By Marc Schlossberg, Assistant Professor, Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management, University of Oregon

In spring 2004, Drix Rixmann, the chair of the West University Neighborhood (WUN) in Eugene, Oregon, contacted the University of Oregon seeking help to visualize and understand the nature of his neighborhood. At the same time, the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon received a small seed grant from the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium to integrate community-based GIS into the teaching curriculum. What emerged was the WUNMAP (pronounced "one map") Project, a collaborative community-based effort between neighborhood residents and university students to collect, map, and visualize community assets. What resulted was much more than maps—community was built, focus was given to neighborhood change efforts, and students applied new skills to a real-world community mapping project.

The West University Neighborhood is a 16-square-block area directly adjacent to the University of Oregon and, thus, a natural housing location for many of the 20,000 students who attend the university. The neighborhood also contains many single-family detached owner-occupied homes, with some owners having lived in the area for many years. The neighborhood has gone through a significant transition over the past decade—most notably the conversion of many large homes to multiple dwellings and the razing of other homes for apartment development. The combination of student residences and longer term homeowners has caused a lot of friction over the years, which has led to a somewhat fractured relationship between the University of Oregon and the West University Neighborhood. One of the goals of this project, therefore, was to utilize a community-based mapping exercise to reestablish some trust between these two very different groups. Two other goals were pursued simultaneously: building community-based GIS skills for undergraduate and graduate university students and assisting the local community in its neighborhood change efforts.

ArcPad, used on handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs), was identified as the best method to meet these three goals. After a series of meetings over the summer, the neighborhood leaders decided they wanted to know about three key features of their neighborhood: (1) location and size of city trees, (2) location and attributes of streetlights, and (3) location and use of dumpsters.

Then, in only the third week of classes in the fall, community data was collected. Students and community residents met at 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday at a local coffee shop so everyone could get to know each other, go over the basic instructions for collecting data, and understand the larger context of the project. The neighborhood was divided into 12 sections, and at 10:00 a.m., student-resident teams began to collect the data for all three categories in each section. The pairing of students and residents was an important element of the project because it helped form new relationships where each was considered an expert—the student an expert in ArcPad software (albeit an expert for less than three weeks) and the resident an expert in neighborhood condition and history. Half the teams collected data with PDA-based ArcPad, and half the teams used pencil and paper. After six hours (and a donated pizza lunch from Pegasus Pizza, a neighborhood favorite), the teams completed their work, and the data was then brought back to the classroom for synthesis.

Once the data was synthesized from each of the 12 quadrants (including digitizing the data collected by paper and pencil), three students took on the task of developing a map template and creating maps based on the community asset data collected. More than 100 different maps were created, including making some public data (e.g., local zoning, parcel annexation dates, and local soil types) more usable by the neighborhood by putting it in map form. These maps were delivered to Rixmann on a CD, a presentation was made at the monthly neighborhood association meeting highlighting some of the maps. Many maps (and the raw data) were uploaded to a project Web site, and some of the data layers were made available for download and viewing via ArcReader. The WUNMAP Project Web site was also developed to be a one-stop location for all aspects of the project, including the history; process; maps; data; ArcPad *.apl files; reflections; definitions of key concepts; and links to more information that community members, other community groups, researchers, and other instructors could use.

Thus far, the impact of the project has been quite significant for participants. Neighborhood residents are using the data and maps on city tree locations and type to identify key trees as heritage trees, a classification that affords them greater protection from removal. The neighborhood has used this data to negotiate with the city of Eugene regarding the need to remove trees from the neighborhood as the city seeks to repave alleyways throughout the neighborhood and tries to remove big trees in the neighborhood whose branches fall more frequently than others during windy conditions. The presence of both the data and maps has strengthened the advocacy position of the neighborhood, showing the city that the neighborhood has cataloged its tree resources and is positioned to see how each tree impacts the overall neighborhood quality of life.

For students in the class, they learned a cutting-edge technology and were able to use it in a real-world setting, thereby understanding how the theory of community-based GIS works in practice. Three different master's theses and one undergraduate thesis also directly emerged from the utilization of ArcPad in the class:

• Participatory GIS and Classroom Projects: Evaluating the Outcomes for Student Participants (Darren Wyss)
• The Built Environment's Effect on Children's Mobility Choices to Access School (Page Paulsen Phillips)
• Evaluating Walkability at the Street Level Using ArcPad GIS Technology (Kristopher Ackerson)
• Assessment of Walkability Around Neighborhood Parks: A Case Study of Springfield, Oregon (Robert Stevens)

And perhaps best of all, this was a fun project: students and residents walking neighborhood streets together; utilizing new technology to achieve community goals; and getting to know others in a new, respectful, and community-building way. The maps are great, but perhaps the rebuilding of trust made possible with the development of the maps is even greater.

For more information, contact Marc Schlossberg (e-mail: schlossb@uoregon.edu) or visit a gateway Web site for community-based GIS with ArcPad (www.uoregon.edu/~schlossb/arcpad).