GAGDC MAPSCorps @gagdc-site-mapscorps - Tumblr Blog

If you had a vacant lot on your block, what do you think the best use of the space would be?

We could best utilize our community if we were providing jobs and employment. We need to open businesses, and black owned businesses, that can help our young men and women to thrive.

A business owner in Chatham

We need a place where kids can come together, run around freely and have fun without worrying about getting hurt, like a basketball court or dance studio.

Kierra from CCAS, a positive youth development organization in Chatham

BINGO

This past Wednesday, GAGDC mappers discussed the different types of community assets that promote success. By doing a clustering activity, the mappers came up with different assets that best promote success within the communities that we are mapping, including youth centers, GAGDC, churches, summer programs for youth, hospitals, block clubs, schools, and parks and other outdoor recreational facilities. The types of success that these different assets promoted were good health, community unity, education, employment, safety, and spiritual happiness. The students agreed that, for the most part, these assets were promoting the types of success that community residents conveyed in their responses from the informal survey conducted the previous day. Reflecting upon this, the students decided that if they had to choose one of these assets to develop so that the communities in which they were located could promote success would be schools.

Success is...

Indicators of Success (ranked by percentages of agreement):

#1 (tie) Knowledge: 100%

#1 (tie) Raising your children well: 100%

#1 (tie) Good transportation: 100%

#1 (tie) Libraries: 100%

#5 (tie) Spiritual happiness: 92.31%

#5 (tie) Higher educations: 92.31%

#7 Daycares and tutoring centers: 88.89%

#8 Money: 88.24%

#9 Faith: 78.57%

#10 Churches: 75%

#11 Love: 70%

#12 Charter schools: 66.67%

#13 New housing developments: 28.57%

#14 Private schools: 16.67%

#15 GAGDC: 13.33%

#16 Catholic school: 0%

Chatham and Auburn Gresham are healthy neighborhoods because...

SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats to the health of South Side communities

Today, we made lists of different assets that we have encountered during our time mapping that promote health in some way and can be categorized as government, local/organizational, or informal/personal. We next decided which of these assets were promoting healthy in their communities the most creatively, were the most cost-efficient, and were most needed in their communities. Based on these designations and a subsequent discussion, we decided which of these assets were most deserving of funding for expansion in order to promote community health. We decided that community gardens, community centers (like GAGDC), and schools were the assets that we most wanted to receive funding for expansion. One characteristic that all of these places shared were that they were relatively cost-efficient and promoted health in innovative and sometimes unintuitive ways. These assets also were places for collaboration, where many different groups could come together in order to improve community health through unconventional, yet relatively fiscally feasible, mechanisms. These assets were also determined to be underutilized, which is why funding would be especially beneficial.

Types of Community Assets That Have a Positive Impact on Health

Rec centers/gyms

Different types of clinics related to physical health (inpatient, outpatient, physical therapy)

Hospitals

Stores that sell healthy foods

Drug stores

Schools

Senior citizen homes and other programmed housing

Churches

Community centers

http://healtherx.org/services-page

Factors that Negatively Impact Health

Main categories:

Unhealthy environmental factors

Unhealthy factors directly affecting individual, physical health

Unhealthy places to eat

Unhealthy things that people consume or use other than food

Poor maintenance of public areas

Poor maintenance of private buildings

Specific things harmful to health:

Liquor stores

Potholes

Fast food places

Cigarettes/smoking

Dead animals

Dirty pools

Swisher packets

Empty/broken alcohol bottles

Abandoned buildings

Poor drainage

Dead animals in the street

GAGDC Research Question

Research Question:

How does the presence of fast food restaurants affect the surrounding community?

Hypotheses:

The more fast food restaurants there are in an area, the lower the property value as compared with areas with fewer fast food restaurants.

The more fast food restaurants there are in an area, the more trash will be observed in an area and the more unkempt the area will appear.

From these hypotheses we can answer the question how does the presence of fast food restaurants affect how a community looks in a qualitative sense and what is it worth in a more quantitative manner.

Methods:

Quantitative analysis using MAPSCorps data about fast food restaurants and city data about property values

Qualitative analysis incorporating observations on the amount and location of trash and other signs of neglect in an area

Potential Audiences:

Community leaders, both political and non-partisan

Fast food eaters who are interested in knowing the impact of their food choices on their communities

Fast food franchises who would want to know their impact or relationship with the communities in which they are located (perhaps for publicity reasons)

Individual Goals

South Side Is...

#mapscorps #southsideis #Chicagohistory #DempseyTravis

#mapscorps #dempseytravis #chicagohistory #southsideis

These are the top photos that the mappers at GAGDC chose as those that best represented the South Side from their perspective. The photos begin to get at the complexities of the South Side and how such complexities are expressed outward to the people who reside in South Side communities and people from outside of the South Side as well. These photos depicted a South Side that is full of contrasts and tensions, both in terms of people and places, that varied drastically block by block. The photos represent a perspective of the South Side as a place that consists of people who care about their communities, as shown by the pictures of St. Sabina, the block club, and the man taking care of the lawns, and those who are more disrespectful towards it, as shown by the trash. One important point that was discussed was that the pictures did not represent more intricate concepts in the mappers’ perceptions of the South Side. Some of these include the underlying reasons of the generation of the outward appearance and attributes of the South Side, including how community members felt towards their neighborhood, the mechanisms behind the perpetuations of such attributes, the lack of unity and the existence of conflict and tension within the community, and the ideas of blame and individual responsibility in terms of the relationship between individuals and the neighborhood in which they live.

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