GIS and Asset Mapping

Asset mapping methods combined with geographic information systems (GIS) technology have proven to be effective ways to help citizens and organizations identify, analyze, describe, and mobilize around assets and issues of concern to them.

The Community Geography Project of the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies has a history of training PSU students, community groups, and middle and high school students in asset mapping and GIS technology to enable them to ask new questions and better strategize and promote community agendas.

This is the second of two Capstone courses that will provide research, technical (including GIS and asset mapping), analytical, and participatory support for this work.

This term we will be focused on the following:

• Reviewing the work of the previous Capstones including the draft of the Lents Atlas.
• Understanding the ideas behind "active living by design" with regard to the Lents neighborhood and incorporating them in to the Atlas fieldwork, analysis, and final document and poster(s). The Lents neighborhood is faced with a number of challenges to healthy and active living including poverty and a lack of connectivity due to the development of I-205 through the historical heart of the community.
• Completing the Atlas document and creating a "poster presentation" for the National Active Living by Design" conference to be held in Portland during the first week of August, 2008.

This will be a student-managed project. Students will consult with the partner to ensure that the work we are doing conforms with her goals. Students will form specialized teams to do the work and the teams collaborate to create the final products (the atlas document, poster(s), and presentation). Allison Adcox and Allen Davis, students from the previous Capstone course, have expressed bridging the two Capstones' work and being engaged in the project to completion.