BUILDING FOR SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY - Kennedy Bibliothek

Making Maps
69. Every community and neighborhood has its own special characteristics.
If we only know how to identify these resources, human as well as physical,
and how to co-ordinate them, our educational and community centers would
be incalculably enriched. Making maps is a useful way of getting officials,
planners, and citizens to address the same issues and understand
the same constraints with regard to co-ordination, if they all make maps
together.
70. The idea of mapping is not new. Urban geographers have developed
the technique to considerable sophistication, particularly since the advent
of computerization. What is new is getting citizens involved in
mapping, and allowing the perceptions of "the man in the street" and even
.children to influence the goals, criteria and mechanisms of co-ordination,
through revealing how they see and use the community they live in.
71. The method can be quite simple. (it can occur independently of the
critical path process, or as part of it. It could be a game at a Public
Forum.) . For materials, all that is required are large sheets of white
paper, colored felt pens, large tables or a smooth wall or floor, and a
tape-recorder. Time can be saved if the planners were to make a quick
rough sketch of the main infrastructural elements of the community on the
large sheets of white paper, the main roads and natural configurations,
and one or two landmark buildings, so that participants can get their
bearings. It is important however that if this is done, it should be the
barest minimum. The more the participants have to draw themselves and
the more they discuss what and why they are drawing, the better. '
72. Of course not many people can work on a map at once. Depending on
the size of each sheet, 4-8 people can map comfortably together. If,
therefore, mapping should form part of a Public Forum, of, say, 80 people,
it may be necessary to work in small groups in different rooms, and come
together at the end to compare the maps which each group has made. In
that case each group will need a technician to work .with it and its own
tape recorder (since mapping is also describing "what and why") in addition
to its mapping materials.
73. This kind of mapping is a useful technique because it gives officials
and technicians insights into how their constituents evaluate the community
and the scales of importance they attach to various elements in it. And
for the citizens, the maps become "discovery networks". They learn about
the options and richness of co-ordination.
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