ITSRG

On behalf of the Information Technology and Society Research Group of Temple University, we wish to express sincere thanks to the geo-blogging community for following ITSpace during the past six weeks as we have called attention to growing trend for citizens to share spatial information using web 2.0 applications. In particular, we wish to give a special thanks to the folks at Very Spatial for calling our series to the attention of their readers and pod cast audience. We are grateful for the insightful comments shared by the professional geographers across the country and members of online map user communities. Thank you also for the contributions of guest authors David Organ and Paul Schroeder. We will continue to welcome guest authors to post new discussions, so please do not hesitate to contact us about new post ideas related to the theme of Citizen Cartographers in the future.

Citizen Cartographers theme posts have highlighted examples of citizen involvement in creating and sharing maps online, the use of online map tools by citizens and advocacy groups, and the concerns citizens may have in how online spatial information may affect them on the ground. We have suggested that the magnitude of this trend warrants the attention of geographers, cartographers, community advocates and others to enter into a public conversation about the impact of the Internet on sharing spatial information, collaborating to create spatial data sets, geo-visualization and map making, and using maps. One of the challenges that we face in doing so is how to foster and engage a conversation that is relevant with respect to the rise of citizen cartographers and their concerns.

Now that citizen involvement in cartography is web-enabled, the participatory impact and geographic dissemination of projects engaged by citizens and in the public domain is greatly expanded. Maps as literal and metaphoric tools for illustrating community concerns, depicting contested spaces, visualizing analyzed geographic problems, and showing where the thing occurs are one of the oldest artifacts of geographic inquiry and representation. We have suggested that what makes the emergence of web 2.0 tools for creating maps intriguing is the ways in which collaboration, distance, and dissemination are mitigated for content creators. 

Our examination has also led us to theorize about how collaborative cartographic practices are redefining the focus of geographic inquiry and cartographic representation. The professional practice of cartography involves using skillful design techniques to locate and visualizing geographic information, define and classify geographic data sets, align those datasets with graphical representation traditions and formats, and critically examine what is communicated on maps. Many scholars have pointed out that embedded within the practice of cartography are political and ethical concerns. Maps can be artifacts of power relations (such as political redistricting maps) as well as tools for mitigating power among groups (such as zoning maps). Maps can be representations of places and they can be manifestations of how people identify themselves.

The traditional study of maps is quickly being supplanted by the rapid creation of maps (or maps-of-a-sort). Many web applications that permit collaborative mapping are quite simplistic in terms of how spatial data are represented. Most mash ups approaches supported by online map applications use simple x-marks-the-spot tools for geo-tagging features. Attributes can be attached to the point (line or area) markers with most of these applications. Most online map applications also support collaborative approaches that enable more than one contributor to create the spatial data set. This aggregation of spatial data through the inclusion of collaborators is one of the unique features of the process of online mapping, and represents one of the most important divergences from prior cartographic practices. Users can e-collaborate to generate data in virtually real time, so that the spatial data set itself is unbounded at the onset of creating the map. Most professional cartographers are accustomed to mapping a temporally static spatial data set.

More sophisticated forms of geovisualization, such as representing classes of spatial information, showing proportional representations over space, or creating isometric lines of equal value to model distributions of spatial information are not yet the domain of online cartography collaborations. Instead, the underlying objective of web-enabled citizen cartographic activities lies in two main areas: (a) participating to create and share new content that cannot be shared or accessed otherwise and (b) tailoring existing (online) content for new audiences and new purposes through adding new media components.

We suggest that a new research direction related to citizen cartographers and the cartographic products they create would focus on issues related to their participatory processes, the transparency and fairness of information practices, the privacy implications of citizen cartographic practice, the use of data sets and maps created through e-collaborative processes, and the implications of a proliferation of user defined content.

We will begin to explore these issues through the startup of an informal science education demonstration project that involves citizens in Philadelphia and other cities to map and share their walking and rolling routes using online social media applications. The project will be implemented in the Fall of 2008, with more details to come soon about how to participate.

Michele Masucci
Caroline Guigar
Temple University

BITS Summer Program 2008 is underway throughout the month of July. This year we are providing students with research and field experiences and information technology skills in mapping historic markers related to the African American experience in Philadelphia.

Charles L. Blockson, founder of the Blockson Afro-American Collection housed at Temple University's Paley Library has met with BITS students every summer for the past four years to instill in them an understanding of the importance of learning about the relationship between primary sources of information and analyzing the racial, cultural, and geographic histories of Philadelphia and beyond. Over 200 BITS Students have had the opportunity to examine first edition volumes of major works by African American authors, documents related to the historical underpinnings of the institution of slavery that are hundreds of years old, photos taken by John Mosely depicting nationally prominent African Americans, archives from the nation's largest collection of Underground Railroad documents, and the focus of our theme this year - one of Blockson's books depicting the locations and descriptions of historical markers related to African Americans throughout Philadelphia. It is called: Philadelphia's Guide: African-American State Historical Markers (1992). He has been gracious to donate this and other volumes of his work to ITSRG and the BITS Program.

Students are shown visiting the collection and interacting with Mr. Blockson on Thursday, July 11, 2008 here:

This summer, our students are focused on creating web-interactive maps of the entire marker collection documented by Dr. Blockson. Dr. Blockson has spent a great deal of time helping our students to understand the politics of marking by sharing some of the stories related to how and why specific settings are ultimately chosen to receive an official state historical marker. They have found that there is no single consolidated listing of markers, since more than one institution has programs to place markers at historical sites. And, since the various marker programs do not create meta-tags denoting categories for inclusion, it is difficult to search for maps of markers online. Here is the map one of our students, Hazreena Ali, has created drawing from Mr. Blockson's book detailing sites related to African American history designated by the State of Pennsylvania to be of interest within Philadelphia.

One interesting example of a setting that has been given a state historic marker is the Legendary Blue Horizon, located on North Broad Street, just a few blocks from Temple University's Main Campus. Many of the greatest boxers of the last century have fought and trained at the Blue Horizon. Surprisingly little information about it is found online, and even less is noted on the marker outside. Our approach for providing students with an understanding of its historical and cultural significance within the African American community of Philadelphia and beyond has been to visit, photo-document, and map the location during the past four years. Through this process, our students have come to understand that it is a living legacy that continues to host world-renowned boxing events, and that its owners are striving to compile archives of its historical significance and share them with the public. Newspaper clippings are framed behind the venue manager's desk, shown here in a photo taken by students in the BITS Program during the summer of 2006.

One block away is Progress Plaza, another site with important significance in the African American experience in Philadelphia and the nation. It is the oldest black-owned and developed shopping center in the country. It is currently in the process of being renovated. The renovation will feature the return of a neighborhood grocery store after a decade without one. The issues of local food security and economic development have been themes for the BITS Program during the past four years. Students have learned that these two issues are closely intertwined. They have visited and photo-documented this site, tracking the progression of change related to the renovation. No historical marker notes the significance of Progress Plaza for the local community or larger national audience. Students have discussed this issue with Mr. Blockson and BITS mentors as they learn about the process by which some sites gain distinction while other important sites are less noticed.

The facade and ambiance of the Legendary Blue Horizon are distinctive in many ways. Fancy grill work, well maintained brownstones, and a famous mural on the northern exterior wall all say "historically significant" to passersby. In contrast, Progress Plaza is denoted with a well worn, wooden sign. It is famous locally for the rapid rate at which cars unauthorized to park in the lot are towed. And, the slow transformation of the site is on the minds and in the conversation of locals eager for the new grocery store set to open its doors this fall. Yet, the continued presence of Progress Plaza in the neighborhood is vital to its economic stability, anchoring it to the massive investments that are being made in public-private partnerships along what is known locally as Avenue of the Arts North.

Our students have had the opportunity to gain a front row seat to the tensions between neighborhood transformation and historical preservation at work in our community of North Philadelphia. Through the basic geographic research tasks of field observations, mapping historically significant settings, and photo-documentation they have gained an opportunity to see their local community through different lenses.

Michele Masucci
Temple University

Over the past year, various Web 2.0 technology platforms have begun to provide its users with the ability to connect content they have created with a location, thus enabling not only keyword searches but location-based searches.   This experience has been further enhanced through geoRSS feeds and geotags which integrate technologies such as Twitter and Flickr with online mapping sites such as Google and Yahoo Maps.

Never before have citizen cartographers had such easy-to-use tools at their disposal to create meaningful maps that reflect not only the way they perceive their environments. Additionally, citizen cartographers are now able to share with others both inside and outside of their communities a much more nuanced view of their world through sight and sound.  In short, the map is in the hands of the masses and the opportunities for gaining new insight into place and space have never been more exciting. Further, the ever growing Web 2.0 technologies situated around online maps have  enabled people to develop online communities based on a share interested in geography and have brought to the forefront of the importance of understanding geography.

Citizen cartographers have used these new technologies to become empowered in times of crisis,  banding together to use online mapping tools and associated Web 2.0 content as a portal to organizing vast amounts of information from otherwise isolated areas. The 2007 California wildfires saw citizen cartographers taking their on-the-ground experience with the fires and sharing it virtually through Twitter, photo-sharing, and Youtube to the outside world as well as those isolated by the fires in their own communities. The 2008 Floods in the Midwest have seen the power of the map in a time of crisis, with organizations like the Red Cross using these Web 2.0 and mapping tools to send and receive information in the flood affected areas.

This growing movement shows the power of grassroots mapping to provide both a micro and macro experience of a vast crisis that assists not only neighbors but increases the knowledge base of those responding to the natural disaster.It is this grassroots effort coupled with technologies that hold promise for developing new and meaningful ways to respond to large scale crisis. It also serves to refocus the lenses of the discipline of geography and provides a unique opportunity to learn from and critically engage this exploding technology.

Geographers have much to offer in this new space of citizen cartography. As these technologies grow and becomes more and more ubiquitous there are substantial questions we must ask.

While we have seen an explosion of citizen cartographers actively contributing to grassroots mapping there is also a different map that is emerging that we must engage and critique. As web technologies enable and encourage location-based tagging and location-based searches,  we must begin to question and understand the long-term consequences of the electronic footprint being created by and about individuals, both intentional and unintentional.

How is the online electronic footprint becoming the unintentional electronic map, especially as  the roll-out of technologies that take advantage of GPS-enabled mobile phones  make tagging location seamless and more and more invisible to the user? How will governments and industry seek to use these electronic maps in the future? What are the ultimate implications for the growing level of transparency both intentional and unintentional?

Finally, an important tenet of web 2.0 is user-generated content which requires a level of computer literacy and technology access that vast sections of the population still lack. Will the those citizen cartographers who map and describe their own communities bring attention and resources their way for simply placing it on the map? Will communities forfeit resources and lose even more visibility in an online world because they lack the resources necessary to reestablish their communities on the virtual map? These are questions are where geographers have much to offer citizen cartographers.

Caroline Guigar
Temple University
June 30, 2008

Thanks to Temple's IT and Society Research Group (ITSRG) for creating a space for "citizen cartographers" to show their work. I hope this opportunity continues beyond June into the coming months.

How are citizen cartographers making a difference when engaged with particularly intractable global issues such as environmental collapse and international conflict? The evidence is slim, but now that ITSRG has tuned us in to the concept of "citizen cartography" we'll probably begin noticing many examples where individuals and small groups are making a difference by re-drawing the maps we've inherited and by creating entirely new maps that help us to visualize global transformation.

The problems between the US and Iran are again demanding our attention. The chronic antagonism that has infected relations between these nation-states certainly prompts citizen innovation, especially since these governments seem to have no incentive to give peace a chance. I'm reminded of the early '90s when I was involved in promoting network connectivity for Maine's libraries and schools. A librarian from a rural Maine school testified at a utilities commission hearing that the "Internet will bring world peace." Of course I was skeptical, but as long as we got our online connections, why should I argue? The promise that the emerging "information superhighway" would do away with the "constraints of distance and time" also seemed like over-the-top hype to me.

While we usually think that cartography represents places and spaces, we can also think of cartography as a way to create spaces that don't exist yet, or as a way to re-create spaces that have been lost socially and geographically. About a year ago I began to inhabit a place cartographically that I last visited physically nearly 50 years ago, the small city of Abadan, Iran where I lived from 1958 to 1960 as a teenaged American boy (see photo essays here). The responses have been overwhelming, showing that there is a huge unmet need for people to connect personally across gaps of culture, time, politics and geography.

Public mapping technologies such as Wikimapia point the way toward reclaiming and even re-inhabiting territories that have been completely occupied by contending state interests. The City of Abadan is situated on a major river (variously named, depending on what national claims are held) that for many years (decades? centuries? millennia?) has served as a major conflict zone. The city, formerly Iran's largest refinery and oil port, suffered widespread destruction from bombing and siege during the Iran-Iraq war (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Abadan for more information). The house my family lived in was destroyed, but its footprint is still visible on the Wikimap. By annotating this plot, I could reclaim a part of my personal history by use of a public map technology.

Sites like Wikimapia open the door to reclaiming a collective history based on shared connections to a beloved place. Annotations to the Abadan Wikimap are now mainly in three languages: English, Persian / Farsi, and Arabic. The stories told from these three lingustic perspectives are very different, but there is a chance for dialogue within this shared mapped space. I'm encouraging people who have contacted me to collaborate in bridging these perspectives through translating existing annotations into all three languages. I visualize this as a project for Iranian teachers (some of whom have been in touch with me) who want to broaden both the language skills and the intercultural awareness of their students.

Meanwhile, the deeply felt need to establish direct person-to-person contacts across this critical international divide has been taken up by other projects such as EnoughFear.org. As a project of The Action Mill. EnoughFear has posted hundreds of photos of individual Americans, Iranians and others whose hands reach out with a shared message, No to War between the US and Iran. This project also sponsors direct public person-to-person telephone conversations between the US and Iran.

So far there's not a mapping component to EnoughFear. Both this and the Wikimapia reclamation effort seem to share in trying to create new spaces for international direct citizen dialogue. My personal belief is that regions such as Abadan, whose geopolitical situation has bred ceaseless conflict, are candidates for reclamation as international peace zones. (See Zones of Peace and Zones of Peace, a History. Learning to recognize the stake that each of us has as "global citizens" might help us to re-define our tasks as "citizen cartographers."

Thanks again to ITSRG for creating this space.

Paul Schroeder
June 30, 2008