“I’m so grateful that I get to walk around in neighborhoods as part of my job,” said Jane Walsh, the strategy and development coordinator at Louisville’s Network Center for Community Change, also known as NC3.
“The Network is about building community demand for results…creating new connections to systems and organizations…transforming the environment to sustain the change…[and] holding ourselves and others accountable for what we say we are doing in the community,” reads the NC3 website.
Walsh’s passion for neighborhoods was immediately recognizable as she demonstrated the novel practicality of the nonprofit’s multicolored opportunity mapping.
“I was looking today at Census Tract No. 9 in Shawnee,” said Walsh, referring to the map of the neighborhood and using the backside of her pen to indicate specific areas of interest. “And if you look here, it’s not quite a rectangle, but it’s close. And here’s Shawnee Park. So here’s the park, here’s the avenue, and then there’s blocks of residential housing. And as you look, as you move back from the park, there might be a couple vacancies here and here. And then all of a sudden: foreclosure, foreclosure, foreclosure, vacant. And ‘vacant’ indicates there’s more and more as you move back from the park. What you see is – here is the asset [Shawnee Park]. And if we focus on the value of the park to the neighborhood, we can start to see how much more people are able to hang on to their properties. That’s the value of mapping. Because you can really see, ‘Look, there’s an opportunity here to capitalize on the park.’ We have to start at the asset every time.”
The logic is fairly straightforward, but much less so without the bird’s-eye perspective provided by the map itself. And without NC3 and their Community Engagement Mapping project, this data just wouldn’t exist.
A change-driven nonprofit entity that thrives on utilizing the best information available, NC3 maintains two full-time geographers on staff and has been engaging in mapping activities for years. But the Community Engagement Mapping effort didn’t begin in earnest until a local activist contacted the organization in November of 2010.
“Michael Dean, who was an activist in the California neighborhood, said he really wanted to know about this piece of land there between Victory Park and California Park,” said Walsh. “So we went out with a bunch of young people from [the California neighborhood] to find out what was vacant and then populated the map with that information, as well as the public data sets: tax liens, building code violations, foreclosures, public value administration numbers, that kind of stuff. People in the neighborhood, as well as partners like New Directions [Housing Corporation], found that map really informative and interesting. And we thought it was a great first step, but wanted to do something more in-depth, wanted to do an entire neighborhood.”
Fast-forward to the present and NC3 stands poised to finish the yearlong mapping of the entirety of Louisville’s Shawnee neighborhood in the coming weeks. Having received enthusiastic support from both the community at large and District 5 councilwoman Cheri Bryant Hamilton, the project will conclude with a neighborhood forum in which citizens will be asked to examine the maps, discuss them, and offer more information as to what may or may not be missing. This missing information might be related to housing conditions, but NC3 is just as serious about obtaining firsthand neighborhood stories and history.
“[The NC3 staff] attended the National Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference in Cleveland two years ago,” said Walsh. “And the most powerful thing we heard about was citizen storytelling.”
Citizen storytelling is the idea that that the community can shift its expectation of what is possible by investing in the individual stories of various land and properties, thereby transitioning from what’s called liability thinking to asset thinking.
“One of the hurdles we have to overcome as a city is this idea that all urban land is a liability, while, in fact, if you begin to actually listen to the citizens, a lot of urban land is a vital asset,” said Walsh.
Pleased with the progress of the mapping efforts thus far, but quick to identify additional potential, NC3 plans to double-down on this notion of storytelling and transparency by eventually making all of its maps available online. Once the maps are online, they hope to allow neighbors themselves to digitally enter stories, history, and updates about individual properties.
“Ultimately, we believe that the stories of a neighborhood and the data of a neighborhood should come from the neighbors and not some think tank a couple of states away,” said Walsh.
NC3’s canvassing process has been fine-tuned over time, but collecting the type of information needed still comes back to the on-foot simplicity of volunteers with clipboards. Consisting of people who live in or otherwise care about the neighborhood – be they longtime residents or zealous young college students – the surveyors are provided with the requisite training and then sent up and down streets in groups of two, noting one property and one story at a time.
“What constitutes a hole in the roof?” said Walsh. “What does it mean to have a hanging gutter or 10-inch high weeds? Because these are all things we track now, as far as the condition of the housing and what needs repair.”
The teams determine vacancy largely by LG&E tags on meters (Green means the property is current and yellow means there’s no active account.), notices from the post office, and whether or not the structure is boarded up.
“The only way to know where you are in the world is to be on your feet, sitting on people’s porches, and talking to them,” said Walsh.
With the persistent goal of activating citizens, equipping them with the tools they need, and nurturing the sparks of grassroots change, NC3 has successfully mapped around 3,600 plots to date and plans to add another 3,600 over the coming year. The continued effort has already enabled some exciting growth agenda results, such as informing a $3.5 million Habitat for Humanity development plan in Portland. But NC3 is just as excited to celebrate the positive outcomes of individuals, like the mother who no longer has to worry about her children wandering through an open basement next-door.
Looking to facilitate neighborhood empowerment and personal resilience, Community Engagement Mapping is just one of many initiatives for a nonprofit organization that’s in a time of great transition. With other activities including monthly Network Nights (where citizens are encouraged to share good news and form relationships), property research workshops, training, and technical support, NC3 is spending the remainder of its original grant funding this year and will be fully community-supported by 2013.
The latter part of this year promises much excitement for NC3, as the organization will be hosting its first ever fundraiser, called Chill 4 Change, at the Quonset Hut gallery space in Phoenix Hill on September 15. NC3 is also hoping to host a National Community Engagement Mapping Institute this fall.
Nowadays relegated to wall-mounted conversation starters and perhaps most frequently preceded by the word “Google,” maps can seem mere nostalgia in a world where computers and 3D models do all of our visualizing for us. But the folks at NC3 believe wholeheartedly in the power of maps. And what if a map could save our city?
-Chris Ritter
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