophie Des Clare (UCL) talked about participatory mapping in the marine environment; Andrea Berardi (Open University) focus on the aspects of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ brain thinking for participation; and Louise Francis (London 21) highlighted the benefits of paper based mapping when combined with GIS analysis.

• Chris Church (London 21) – Introduce some of the practical aspects of community mapping

• Chris Perkins (The University of Manchester) – Community mapping with focus on cartographical and social aspects

• Colleen Whitaker (London 21) – Community mapping as a tool to identify local environmental issues and concerns

• Mike Batty (UCL) – Participation through Online Technologies: Experiences with 3D-GIS, Second Life and Multimedia in London (Mike’s presentation was too interactive – so for more information about the issues that he presented, see the CASA website)

• Community Showcase, where five of the communities that we are working with talked about their experiences.

Mapping for Sustainable Communities Seminar

As part of the Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities, we are organising a one day seminar titled ‘Mapping for Sustainable Communities – An interactive day of reports and discussion for community practitioners, academics and community groups‘.

This event is scheduled for 17th June 2008, starting at 10.30 and finishing with a reception around 7.00 in the evening. It is free and open to anyone with interest in community mapping.

This is how we describe the event:

The seminar will consider recent work and ways forward. It is being organised by University College London and the London 21 network as part of their ‘Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities’ project funded under the UrbanBuzz programme and their Environmental Justice programme. These projects use internet-based and paper mapping along with other tools to work with communities on collecting and collating local information.

The seminar will bring together academics, practitioners and community groups to discuss the use of mapping as a means of engagement and tool for collaborative action, and to consider the benefits and limitations. The seminar includes sessions for academics and practitioners and a celebration of community work.

Outline Agenda
10.30 am “Academic” Session – Theory & Research

• The use of different methodologies in participatory mapping
• Mapping, impacts and inequalities
• Panel discussion: the balance between participation and the use of technology

2pm “Practitioners” Session – The Practice of participatory mapping

• The use of mapping with local communities
• Mapping, empowerment and Community Development
• Local Government, Regeneration and the use of community mapping
• Practical workshop: starting a participatory mapping project

4.30pm “Community” Showcase – work in progress

• A brief introduction to the development of the two projects, followed by presentations about the five case studies.

6pm Reception

Now, just because a session is tagged as academic, practitioners or community, it doesn’t mean that we want just one group – the whole point is to have people from different groups joining the discussion throughout the day. The titles are about the ‘hats’ that you put on during a session!

The conference is free but numbers are limited. Register on-line at http://www.communitymaps.london21.org/includes/mcsc_conference.php

Web 2.0 notion of democratisation and Participatory GIS

An interesting issue that emerges from The Cult of
the Amateur is about Participatory GIS or PPGIS. As Chris Dunn mentioned in her recent paper in Progress in Human Geography, Participatory GIS makes many references to ‘democratisation’ of GIS (together with Renee Sieber’s 2006 review, these two papers are excellent introduction to PPGIS) .

According to the OED, democratisation is ‘the action of rendering, or process of becoming, democratic’, and democracy is defined as ‘Government by the people; that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them (as in the small republics of antiquity) or by officers elected by them. In modern use often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege.’ [emphasis added].
The final point is the notion that is mostly used when advocates of Web 2.0 use the term, and it seems that in this notion of democratisation, erasure of hereditary or arbitrary differences is extended also to expertise and hierarchies in the media and knowledge production. In some areas, Web 2.0 actively erodes the differentiation between experts and amateurs, using mechanisms such as anonymous contributions that hide from the reader any information about who is contributing, what their authority is and why we should listen to them.
As Keen notes, doing away with social structures and equating amateurs with experts is actually not a good thing in the long run.
This brings us back to Participatory GIS – the PGIS literature discusses the need to ‘level the field’ and deal with power structures and inequalities in involvement in decision making – and this is exactly what we are trying to achieve in the Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities project. We also know very well from the literature that, even in complex issues, individuals and groups are investing time and effort to understand complex issues and as a result can become quite expert. For example, the work of Maarten Wolsink on NIMBYs shows that this very local focus is not so parochial after all.
I completely agree with the way Dunn puts it (p. 627-8):

‘Rather than the ‘democratization of GIS’ through th[e] route [of popularization] , it would seem that technologizing of deliberative democracy through Participatory GIS currently offers a more effective path towards individual and community empowerment – an analytical as opposed to largely visual process; an interventionist approach which actively rather than passively seeks citizen involvement; and a community-based as opposed to individualist ethos.’

Yet, what I’m taking from Keen is that we also need to rethink the role of the expert within Participatory GIS – at the end of the day, we are not suggesting we do away with planning departments or environmental experts.
I don’t recall that I’ve seen much about how to define the role of experts and how to integrate hierarchies of knowledge in Participatory GIS processes – potentially an interesting research topic?