WUNMAP: Main Project Summary

Main Project Summary

Two key events in the Spring, 2004 led to this project. First, Drix, the Chairman of the West University Neighborhood (WUN) contacted the University of Oregon to seek assistance in visualizing his neighborhood in some way. Drix's request eventually trickled to Marc Schlossberg, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management (PPPM). Professor Schlossberg annually teaches a GIS class focusing on social applications and was interested in having his class to work for a local neighborhood. A team is collecting data on one of the younger trees in the neighborhood.

The 2nd key event in the Spring was the awarding of a small classroom technology grant to Professor Schlossberg by the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium (NWACC). This grant was intended to bring new technologies into the classroom, and Professor Schlossberg intended to create new teaching tools around mobile GIS technology with handheld computers.. The timing was such that Professor Schlossberg thought it would be a good idea to match Drix's request with the NWACC grant, and presented the idea of a community-mapping project to the neighborhood association in May, 2004.

Three key points were made by Professor Schlossberg during this presentation to the WUN. First, the project was intended to place control over the basic structure and content of the project in the hands of neighborhood residents. The effort, if it were to happen, would be based on the neighborhood inviting the class and its students in, and not the other way around - this was not to be a class project conducted on a neighborhood without the neighborhood's consent. Second, as a class-based exercise, the educational value to students of the project was essential. And third, the project should be viewed as an opportunity to establish positive university-community interactions where stereotypes and mistrust between the two groups could be broken down and that each could derive benefit from the overall project.

A student recording some neighborhood asset information directly into a GIS-enabled PDA. This device also had a digitial camera insert, so that digital images could be embedded into the GIS database. After a month of deliberation, the neighborhood decided to invite the class in to the neighborhood and to jointly develop a plan of action. Over the summer, 2004, Professor Schlossberg, his teaching assistant Darren Wyss, and two members of the WUN board (Drix and Deborah Healey) met on multiple occasions to try to determine what the mapping project should entail. There were three guiding limits: 1) the project should be of immediate value to the neighborhood; 2) the project should be small enough in scope to ensure some success at the end; and 3) students must be able to gain tangible skills.

Through this meeting process and through discussions at regular WUN monthly meetings, the neighborhood decided they wanted to know about three key assets in their neighborhood:

Public street trees - the neighborhood is interested in knowing where the trees in the public right of way are, as well as some basic facts about them. Their interest in street trees stems from their desire to protect trees in their neighborhood. The primary attribute of interest, therefore, was tree diameter because trees greater than eight inches in diameter have a different, and stronger legal status.
Street lights - the neighborhood has a spatially unequal distribution of street lights, which can have impacts on safety. Equally of interest, the neighborhood wanted to identify where "traditional" or old-fashioned pedestrian-oriented and styled street lights were. Once residents know where these community assets are clustered, they can begin thinking about strategies to use them for additional community building activities.
Visible dumpsters - in addition to detached residential housing, the neighborhood has many multi-unit apartment buildings and some businesses that utilize dumpsters for their garbage collection. In some instances, these dumpsters are highly visible from any walking path, detracting from the view shed throughout the neighborhood. Moreover, the dumpsters are often misused, further impacting the "feel" of the community.

(to be continued...)