Beyond Cooptation or Resistance: Urban Spatial Politics, Community Organizations, and GIS-Based Spatial Narratives

1. A review of the concepts presented in the paper:“Beyond Cooptation or Resistance: Urban Spatial Politics, Community Organizations, and GIS-Based Spatial Narratives”by Sarah Elwood, Dept. of Geography, University of Washington Presented by: Tyler Beemer Eugene Choi Jason Yaich for Oregon State University’s GEO 599: Virtual Seminar in Public Participation GIS, Oregon State University, moderated by Dawn Wright, PhD, GISP

2. Evolution of Community Organizations • Community and neighborhood organizations’ roles in urban planning, problem solving and service delivery have increased / evolved as government tries to provide more with less • Many new non-governmental organizations forming  increased competition for funding • These organizations are utilizing and/or being manipulated by use of spatial knowledge (a.k.a. GIS) BOTH in empowering and dis-empowering ways

3. GIS used by community organizations in ways that go beyond simple effect of empowering or dis-empowering • Author uses three concepts of : • “Spatial Politics” • “Institutional Politics”, and • “Knowledge Politics” . . . along with many examples from literature research, to illustrate a balanced look at empowering, dis-empowering and evolving applications of spatial knowledge to decision making Author also cites two Chicago community organizations’ use of GIS as a case study

4. How is GIS being used to empower ? • NGOs use spatial knowledge to gain power in decision-making opportunities • Use GIS to produce “flexible forms of spatial knowledge to support different objectives at different times” • Strategic tool to allow importation of spatial knowledge in decision-making process, strengthen relationships with other actors and decision-makers, help shape and achieve vision for community’s development • Examples of organizations resisting a government’s attempt to limit power spatially by expanding the discussion in the decision-making process to cover a larger geographical context or assigning special meaning to a place to give the organization more power to change

5. How is GIS being used to dis-empower ? • Examples of use of “Spatial Politics” – decision-makers defining geography either by scale or quality as means to limit the power of other organizations • Scale(ex. “neighborhood”) – limits influence of organization to specific geography even if their concerns may relate to larger geographical context • Quality (ex. “decaying” neighborhood) – assigns a value to a place – diminishes an organizations control over it’s own representation and vision of that place

6. Spatial Politics • Politics of Urban Planning, Problem-solving, and service provision are fundamentally spatial • Using scale and “place framing” plays role in power and authority of institutions, individuals, and organizations Do the words “urban decay” color your understanding of a place ? How would you map it ?

7. Change perception of place through GIS modeling / visualization BEFORE… AFTER… Images courtesy of ESRI

8. Institutional Politics • Historical lines of authority between different actors in decision-making process • Strategies used by each actor in influencing other actors • Allowable terms of negotiation over urban spatial change

9. Institutional Politics continued • Other variables affecting organizations’ control in decision making: • Altered organizational structure • Funding practices / sources • Shift toward increased level of participation of NGOs supported by provision of resources or real decision-making authority ?

10. Knowledge Politics • Two means of influencing power of actors in spatial decision-making: • Different types of knowledge • Ways of representing needs & conditions of a place Perception that “expert knowledge” and quantitative, scientific data leads to greater power and more influence in decision-making than experiential data

11. Knowledge Politics continued • How does GIS play into this role ? • “spatial knowledge and cartographic representations produced using a GIS and other digital technologies are often given greater weight in planning and policymaking than knowledge presented in other ways” • (Aitken and Michael 1995; Elwood and Leitner 2003) • NGOs make choices about what knowledge to present & how

12. “Countermapping” • Marginalized social groups using maps to define and negotiate spatial goals, claims and perceptions to their own advantage • BUT… paper also cites examples where GIS-based spatial information was used by powerful social/political actors to control decision-making process (“quash disent”)

13. Author’s Proposition • Literature review of impacts of GIS on community organizations leads to polarized view of whether GIS empowers or dis-empowers • Cooptation or resistance • Activist vs. service delivery of gov’t mandates • Expert vs. experiential knowledge • No longer a dichotomy  organizations now fill multiple and diverse roles / spatial meanings (neither pawn nor guiding hand)

14. Multiple roles in spatial decision-making • Grass-roots organizations “are, for instance, actively working with and for state institutions and programs while simultaneously operating to mobilize protest.” (Elwood 2006) • Organizations use GIS to create spatial narratives that represent community priorities in shifting and flexible ways (Elwood 2006)

15. Chicago Case Study • Urban planning and revitalization activities in an inner-city neighborhood northwest of the downtown Chicago • Conducted through a participatory research design that relied on ethnographic data collection and qualitative data analysis techniques

16. The “Which, What, & How” • The community participants direct the GIS application themselves, making choices about which spatial data will be acquired or developed, what analysis and mapping will be performed, and how the resulting output will be used by their organizations • This aims towards sustainable GIS production and application

17. The Community Goals • The particular goals of these community organizations are focusing on housing improvement, better access to affordable housing, employment training and job development, youth and family support, crime reduction, retention of employers, and prevention of residential and business displacement

18. Roles and Activities

19. Narratives

20. Example

21. Questions to ponder . . .

22. Is your impression that GIS is empowering, dis-empowering, or a hybrid of both? • How has the evolution of grassroots organizations altered the realm of public participation GIS? • How would you illustrate the term “Urban Decay” graphically on a map? • Considering the first paper by Rina Ghose, how does the Chicago project compare to the one done in Milwaukie? • Can “narratives” be abused? Examples?

23. PPGIS and Public Participation policy • Are they placed in the same context? http://deathstar.rutgers.edu/ppgis/Tulloch.PPGIS.2003_files

24. Participatory model • Unit of analysis: Individuals, not groups, classes, elites, etc. • Assumptions: 1) Individuals (voters) participate in political life spontaneously; they are not elite-directed. 2) The majority of eligible voters participate in the policy process. 3) Individuals are informed and knowledgeable about political/policy affairs; they are not manipulated by elites. 4) There are fair, honest, and egalitarian means for citizens to express their political desires - e.g., elections, town hall meetings, public meeting, etc 5) Policy is the product of majority preferences, not group, class, or elite preferences. - Brent Steel

25. http://www.geographyhigh.connectfree.co.uk/s3settgeoghigh6urbdecay.htmlhttp://www.geographyhigh.connectfree.co.uk/s3settgeoghigh6urbdecay.html