Mapping the Hidden Hazards: Community-Led Spatial Data Collection of Street-Level Environmental Stressors in a Degraded, Urban Watershed

Abstract

We utilized a participatory mapping approach to collect point locations, photographs, and descriptive data about select built environment stressors identified and prioritized by community residents living in the Proctor Creek Watershed, a degraded, urban watershed in Northwest Atlanta, Georgia. Residents (watershed researchers) used an indicator identification framework to select three watershed stressors that influence urban livability: standing water, illegal dumping on land and in surface water, and faulty stormwater infrastructure. Through a community–university partnership and using Geographic Information Systems and digital mapping tools, watershed researchers and university students designed a mobile application (app) that enabled them to collect data associated with these stressors to create a spatial narrative, informed by local community knowledge, that offers visual documentation and representation of community conditions that negatively influence the environment, health, and quality of life in urban areas. By elevating the local knowledge and lived experience of community residents and codeveloping a relevant data collection tool, community residents generated fine-grained, street-level, actionable data. This process helped to fill gaps in publicly available datasets about environmental hazards in their watershed and helped residents initiate solution-oriented dialogue with government officials to address problem areas. We demonstrate that community-based knowledge can contribute to and extend scientific inquiry, as well as help communities to advance environmental justice and leverage opportunities for remediation and policy change.

Individual and Community Engagement in Response to Environmental Challenges Experienced in Four Low-Income Urban Neighborhoods

“…Reported food access issues are consistent with much research [68,69]. Residents reporting illegal dumping are right to be concerned, as it compromises safety, environmental health, soil, the water table, plants, animals, and property values [70,71]. Additionally, as residents noted in their discussion of concerns about trees being removed, trees can be effective at improving air quality by reducing harmful air pollutants [72].…”

Socioecological Production of Parks in Atlanta, Georgia's Proctor Creek Watershed: Creating Ecosystem Services or Negative Externalities?

“…The overwhelmingly African American and poor residents who remained have had to contend with the pullout of private capital, eroding infrastructure, high rates of vacant and abandoned properties, and crime rates. 30,31,32 English Avenue earned the infamous moniker, ''The Bluff'' in recent decades, due to the openly visible heroin trading that occurred there until recently. 33 Related, Atlanta police raided the house of 92-year old Kathryn Johnston in 2006, fatally wounding her, when they mistook the residence for a drug house.…”

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“…Relevant to the present study, they also found that civic engagement, in the form of voting and community organizing, did not lessen blighted conditions. However, Osborne Jelks et al (2018) contend that in Atlanta, resident-led monitoring and cleanup of neighborhoods is a more effective recourse for blight remediation than generalized civic participation. This kind of civic engagement goes beyond petitioning municipal authorities for redress; rather, it places community activists on the ground, physically in communities to not only call out blighted conditions but also to inventory and remediate dereliction (Greenberg, 2001;Osborne Jelks, 2008;Osborne Jelks et al, 2018).…”

“…However, Osborne Jelks et al (2018) contend that in Atlanta, resident-led monitoring and cleanup of neighborhoods is a more effective recourse for blight remediation than generalized civic participation. This kind of civic engagement goes beyond petitioning municipal authorities for redress; rather, it places community activists on the ground, physically in communities to not only call out blighted conditions but also to inventory and remediate dereliction (Greenberg, 2001;Osborne Jelks, 2008;Osborne Jelks et al, 2018). Of course, residents are limited in the impact they can effect, but this sort of activism places people in out-of-doors spaces where their activities can be witnessed by others.…”