Community MappingOne of our tasks as a people in transition is the process of mapping out our community's needs and resources -- so that, as we all move forward with our work, we'll be better networked and more accessible to those around us -- so that we can all better meet our needs in community. We will be assessing food, water, energy, land, waste, transportation, housing, industry and commerce, social services, environment, natural resources, human skills and special tools, arts and media, health and medicine, heart and soul, recreation and leisure, and emergency preparedness, as well as youth, senior, family, tribal and other resources. (Plus anything that wasn't mentioned here.) What do we have? What do we need? How can we work together to get our needs met?
This process is just beginning to come together. If you'd like to participate, please e-mail seed@transitionlakecounty.org |
More about Community Mapping
(compiled by Peggy Rose in Anderson Springs)
Community mapping is both the recovery and discovery of the connections and common ground that all communities share. This emerging cartographic practice is a vital part of a worldwide movement for participatory learning, community empowerment and sustainable planning.
Maps visually represent worldviews and knowledge and therefore have unique spatial power. Community mapping assumes that ordinary people and communities can make maps to express the stories about their lives and home places. Community mapping, as a learning and planning process, facilitates such story telling and community maps represent the stories.
This reminds me that it's the relationships. We are all mapmakers. Any community can make maps. Maps are inspiring. Maps provide a unique language for humans to communicate with one another. Maps can record great losses and discoveries, the changes of physical and political landscapes, great beauty and destruction. Maps reflect our relationship to ourselves, to one another and to the environment. They reflect the geography of our lives and communities.
The "geography of our lives" - WOW!
Whether conscious or not, our cognitive or mental maps guide the paths and routes that make up our lives. Each of us has a different mental map, a different sense of place, and a distinct way of seeing and being in the world. In effect, we have our own stories and geographies, different physical, mental and social landscapes that we experience and inhabit everyday. How we spatially and visually represent such stories and geographies is in effect, cartography. When we do this with other people we are “community mapping.” An exploration of the power of maps and the theoretical challenge posed by indigenous and community mapping to the discipline of Western cartography. Indigenous maps illustrate the power of maps for cultural, historical and geographic expression and connectedness.
As the need for community and ecological recovery and connectedness grows, so will the relevance of the unique and powerful spatial learning and planning tool - community mapping!
(compiled by Peggy Rose in Anderson Springs)
Community mapping is both the recovery and discovery of the connections and common ground that all communities share. This emerging cartographic practice is a vital part of a worldwide movement for participatory learning, community empowerment and sustainable planning.
Maps visually represent worldviews and knowledge and therefore have unique spatial power. Community mapping assumes that ordinary people and communities can make maps to express the stories about their lives and home places. Community mapping, as a learning and planning process, facilitates such story telling and community maps represent the stories.
This reminds me that it's the relationships. We are all mapmakers. Any community can make maps. Maps are inspiring. Maps provide a unique language for humans to communicate with one another. Maps can record great losses and discoveries, the changes of physical and political landscapes, great beauty and destruction. Maps reflect our relationship to ourselves, to one another and to the environment. They reflect the geography of our lives and communities.
The "geography of our lives" - WOW!
Whether conscious or not, our cognitive or mental maps guide the paths and routes that make up our lives. Each of us has a different mental map, a different sense of place, and a distinct way of seeing and being in the world. In effect, we have our own stories and geographies, different physical, mental and social landscapes that we experience and inhabit everyday. How we spatially and visually represent such stories and geographies is in effect, cartography. When we do this with other people we are “community mapping.” An exploration of the power of maps and the theoretical challenge posed by indigenous and community mapping to the discipline of Western cartography. Indigenous maps illustrate the power of maps for cultural, historical and geographic expression and connectedness.
As the need for community and ecological recovery and connectedness grows, so will the relevance of the unique and powerful spatial learning and planning tool - community mapping!