CAREER: Transforming the Politics of Place: GIS, Knowledge Production, and Community-Based Organizations in Urban Governance

近几十年来，社区组织在美国城市治理中的作用发生了变化。 这些变化最明显的体现在他们在规划、解决问题和提供服务方面的责任越来越大，这些责任直接影响到社区的空间和结构。 随着这些变化，这些群体越来越多地使用地理信息系统（GIS）技术来绘制地图，分析和展示邻里的需求和条件。 这个教师早期职业发展（CAREER）奖的动机是需要更多的理论和实践理解这些密切相关的发展。 该项目将研究通过社区组织基于GIS的空间知识生产推进城市变革和邻里振兴的优先事项，战略和目标。 它将考虑如何生产和基于GIS的空间知识的应用改变了社区组织，邻里和他们的居民在决策过程中，通过城市空间变化的谈判，规划和实施的作用和权力。 它还将探讨这些变化对国家和民间社会机构在城市治理中的关系的影响，特别是这些行为者的权威和知识的建设。 该项目有三个综合研究、教育和社区发展目标。 首先，它的目的是通过发展更强大的理论，城市地理和技术的社会研究的知识，城市空间和政治的影响，地理信息系统技术和基于地理信息系统的知识生产的社区组织。第二，该项目的目的是在地理教育中发展有效的经验和服务学习方法，这将提高学生将概念和应用地理知识联系起来的能力，并批判性地反思他们积极学习的社会意义。 最后，它的目的是建立一个模式，以促进社区组织持续和有效的基于地理信息系统的空间知识生产能力，这是一个关键的挑战，因为这些组织通常面临的财政和技术限制。 这些目标将通过与芝加哥的两个社区发展组织合作开展的参与性研究和教育活动来实现。 与这些组织的工作人员和居民合作，调查员和她的同事将创建一个空间数据库，用于他们的社区振兴活动。 作为德保罗大学首席研究员教授的两门地理课程的体验式学习活动的一部分，本科生将与这些组织合作，利用这些数据规划和实施基于GIS的空间分析项目，社区组织工作人员将接受GIS培训。 该项目的研究问题将通过使用以下几种技术收集的数据进行定性分析来回答：在空间分析项目活动期间参与观察学生与社区的互动;对参与组织的工作人员、社区居民、与该组织合作的当地政府官员进行人种学访谈;和内容分析的地图和报告所产生的社区为基础的项目。这个项目的潜在意义是多方面的。 它应该通过展示他们在这方面的作用和权力如何受到地理信息系统和其他计算机绘图和分析技术的影响，发展关于基层公民组织在城市治理过程中不断变化的活动的重要城市地理知识，这些活动塑造了邻里的需求和条件。 通过这些教育活动，将提高大学生的公共服务技能和承诺以及积极的公民意识，并提高他们对概念和应用学习所涉社会和政治问题的批判性思考。 芝加哥一个贫困社区的两个社区组织将通过该项目对长期持续的GIS能力所需的硬件、软件、培训和数据的投资，加强他们的技术和知识基础设施。 在其更广泛的社会贡献，该项目将开发知识和实践，旨在帮助回答有关如何提高生活质量的基本问题，在美国内城社区，并创建策略，鼓励强大的民主做法，涉及社区居民在非常影响他们和他们的社区的决定。 该项目还将为一名富有成效的年轻研究人员提供一个极好的机会，从事一个将高质量研究和教育相结合的长期项目。

The role of community-based organizations in the governance of U.S. cities has changed in recent decades. These changes have been most evident in their growing responsibilities for planning, problem solving, and service delivery tasks that directly affect neighborhood space and structures. In concert with these changes, these groups increasingly have used geographic information system (GIS) technology for mapping, analyzing, and demonstrating neighborhood needs and conditions. This Faculty Early-Career Development (CAREER) award is motivated by the need for greater theoretical and practical understanding of these closely related developments. This project will examine the priorities, strategies, and goals for urban change and neighborhood revitalization advanced through such GIS-based spatial knowledge production by community-based organizations. It will consider how the production and application of GIS-based spatial knowledge alters the role and power of community organizations, neighborhoods, and their residents within the decision-making processes through which urban spatial change is negotiated, planned, and implemented. It also will explore the implications of these changes for the relationship between the state and institutions of civil society in urban governance, particularly the construction of the authority and knowledge of these actors. The project has three integrated research, educational, and community development objectives. First, it aims to advance knowledge in urban geography and societal studies of technology by developing stronger theories regarding the urban spatial and political impacts of GIS technologies and GIS-based knowledge production by community-based organizations. Second, the project aims to develop effective experiential and service learning pedagogies in geography education that will enhance the capacities of students to connect conceptual and applied geographical knowledge and to critically reflect upon the societal significance of their active learning efforts. Finally, it aims to establish a model for fostering sustained and effective GIS-based spatial knowledge production capacities in community organizations, a key challenge given the financial and technological constraints such organizations typically face. These objectives will be accomplished through participatory research and educational activities carried out in collaboration with two community-development organizations in Chicago. Working with staff and residents from these organizations, the investigator and her colleagues will create a spatial data library for use in their neighborhood revitalization activities. As part of experiential learning activities in two geography courses taught by the principal investigator at DePaul University, undergraduate students will work with these organizations to plan and implement GIS-based spatial analysis projects using these data, and community organization staff will receive GIS training. The project's research questions will be answered through qualitative analysis of data gathered using several techniques: participant observation of student-community interaction during the spatial analysis project activities; ethnographic interviewing of participating organization staff, neighborhood residents, local government officials with whom the organization works; and content analysis of maps and reports produced for the community-based project.The potential significance of this project is multi-faceted. It should develop important urban geographic knowledge about the changing activities of grassroots citizen organizations in urban governance processes that shape neighborhood needs and conditions, by showing how their role and power in this context is affected by use of GIS and other computer mapping and analysis technologies. Through the educational activities, university students' skills for and commitments to public service and active citizenship will be enhanced, as will their critical reflection upon the social and political implications of their conceptual and applied learning. Two community organizations in an impoverished Chicago neighborhood will enhance their technological and knowledge infrastructures through the project's investment of hardware, software, training, and data needed for long-term sustained GIS capabilities. In its broader societal contributions, the project will develop knowledge and practices intended to help to answer fundamental questions about how to improve quality of life in American inner city neighborhoods, and create strategies that encourage robust democratic practices that involve neighborhood residents in the very decisions that affect them and their neighborhoods. The project also will provide an excellent opportunity for a productive young researcher to undertake a long-term project that integrates high-quality research and education.