{"id":34852,"date":"2018-06-24T23:55:36","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T06:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&p=34852"},"modified":"2023-08-07T14:41:31","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T21:41:31","slug":"mapping-open-spaces-and-extending-conservations-reach","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/mapping-open-spaces-and-extending-conservations-reach","title":{"rendered":"Mapping Open Spaces and Extending Conservation\u2019s Reach"},"author":1162,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10372,981,291],"tags":[1631,301,19042,1441,1461],"arcnews_issues":[9332],"class_list":["post-34852","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gis-hero","category-green-infrastructure","category-nonprofit","tag-collaboration","tag-community","tag-environmentalism","tag-resilience","tag-sustainability","arcnews_issues-arcnews-summer-2018","arcnews_sections-gis-people"],"acf":{"short_description":"GIS Hero Larry Orman forged a career that set the agenda for regional planning and conservation.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"As a white-water rafting guide in California in the early 1970s, Larry Orman gained a profound understanding of how environmental activism works\u2014and sometimes doesn\u2019t.\r\n\r\nWell before he built up Greenbelt Alliance or founded GreenInfo Network, he fell into this adventuresome job at the suggestion of a roommate.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe were trained in brutally cold weather,\u201d Orman recalled. \u201cIt was the best thing ever.\u201d\r\n\r\nBut one of Orman\u2019s routes, along the Stanislaus River, was being threatened by a dam. A spectacular stretch of rapids was going to be inundated. As construction on the dam started, a new breed of environmentalists was taking form\u2014and Orman was one of them."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":34862,"image_position":"left","orientation":"vertical","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\u201cWe fought the building of that dam, but we lost\u201d he said. Nevertheless, \u201cit gave me a huge collection of friends and political understanding\u201d\u2014both of which Orman has relied on throughout his influential career in mapping and protecting open spaces.\r\n

A Visceral Dynamic<\/h2>\r\nOrman grew up on the edge of Mission Valley, California, an area just outside San Diego proper (at the time) that was known for its dairy farms. He played in the valley\u2019s open spaces and enjoyed visiting downtown San Diego, which was actually cohesive in the 1950s.\r\n\r\nBut then, the city put a shopping center in Mission Valley. According to Orman, this gave the valley its own core, which caused downtown San Diego to fall into disrepair.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt completely destroyed Mission Valley, from my point of view, as a natural area,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd downtown San Diego was an absolute wreck. That dynamic was visceral for me.\u201d\r\n\r\nAfter high school, Orman moved north to attend UC Berkeley. While studying environmental design and architecture, he spent a year in Germany living in a relatively small city that was surrounded by farmland. He marveled at being able to walk all over town and then step straight into the greenbelt.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat alternative to what San Diego had done got really imprinted in my brain,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nWhen Orman returned to Berkeley, he took a class that required students to work on one project for the whole term. Orman chose to help a group of local citizens fight a development down at the waterfront.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe held off development proposals tooth and nail,\u201d he recalled. While it took 20 years of community activism, that development site\u2014which was slated to become a shopping center\u2014is now a state park.\r\n\r\n\u201cI ended up learning a lot,\u201d Orman said. \u201cI have a background that was ripe to be catalyzed by something like that shopping center, and that thrust me into city planning.\u201d\r\n\r\nOrman got his master\u2019s degree in city and regional planning from UC Berkeley. He then forged a career that centered on setting the agenda for regional planning and conservation\u2014first in the San Francisco Bay Area, next throughout California, and now for many places around the United States.\r\n

Creating the Geography of an Issue<\/h2>\r\nAfter graduate school, People for Open Space hired Orman as its first paid employee. Over the next 19 years, Orman built that organization\u2014which became Greenbelt Alliance<\/a>\u2014into a force for open space and land conservation in and around the Bay Area.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhen I started with this very small organization, we wanted to take on the big question of how to define a whole greenbelt for the Bay Area,\u201d Orman said.\r\n\r\nThe organization didn\u2019t get all the funding it needed for that, so Orman and his colleagues took on agricultural land instead.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe said, we\u2019re going to give that use of open space a voice and talk about what should be done to protect it,\u201d he recalled.\r\n\r\nThey spent two years learning about farmland\u2014including where it was.\r\n\r\n\u201cNobody had a clue!\u201d Orman exclaimed. \u201cWe had to draw our own maps. We had to create the geography of the issue to show people its extent.\u201d\r\n\r\nGreenbelt Alliance also devised the idea of identifying land that was at risk of development.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe decided to talk about all the lands that are unprotected and under pressure of being developed,\u201d Orman said.\r\n\r\nThe organization started doing risk mapping. This is when Orman began using GIS.\r\n\r\n\u201cOur map ended up showing areas of high and medium risk over large parts of the Bay Area,\u201d he said. \u201cOur point was, this isn\u2019t all going to be developed, but until we take away some of these risks, any of it could be.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":34872,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"This project, which showed that the Bay Area had too much land up for grabs, got media coverage. According to Orman, it helped constrict development around San Francisco. Although the area has been booming in recent years, it hasn\u2019t seen much massive sprawl.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe mapping helped with that,\u201d said Orman. It also made him realize how important it was to have competent, compelling visuals to tell a story.\r\n\r\n\u201cI taught myself GIS. I\u2019m not an expert by any means,\u201d he said. \u201cThe thing I learned is, you can have the best technical understanding in the world, but if you don\u2019t know how to communicate in the public-interest realm, you\u2019re never going to make an impact.\u201d\r\n

A Long Arc of Work<\/h2>\r\nThis thinking inspired Orman\u2019s next project: founding GreenInfo Network<\/a> to help nonprofit organizations use GIS. The technology was becoming more democratic, moving from workstations onto personal computers, and data was more widely available.\r\n\r\n\u201cMy thought was that I\u2019d get nonprofits going with GIS, and then they\u2019d take it and run,\u201d said Orman. But nonprofits didn\u2019t have the resources to get great at GIS. So GreenInfo Network became a consulting organization that helps a range of public-interest groups better visualize and communicate their ideas.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe timing was great,\u201d said Orman. \u201cPeople were extremely interested in visualizations.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhile at the helm of GreenInfo Network, Orman and his team developed the California Protected Areas Database<\/a> (CPAD), a GIS inventory of all the protected open space in California that\u2019s owned by various agencies and nonprofits. The project was part of a long arc of work for Orman, evolving out of his efforts to create a database of all public lands in the Bay Area and ending up as a major impetus for the United States Geological Survey\u2019s (USGS) Protected Areas Database of the United States<\/a> (PAD-US), which Orman helped develop.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat whole trajectory shows how Larry has worked, and led others to work, incrementally,\u201d reflected Dan Rademacher, the current executive director of GreenInfo Network. \u201cThirty years ago, people might have wanted a national database of parks, but that was really hard to do then. One of the ways to get there, though, was to make tangible progress where you could. He led the creation of the Bay Area Protected Areas Database. It wasn\u2019t ever perfect, but it amassed data and got jurisdictions talking to each other. And it always got more useful over time. Then that grew into CPAD\u201d\u2014and beyond.\r\n

Reveling in Old Open Spaces<\/h2>\r\nIn his 20 years as executive director of GreenInfo Network, Orman worked on countless projects that helped shape conservation all over California and the United States. At the end of 2015, he decided to step down as executive director and hand the organization over to Rademacher to foster continued growth in the digital age.\r\n\r\nOrman is now a senior fellow at GreenInfo Network, working on projects of his choosing, including PAD-US.\r\n\r\n\u201cOne of the other projects I\u2019m working on is an archive site for the Stanislaus River,\u201d he said, referring to the river that was dammed when he was younger. \u201cI\u2019m working with people I knew from those days to develop a really wonderful website that\u2019s going to be an archive to remember what it was like.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhile he\u2019s never been back to the river itself, he revels in his memories of that open space.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt was really one of the more exceptional places in California that we just couldn\u2019t save,\u201d he reflected.\r\n\r\nAlthough it has been a bit of a tough project to work on, Orman concluded that \u201csetting up before-and-after images really helps reinforce what I knew was there.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"Read other articles in the\u00a0GIS Heroes<\/a>\u00a0series.","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"\nMapping Open Spaces and Extending Conservation\u2019s Reach | Summer 2018 | ArcNews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"GIS Hero Larry Orman forged a career that set the agenda for regional planning and conservation\u2014first in San Francisco, then throughout California, and now for many places around the United States.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/mapping-open-spaces-and-extending-conservations-reach\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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