Improving neighborhoods with web-based community mapping

Abstract

"Neighborhood improvement and recovery is not just for the experts!" That is the motto of Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles, a community outreach program of UCLA's Advanced Policy Institute. NKLA has demonstrated the value of involving community residents in the process of monitoring neighborhood conditions and mapping community assets.

Issue

Community organizations improve the conditions of their Los Angeles neighborhoods through technology-based applications.

Action

During the summer of 2001, Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles (NKLA) — with the help of AmeriCorps*VISTA members — worked intensively with three different community groups to create their own web-based mapping systems.

Youth United for Community Change (YUCA), a youth leadership program to raise awareness about social and environmental justice in the Crenshaw district of South Central Los Angeles had previously been trained on asset mapping so they:

Used the web-based mapping application to collect information about community assets and to publicize their findings.
Entered descriptions and photos of 27 community assets within six-weeks.
Organized their assets into categories they determined (such as schools, churches, and "kick-it" spots).
Published the story of their project in a magazine.

Neighborhoods Fighting Back (NFB), composed primarily of seniors, organized against various liquor stores and motels that they had identified as community nuisance properties. With assistance from NKLA staff, NFB:

Converted their paper records into an online database that included information on crime activities, public hearings, and additional comments on each nuisance site.
Mapped nuisance sites throughout South Los Angeles.
Presented their work to city agencies and local officials as documentary materials in public nuisance cases.

Pacoima Beautiful Youth Environmentalists (PBYES), was interested in cataloging the cultural and artistic assets in their neighborhood as a method of promoting positive local images. As a new group, PBYES found the process of community mapping helpful in developing leadership among the youth membership.

Context

The Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles project began in 1996 as a web portal for people concerned with improving the conditions of Los Angeles neighborhoods. NKLA provided free access to property and neighborhood data sets, information that can aid the monitoring of community conditions by tracking early-warning indicators of decline, such as tax delinquencies, code complaints, or nuisance properties. These trends can further be compared with other demographic and historical data.

Through funding from the US Department of Commerce's Technology Opportunities Program, NKLA was able to conduct extensive outreach and training with many community technology centers and community-based organizations throughout Los Angeles. This helped increase usage of the community improvement data and tools by community residents and activists.

Following the "asset-based community development" approach, NKLA sought a greater role for community residents by allowing them to enter their own community information into a simple database they could access through the Web. This online application, dubbed Inter-Active Mapping Los Angeles (I AM LA), and its respective training program, were flexible and could easily be customized to fit the needs of groups with different approaches and geographic focus.

Neighborhood Knowledge Los Angeles is a project of The Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA. The Center performs research on the role of information technology in the development and implementation of public policy. A primary goal of the research institute is to increase the effectiveness of community development organizations through the use of information technology. The Center acts as a bridge between university-based research and public policy in this area.

Citation

Pitkin, B. & Nick Rattray. Community Mapping for Neighborhood Knowledge in Los Angeles, Community Technology Review. (Winter-Spring 2002): 15-17.

Outcome

The experience of using NKLA for community mapping has:

Served as a vehicle for training youth and seniors how to utilize information technology and electronic media in their daily lives
Provided an efficient data management tool (I AM LA) that enables community groups to better document and archive community information
Allowed community groups to produce maps and data instantly, and share that information to a wide audience in a variety of formats

The I AM LA community-mapping application serves as a platform to organize and present the vastly under-utilized knowledge base of local residents and neighborhood groups.