Community Participation and Geographic Information Systems - Chapter 2 pdf

Surveying the extent of PPGIS practice in the United States David S. Sawicki and David Randall Peterman Chapter 2 2.1 INTRODUCTION Many of the key themes in PPGIS research revolve around knowing who produces and who consumes small area GIS products. Examples include the multiple ways in which PPGIS are being designed and implemented, and identifying community information needs and how PPGIS might contribute to those needs. However, many of the questions posed are difficult to answer because of a lack of comprehensive inventories of either PPGIS providers or consumers. Two exceptions are Craig’s inventory of consumers (community groups) in the Twin Cities (Sawicki and Craig 1996) and the Urban Institute’s list of 30 citywide neighbourhood data providers (Urban Institute 1996). Neither is comprehensive, nor were they meant to be. They do provide a start, however. In this chapter, we provide a definition of PPGIS and report on results of a search for PPGIS providers (see Table 2.1). Research interest on the use of GIS as a tool for enhancing public policy activities by community groups has been in evidence for a number of years. As part of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis’s Project Varenius, a suggestion was made to undertake an inventory of PPGIS activities. The group decided that its primary concern was to learn from those using GIS and Information Technology (IT) to support community initiatives. Our original intent was to produce a comprehensive inventory of PPGIS groups throughout the United States. We quickly realized that it was not a reasonable goal, in part because advancing technology is making PPGIS activity ever more widespread, and in part because delineating PPGIS activity within the universe of GIS was not a simple task. The concepts we used to generate an inventory of PPGIS organizations are reflected in the following introductory statement to the survey instrument: The Public Participation GIS effort of the National Center for Geo- graphic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) requests your assistance in identifying significant information technology projects providing © 2002 Taylor & Francis Table 2.1 PPGIS suppliers contacted in fall 1998 survey Organization Host organization City State Phone URL e-mail Office of Community City of Birmingham Birmingham AL 205-254- Development 2309 Morrison Institute Arizona State Phoenix AZ 480-965- www.asu.edu/copp/morrison University 4525 Urban Data Centre Arizona State Phoenix AZ 602-965- www.asu.edu/xed/urbandata University 3046 Los Angeles Neighbourhood Los Angeles CA nkla.sppsr.ucla.edu Neighbourhood Knowledge Early warning Los Angeles System (LANEWS) Bay Area Shared San CA www.basic.org Information Franscisco Consortium (BASIC) San Diego Association San Diego CA 619-595- www.sandag.cog.ca.us webmaster@sandag.cog.ca.us of Governments 5300 (SANDAG) Urban Strategies Oakland CA 510-893- Council 2404 GreenInfo Network San CA 415-979- www.greeninfo.org info@greeninfo.org Francisco 0343 ESRI Conservation Pro- Environmental Redlands CA 909-793- www.esri.com ecp@lists.desktop.org gramme-Conserva- Systems Research 2853 tion GIS Consortium Institute (ESRI) Piton Foundation Denver CO 303-825- www.piton.org eberman@piton.org 6246 City Room (aka New Institution for New Haven CT Haven On-Line) Social and Policy Studies, Yale University © 2002 Taylor & Francis Public Access The Council on Washington DC 202-939- www.clir.org/pand/ info@clir.org Network Directory Library and 4750 pandhome.htm Information Resources (CLIR) The Right-to-Know Washington DC 202-234- rtk.net webmaster@rtk.net Network (RTK NET) 8494 Food Research and Washington DC 202-986- Action Center 2200 DC Agenda Project Federal City Washington DC 202-223- www.dcagenda.org/index.htm Council 2598 Poverty and Race Washington DC 202-387- www.prrac.org info@prrac.org Research Action 9887 www.povertyandrace.org Council GIS and Software Federal Emergency Washington DC 202-646- Development Team, Management 3071 Development and Agency Implementation Branch, Engineering Division, Informa- tion Technology Services Directorate Environmental Washington DC www.epa.gov/enviro Projection Agency Community Office of Minority Washington DC www.hhs.gov/progorg/ophs/ Networks Health; Federal omh/community/htm Dept. of Health and Human Services The Center for Civic Washington DC 202-362- www.civicnet.org/index.html webmaster@civicnet.org Networking 3831 Community Planning Department of Washington DC www.HUD.gov/cpd/ and Development Housing and Urban 2020soft.html Development © 2002 Taylor & Francis Table 2.1 (Continued) Organization Host organization City State Phone URL e-mail Jacksonville Jacksonville FL 904-396- www.jcci.org Community Council 3052 Incorporated Overtown Miami-Dade Miami FL Neighbourhood Community Partnerships College Center for Economic University of South Tampa FL 813-905- www.coba.usf.edu/ Development Florida 5854 centers/cedr Research Office of Research Florida Department Miami FL www.state.fl.us/cf_web/ and Planning of Children and district11 Families, District 11 Office of Data and The Atlanta Project Atlanta GA 404-206- Policy Analysis (TAP) 5015 (DAPA) Hawaii Community Honolulu HI 808-521- www2.hawaii.edu/~cssdata Services Council 3861 Center for Chicago IL 773-278- www.cnt.org info@cnt.org Neighbourhood 4800 Technology Chicago Area University of Chicago IL 312-996- www.cagis.uic.edu httpadm@cagis.uic.edu Geographic Illinois at Chicago 5274 Information Study (CAGIS) East St. Louis Action Champaign IL 217-265- www.imlab.uiuc.edu/eslarp Research Project 0202 (ESLARP) © 2002 Taylor & Francis Polis Centre Indiana University- Indianapolis IN 317-274- www.savi.org polis@iupui.edu Purdue University I2455 Indianapolis (IUPUI) Boston Persistent Boston Foundation Boston MA 617-723- Poverty Project 7415 Coalition for Low- Baltimore MD 410-752- www.clicd.org Income Community 7222 Development Michigan Metropolitan Center for Urban Detroit MI 313-577- www.cus.wayne.edu/mimic/ Information Center Studies, Wayne 8996 mimhome.htm (MIMIC) State University Automated John R. Borchert Minneapolis MN 612-625- www.map.lib.umn.edu/ Cartographic Map Library, 9024 acic.html Information Center University of Minnesota The Urban Coalition St. Paul MN 612-348- http://www.urbancoalition gen@urbancoalition.org 8550 .org Neighbourhood Center for Urban Minneapolis MN 612-625- http://www.npcr.org nelso193@tc.umn.edu Planning for and Regional 1551 Community Affairs, University Revitalization of Minnesota Neighbourhood Kansas City Kansas City MO 816-753- www.kcneighbornet.org Network Neighbourhood 8600 Alliance Greater Kansas City Kansas City MO 816-842- www.gkccf.org Community 0944 Foundation Community St Louis Enterprise St Louis MO 314-622- stlouis.missouri.org cin@stlouis.missouri.org Information Community 3400 Network Programme, City of St Louis © 2002 Taylor & Francis Table 2.1 (Continued) Organization Host organization City State Phone URL e-mail Community Asheville Chamber Asheville NC 828-258- www.ashevillechamber.org/ Research Center of Commerce 6128 CRC.htm Center for Urban Rutgers University New NJ 732-932- policy.rutgers.edu/cupr Policy Research Brunswick 3133 Community Mapping New York Public New York NY 212-349- www.cmap.nypirg.org Assistance Project Interest Research 6460 Group Urban Technical Graduate Prog- New York NY www.arch.columbia.edu/UTAP UTAP@columbia.edu Assistance Prog- ramme in Urban ramme Planning,Colum- bia University Green Mapping Modern World New York NY 212-674- www.greenmap.com web@greenmap.com Design 1631 United Neighbourhood New York NY 212-967- www.unhny.org Houses of New York 0322 Center on Urban Mandel School of Cleveland OH 216-368- povertycenter.cwru.edu/ info@poverty.cwru.edu Poverty and Social Applied Social 6946 cando2.htm Change Sciences, Case Western Reserve University NeighbourhoodLink Center for Cleveland OH 216-687- little.nhlink.net/nhlink Neighbourhood 2134 Development Northern Ohio Data The Urban Center, Cleveland OH 216-687- urban.csuohio.edu/~ucweb/ rosemary@wolf.csuohio.edu and Information Levin College of 2134 index.htm Service (NODIS) Public Affairs, Cleveland State U © 2002 Taylor & Francis Economic Tulsa City-County Tulsa OK 918-596- mgregor@tccl.lib.ok.us Development Library 7991 Information Center PSU@Home, Institute College of Urban Portland OR 503-725- www.upa.pdx.edu/IMS/About of Portland and Public Affairs, 5170 IMS Metropolitan Studies Portland State University Oregon Progress Salem OR 503-986- http://www.econ.state.or.us/ Board 0039 opb Interrain Pacific Ecotrust Portland OR 503-226- www.interrain.org (also info@interrain.org 8108 www.inforain.org) Portland Multnomah Multnomah County Portland OR 503-823- www.p-m-benchmarks.org Progress Board Auditor’s Office 3504 Philadelphia Institute for Study Philadelphia PA www.libertynet.org/nol Neighbourhoods of Civic Values On-line The Alliance for Dickinson College Carlisle PA 717-245- www.dickinson.edu/allarm Aquatic Resource Environmental 1135 Monitoring Studies Department Housing Association Philadelphia PA 215-545- www.libertynet.org/hadv hadv@libertynet.org of Delaware Valley 6010 Rhode Island Rhode Island Dept Providence RI 401-222- www.edc.uri.edu/gis Geographic of Administration- 6483 Information System Planning (RIGIS) The Providence Plan Providence RI 401-455- www.providenceplan.org 8880 Department of State of Olympia WA 360-407- www.wa.gov/ecology/gis Ecology Washington 7128 Nonprofit Center Nonprofit Center Milwaukee WI 414-344- http://www.execpc.com/ npcm@execpc.com of Milwaukee of Milwaukee 3933 ~npcm © 2002 Taylor & Francis 24 D. S. Sawicki and D. R. Peterman community information to community groups around the world Your response to this request can be either a full reply to the question- naire below or a brief note or call to us, which we can follow up with you in more detail. There are other surveys underway that look at the use of information technology by nonprofit organizations. This survey is broader than just nonprofit organizations, and narrower than the entire range of informa- tion technology. Our goal is to assemble an inventory of organizations that contribute to public participation in community decision-making by providing local-area data to community groups. We are looking for organizations that: (a) collect demographic, administrative, environmental or other local- area databases, (b) do something to the data to make it more useful locally (e.g., address matching of individual records; creating customized tables), and (c) provide this information to local nonprofit community-based groups at low or no cost. This can include local non-profit commun- ity groups that are collecting and processing data in-house, or data ‘intermediaries’ that process and analyze data for others (data inter- mediaries might be government offices, nonprofit groups, univers- ity-based centers, etc.). This working definition of PPGIS generated valuable discussion and is explored in more detail below. 2.2 GIS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, OR JUST GIS Information technology is a broad term. There are many sites on the World Wide Web that offer advice to non-profit/public service organizations on making use of IT. A glance at representative sites suggests the primary uses (so far) of IT by non-profits are: 1 word-processing programs for report writing, newsletters, 2 database programs for accounting, fund-raising, volunteer manage- ment, project management, training, mailing lists, 3 e-mail for communication, and 4 Internet access to create websites, disseminate information, and for research. We decided that we were not attempting to inventory all IT activities (though that could be an interesting, tough, and rewarding task), but rather © 2002 Taylor & Francis Surveying the extent of PPGIS practice in the US 25 were searching for organizations with a significant spatial analysis compon- ent. Many groups use GIS to simply display spatial information, a task that might be done as well or better by hand. This is not necessarily a trivial activity. Displaying spatial information on a map can enable viewers to see patterns that would otherwise not be apparent. But in our view, the power of GIS is in analysing information, not merely displaying it; using a GIS system just to draw maps ignores most of its functionality. It was decided, therefore, that the GIS component of the PPGIS activity must include some analytical capability to be included in the survey. Spatial analysis need not be expressed in maps. Just as the real power of GIS is analysing information, rather than just drawing maps, the presenta- tion of data in a table or a report is still representative of spatial analysis. Nor is it critical, in our definition, that the organization even is using a GIS software program; after all, for some time people did spatial analyses by hand. The important thing is that some sort of analysis is being carried out. But by whom? The Census Bureau has long been a great source of spatial information for community organizations. Now with its use of IT to make its data more accessible to users (e.g. the 1990 Census Lookup site), the Census Bureau’s role as a provider as well as generator of spatial data has been expanded. It also offers analysis of data via reports, though usually at the national level. Thus as a tremendous source of local-level spatial information, the Census Bureau would have to be on any list of organizations promoting public participation through providing geographic information. The Bureau collects demographic data, does something to the data to make it more use- ful, then distributes the data to community groups at low or no cost. Of course, the Census Bureau is a special case. The primary reason for our requiring that a PPGIS organization do something to the data to make it more useful was to exclude many organizations that merely redistribute local-area Census data without any further analysis. Nevertheless, an argument could be made that even this sort of activity may assist community groups, by mak- ing local-area Census information even more widely available. 2.2.1 Geographic scale At what geographic scale would a community GIS activity operate? ‘Community’ has many possible meanings. We take community in this con- text to be a spatial as well as a social term: a relatively small, roughly defined area, populated with people who feel themselves to have something in com- mon. We were thinking of it interchangeably with neighbourhood and perhaps small town. We exclude virtual communities, though we include organizations comprised of members with non-contiguous residence whose object of analysis might be a particular small place. It is difficult to limit the scale for other reasons. For example, regional planning agencies tend to work with large land areas, often metropolitan © 2002 Taylor & Francis 26 D. S. Sawicki and D. R. Peterman areas. So, on the face of it, their work would be excluded. But some of their work may have important implications for small areas. Thus, were they to provide residents of neighbourhoods with spatial data to be used by residents (say in a planning process) we would want to include them. Most obviously, though, we are trying to find examples of organizations pro- viding spatial analysis to persons who share the fate of their small place. There is a definite urban bias to this definition of community scale. The clearest shortcoming of the definition is the use of GIS by environmental groups. Environmental concerns centre around natural systems rather than social systems, and many of these systems operate on a large scale, e.g. air pollution, watersheds. To address this issue, we divided our PPGIS survey into two conceptual parts. For organizations that dealt primarily with social issues, we looked for the use of social data at the local-area scale. For organizations that dealt primarily with environmental issues, we looked for the use of environmental data at a regional or smaller scale. Demographic data is readily available at the level of standard political divisions (nation, states, counties, cities). Thus we decided that organizations that provided demographic data at other levels, whether sub-city (as in our local-area focus) or super-county (not just aggregating counties, but crossing county or even state lines), were adding something to the database. 2.2.2 Whose data? The US Census Bureau provides data for small areas at their Lookup web- site. Anyone with access to http://venus.census.gov/doc/lookup_doc.html on the Internet can get information at the tract or block group level. The user can even see the information displayed on a map. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development provides GIS software and data to hundreds, maybe thousands, of local communities, allowing community groups to display local Census information on maps. 1 Are those activities community GIS? It seems that if ‘community GIS activity’ is to mean anything, it must go beyond simply redistributing the work of these organizations. We defined ‘major community GIS activity’ as one in which some organ- ization collects data for small areas. Local, state or federal governments might first collect the data, or residents themselves might collect it. By ‘col- lect’ we mean only acquiring the use of, not necessarily generating primary data. However, we hoped to find organizations that did engage in primary data collection. 2.2.3 Whose analysis? An important distinction can be made between organizations that take a supply side approach (e.g. post data on the web but have little or no contact © 2002 Taylor & Francis [...]... do And given the progress of desktop GIS technology, more organizations undertake PPGIS work every month This list does however provide a good starting point for further research into PPGIS activity in the United States © 20 02 Taylor & Francis 36 D S Sawicki and D R Peterman NOTES 1 HUD’s Community 20 20 software: http://www.hud.gov:80/cpd/c2 020 /20 20soft html 2 The Office of Data and Policy Analysis and. .. computers and perhaps receive limited training in computer programs, though probably not enough training to make use of GIS software 2. 3 THE SURVEY INSTRUMENT The survey was implemented in three ways: by telephone, by e-mail, and by web search The e-mail survey consisted of three parts: an introductory section describing the origin and purpose of the survey; the survey questionnaire (see Table 2. 2); and. .. services © 20 02 Taylor & Francis 30 D S Sawicki and D R Peterman Table 2. 2 Survey questions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 What is the administrative structure of this organization (e.g connected to a college or university, part of a municipal government agency, free-standing NGO, etc.)? When was the organization established? What is the financial base of this organization (e.g supported by annual grants, line-item... collect and produce local-area data and analysis, to those organizations that repackage local-area Census data and make it available to whoever wants it We began by defining localarea as sub-city (neighbourhood level) But we soon realized that this definition excluded much of the work of community environmental groups, so we tried to include them by defining local-area as areas other than standard political... state and local level, these are most likely to be planning offices They would typically have an in-house GIS capacity for their own work, and might provide information to CBOs on request However, these offices are most likely to limit their community- oriented work to sharing simple information or the results of their own projects and tend to be reluctant to undertake extensive work on behalf of a community. .. questions seemed to get framed and the appropriate GIS products produced 2. 2.5 PPGIS data intermediaries Our assumption is that not many people with GIS skills volunteer their time to work with grassroots groups We are prepared to believe otherwise However, this brings in a definitional problem If the definition of © 20 02 Taylor & Francis 28 D S Sawicki and D R Peterman community GIS activity is too... (1998) Personal communication Ryan was the founder and administrator of New Haven On-Line Sawicki, D S and Craig, W J (1996) ‘The Democratization of data: bridging the gap for community groups’, Journal of the American Planning Association 4: 5 12 523 Stoecker, R (nd) ‘Putting neighborhoods on-line; putting academics in touch: the urban university and neighborhood network’, http://131.183.70.50/docs/... capture in a general survey And it does not represent a major community GIS activity It is possible for a community organization to develop GIS capacity inhouse However, that is likely to be rare, for several reasons Most community organizations have small staffs and small budgets, surviving from year to year on annual receipt of grants Although the user friendliness of GIS systems – and the power of desktop... doing a similar kind of community work 2. 4 SURVEY RESULTS At the conclusion of the survey (1 November 1998), there were 65 organizations in the database sponsoring some PPGIS-related project This included 30 non-profits, 18 affiliated with universities, 15 government offices, and 2 private companies They came from 40 cities Washington, DC led the list, followed by New York City and several other cities... $100,000 or less, and about the same percentage had two or fewer staff members In response to a question about the types of information most important to them, the two most frequent answers were information about their service area and information about funding opportunities (Stoecker nd) No one in our survey mentioned any privacy issues about the information they were collecting and distributing, . Research and Washington DC 20 2- 9 8 6- Action Center 22 00 DC Agenda Project Federal City Washington DC 20 2- 2 2 3- www.dcagenda.org/index.htm Council 25 98 Poverty and Race Washington DC 20 2- 3 8 7- www.prrac.org. NY 21 2- 9 6 7- www.unhny.org Houses of New York 0 322 Center on Urban Mandel School of Cleveland OH 21 6-3 6 8- povertycenter.cwru.edu/ info@poverty.cwru.edu Poverty and Social Applied Social 6946 cando2.htm Change. University I2455 Indianapolis (IUPUI) Boston Persistent Boston Foundation Boston MA 61 7-7 2 3- Poverty Project 7415 Coalition for Low- Baltimore MD 41 0-7 5 2- www.clicd.org Income Community 722 2 Development Michigan