Community Participation and Geographic Information Systems - Chapter 7

Chapter 7 The Atlanta Project: reflections on PPGIS practice David S. Sawicki and Patrick Burke 7.1 INTRODUCTION In October of 1991, former President Jimmy Carter announced his support of a comprehensive initiative to assist Atlanta’s inner-city poor, The Atlanta Project (TAP). TAP’s approach was based upon principles of greater democ-racy and community empowerment. Throughout its history, the programme has sought to give residents a voice and a sense of power in determining the future of their communities. To achieve these objectives, the organization adopted a structure to support a neighbourhood-based model of commun-ity change. TAP also made available centralized technical resources to sup-port the community-building process. The Data and Policy Analysis group (DAPA) plays an important role in TAP’s strategy to share expertise and resources with community organiza-tions. DAPA is a partnership between The Atlanta Project and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s graduate City Planning programme. It was one of the first neighbourhood data intermediaries established during the new era of microcomputer-based GIS technology. Our organization has worked for nearly a decade to increase access to GIS technology so that under-served residents and community organizations might utilize it for their own empowerment.1 In this chapter, we discuss two fundamental issues regarding PPGIS, com-munity accessibility to GIS technology and the role of GIS within commun-ity decision-making. The method of access and level of citizen engagement directly impact measures of empowerment. Second, we examine the role of GIS technology within the context of community decision-making and empowerment. We describe our work with two sample case studies. Clear tensions exist between community decision-making models that utilize and rely upon technical expertise and ones that advocate a partici-patory approach. In the long debate in urban planning regarding models of decision-making, some suggest that these approaches are difficult to recon-cile (Peattie 1968; Fox Piven 1970; Peattie 1994). We believe that these models are not mutually exclusive but that they can coexist. Empowerment © 2002 Taylor & Francis 90 D. S. Sawicki and P. Burke through technology implies that citizens must be more than simple con-sumers of information produced for them. They should be partners in the use of the technology for the production and communication of informa-tion and the knowledge that results (Beamish 1999). 7.2 THE CONTEXT OF THE ATLANTA PROJECT The Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) had the twelfth largest MSA population in the nation in 1990. The 1990 Census indicated that it had a 1989 median household income of $36,051, almost 20 per cent above that of the nation. However, as with many metropolitan regions, Atlanta is a tale of two cities. Twenty-seven per cent of the households living in the City of Atlanta had incomes below the poverty level in 1989. The City con-sistently ranks among the ten poorest in the nation, with extremely high rates of infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, homelessness, and crime. The physical conditions of neighbourhoods in and near the downtown serve as a testament to the results of this poverty with housing conditions as bad as any in the nation. The history of TAP begins with an epiphany experienced by President Carter when he visited the neonatal clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta’s large inner-city hospital. During his tour, the former President met baby ‘Pumpkin’ born to a mother on cocaine and alcohol, four months pre-mature, weighing barely a pound. Carter claimed to have been unaware until that moment of the depth of poverty in his own home state’s inner-city (Thompson 1993). The experience became the seed of TAP. The former President consulted a number of persons about how to attack poverty prob-lems in Atlanta, and within a year, the basic structure was in place. The area of TAP includes 500,000 people experiencing the highest teenage birth rate, highest poverty rate, and the densest concentration of female-headed households within the Atlanta region. The area is mostly concentrated in the southern portion of the City of Atlanta, but it includes also urbanized portions of DeKalb and Clayton Counties. This TAP region was subdivided into 20 distinct ‘clusters’ of roughly 25,000 people each centred on a high school. These clusters were the organizing component of TAP’s community-based decision-making model. Each cluster had a coord-inator and its own committee structure. Cluster coordinators were charged with the responsibility of organizing and mobilizing residents within their communities. Each cluster was partnered with one or more major corpora-tions and an institution of higher learning. To provide central support for the effort, the entire TAP was led by an executive director and secretariats in seven key policy areas, namely, housing, economic development, public safety, health, education, children and fami-lies, and arts and culture. These secretariats provided resources and informed © 2002 Taylor & Francis The Atlanta Project: reflections on PPGIS practice 91 decision-making in collaboration with the clusters. TAP attracted millions in gifts and in-kind donations from dozens of foundations and Atlanta corpo-rations, including IBM, Cox Enterprises, Equifax, Trust Company Bank, John Harland Company, Marriott Corporation, Arthur Anderson Consulting, Coca-Cola, Atlanta Gas Light, NationsBank, United Parcel Service, Delta Airlines, Georgia Power, AT&T, First Union, Home Depot, Wachovia, Turner Broadcasting, BankSouth, SouthTrust Bank, Northern Telecom, Equitable Real Estate, Prudential, Kroger, and Bell South. 7.3 TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: THE OFFICE OF DAPA From its beginning, technology played a role in how TAP addressed its mis-sion. IBM contributed over one million dollars in hardware and software, including the furbishing of a state-of-the-art ‘collaboration room’ that per-mitted the use of facilitation software for community meetings, discussions, and planning sessions. While IBM was building the room, it was also search-ing for other ways to assist this massive local ‘war on poverty’. It was at this point that they found David Sawicki, a Professor of City Planning and Public Policy at Georgia Tech and among a handful of faculty who were using microcomputer technology and desktop GIS in the classroom and in his research. Sawicki was joined by graduate students who took courses for credit under his direction. Within a year, Sawicki had articulated a structure that was to serve this matrix organization of 20 clusters by seven secretariats. DAPA was a quick-response team able to provide leaders with data, maps, and information and soon clients using DAPA spread well beyond TAP organization proper. Clients included governmental departments, non-profits, and even private corporations working with TAP. TAP leaders began to provide an annual budget of roughly $100,000 and gave Sawicki the go-ahead to serve anyone with a reasonable request whose objective was to serve the residents within the TAP geographic boundary. Sawicki soon hired full-time staff but continued to employ Georgia Tech graduate students. DAPA is built on a data intermediary model of providing access to GIS technology. The application of technology is use-driven with work defined by our clients’ demands. The model is consistent with those who suggest that GIS for community empowerment must be demand-driven and not technology-driven, requiring that technology be taken out of a conventional top-down context (Hutchinson and Toledano 1993). Our approach is to centralize the operations of a data centre and share that capacity among all non-profits working within a geographic area. DAPA’s centralized data intermediary model permits the development of © 2002 Taylor & Francis 92 D. S. Sawicki and P. Burke scale economies in the areas of data warehousing, personnel, and access to advanced information technology (Sawicki 1993; Sawicki and Craig 1996; Leitner et al. 1998; Burke 1999). A primary role of DAPA is the collection and warehousing of data that may be used in a neighbourhood-planning context. Information might include data on land-use, tax delinquency of property, crime, CDBG investment, housing code enforcement, and institu-tional assets to name a few. Many of these data are collected and main-tained by private, public, and non-profit agencies. As an intermediary, we serve as a central conduit for these agencies to end-users. We negotiate agreements for release of data among these agencies, process and clean data, and integrate information across all databases. Types of data collected are driven by the work, and the uses desired by the clients. A second benefit of our approach is that it permits the development of a sustainable core of competent GIS professionals. Non-profits and CBOs find it difficult to maintain competent technical staff for any IT needs. It seems appropriate that non-profits share resources to develop a centralized shared-technology capacity. Finally, we experience scale economies created by centralizing software and hardware purchases. We utilize a variety of GIS, database, program-ming, and statistical software packages. DAPA has access to a variety of media and output devices, including an E-size plotter, various colour print-ers, a nine-track tape reader, a large scale digitizing tablet, CD-writers, Jaz drives, Zip drives, and a variety of other devices. DAPA has become a resource of community-based planning and deci-sion-making within inner-city Atlanta. During FY 1999–2000, DAPA pro-vided research, data analysis, and planning services to over 75 public and non-profit agencies.2 We believe that DAPA’s success has stemmed from a unique set of circumstances that existed during its first five years of oper-ation. First and foremost, we enjoyed the cachet of former President Carter’s enormous popularity in corporate- and governmental-Atlanta. Not only did it bring us clients, but it also provided access to resources and data. Second, Professor Sawicki was given a substantial budget and a free hand at deciding what constituted worthy projects. Third, DAPA’s prod-ucts were given away. Once DAPA staff agreed to support a project for a client, the work was completed very quickly. A small academic research group with microcomputers compared favourably to people’s previous experience with large public bureaucracies and mainframes, most requir-ing reimbursement. To explore further the potential impact of GIS technology on the goals and effectiveness of community-based planning and neighbourhood change in Atlanta, we provide two case studies illustrating specific DAPA efforts. The first case depicts the role of GIS within the context of housing code enforcement and is an example of the rare occasion when citizen participa-tion results in real system change. We believe the role of technology access © 2002 Taylor & Francis The Atlanta Project: reflections on PPGIS practice 93 was invaluable in communicating the community’s concerns. The second case is more typical of the work we perform, working with an organization representing the interests of a community to explore inequities and oppor-tunities for policy intervention. 7.3.1 GIS and housing code enforcement The condition of a neighbourhood’s housing stock is a measure of the com-munity’s health, vitality and quality of life. An inadequate judicial system, shortage of code inspectors, and declining city budgets allow negligent house owners to go unmolested. In 1994, Atlanta residents launched a com-munity-based effort to improve local enforcement of housing maintenance codes. Residents approached TAP with the hope that the organization could work with them to reverse the decline of housing conditions. The Housing Resource Team (HRT) of TAP responded to the residents by organizing an initiative to address their concerns. The HRT consisted of advisors from corporate, academic and community organizations (The Atlanta Project 1994). The DAPA group supported the initiative. The strat-egy adopted was consistent with TAP’s philosophy of self-determination. We worked with residents to build their information capacity. The capacity-building process was twofold: increase residents’ education about the issue and apply technology to information collection and dissem-ination. The first step in the process was a community education effort aimed at training neighbourhood leaders and residents to identify code vio-lations in their neighbourhoods. Staff prepared a pamphlet explaining the various code violations as defined in the Atlanta ordinances. TAP personnel distributed these materials through the cluster communities. With training, residents from two neighbourhood planning units3 (NPUs) surveyed their neighbourhoods for code violations using a standard data sheet. Staff from DAPA cleaned and organized the data into clear reports. We used GIS technology to map the code violations recorded by pro-gramme participants. As information was entered from resident surveys into the GIS programme, records were automatically given x–y coordinates based upon the address, facilitating production of a map of code violations (Figure 7.1). We were able to correlate the address-based information with a database that included ownership and other relevant tax information. Working with residents and the HRT, DAPA prepared a report present-ing information and an analysis of the data for the City of Atlanta Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). City offi-cials did not react to the effort. When the HCD failed to respond to the vio-lations identified, City Councilwoman Gloria Tinubu, who represented the area, became involved. In the summer of 1995, Councilwoman Tinubu, TAP’s HRT coordinator and NPU citizen representatives joined together with other involved parties © 2002 Taylor & Francis ... - tailieumienphi.vn