Awesome Every Day

What is Community Engagement Mapping?

Well… It’s a lot of things. It’s the creation of a map using existing data, people power, and logical research. It’s an opportunity to look at a current snapshot of a neighborhood and put feeling and energy into it. More than anything, community engagement mapping is putting data in the hands of folks in a community.

Information is power, and all that stuff, right? You might feel like there are a lot of vacant properties in your neighborhood, but the government doesn’t respond well to, “I think there are a bunch of vacant properties!” Well, with hard facts, people take you seriously.

Saying, “There are 8 vacant properties in a 3 block radius of my home,” and having a visual like a map to back that up is powerful stuff.

Community Engagement Mapping is also my job :D… and what I’ll really dive into in the next 3 months. With community members and awesome partners like Habitat for Humanity of Metro Louisville, the Louisville Metro Housing Authority and Youthbuild Louisville, we’re going to do some massively cool work.

Habitat & the Housing Authority are going to do some cool stuff with the maps generated through this work. Hopefully I’ll be able to share some of that with y’all as time goes on.

Smoketown, the neighborhood we’ll be mapping, is a historically African-American neighborhood. It’s the oldest black neighborhood in Louisville. So for me, this is extra interesting!

If you wanna check out some cool stuff about our mapping process you can check out:

This article from The Paper

This other article from Fast Co, which features our awesome video.

This detailed foreclosure research in PDF form, which NC3 & our friends at the Metropolitan Housing Coalition created in a joint venture.

You can keep up with my adventures in Smoketown by following the #SmoketownCEM tag.

(Source: makechangetogether.org)