By Peyton White, Community GIS Student Spring 2024

Stepping out of one's own comfort zone is just as it sounds: uncomfortable. This was what I chose to take on as an Ecology major adding a GIScience certificate, with which I was largely unfamiliar with, yet eager to experience. I am currently enrolled in “Community GIS” at the University of Georgia, where the focus is to put geographic tools to use in real-world problem-solving applications. Putting these GIS skills that I have only recently learned into practice through collaborative research has been new territory for me.

Prior to this class, I had no experience in community engagement or service-learning projects. In my GIS certificate classes thus far, I had felt as if I was just going through the motions of downloading data, making maps, and turning them in for a grade. I can fairly say I had a sense of imposter syndrome, as people around me had dedicated their entire majors to Geography and I felt as if I was just jumping in and skimming by. This differs from Community GIS in the sense that we routinely meet as groups for collaboration with our classmates and occasionally with community members via interviews, and most of our work is a team effort towards one final goal. Now that our deliverables are to be used for a purpose rather than merely a grade, I feel as though this is the step up to the plate I had been preparing for.

The community service project for this term involves assisting Rashe Malcolm, a business owner in Inner East Athens (IEA), in her plans to revamp the area surrounding the “Triangle Plaza” by constructing a grocery store, laundromat, community garden, and affordable apartment-style housing for the community. We intend to create demographic, economic, and business profiles of this area and provide what we create to equip Rashe with information to use as she sees fit.

The most impactful part of this class to me has been our interactions with Rashe and going out to see East Athens as a class. Crossing over the North Oconee River felt foreign, and being met with turned heads and stares from residents, I felt out of place in a way I had never experienced. Upon stepping out of my car, and other students stepping out of theirs, we were met by Rashe with warm greetings and inviting energy. She spoke with us about her plans, and walked us to the site where she intends to make it all a reality. I love learning of Rashe’s ambitions and goals for the community, and I am so glad our class can support her endeavors.

Furthermore, the impacts of this project could reach not just Rashe, but the whole community. Although we are only creating deliverables for Rashe herself, the materials we provide could potentially lead to the broader impact of Rashes proposed plans being executed. Rashe is also currently running for Commissioner of District 6, and the information we will provide could be meaningful for non-IEA residents to understand IEA and how it compares to Athens-Clarke County. It makes me so grateful that she is placing her trust in our class’s budding expertise, and it is refreshing to know our work is going to a purpose far more meaningful than just a grade.

Having spent four years in Athens completing my undergraduate degree and never hearing of East Athens until this semester, I can say this class has been such an eye opening experience. Looking back on how I would tell others that I live in Athens makes me feel like an imposter – I never truly understood the disparity between college student life and resident life of Athens. Just two miles from the renowned UGA Arch and less than a mile from high-rise student housing, infrastructure and demography undergoes a sudden change.

With my newfound knowledge of Athens and the new meaning of GIScience I hold, I am becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable. Breaking free from the imposter syndrome I felt throughout my progress in this degree certificate, I no longer feel like my major is a hindrance to my ability to succeed in my GIS classes. I no longer feel behind, out of the loop, or less than. This step of taking Community GIS has given me such vast and valuable knowledge of my community, and ties together what all of those tools I learned are meant for. Wrapping up this certificate with this course and project makes all of that learning come full circle, and I can not recommend this course enough.

Peyton is a 4th year B.S./M.S. Ecology DoubleDawg student at the University of Georgia, pursuing a certificate in GIScience. Her current research is a multidisciplinary approach of genetics, biogeography, and physiological ecology to understanding the North American Atlantic coast mussel species, Geukensia demissa.

Keywords: Community projects, engaged scholarship, imposter syndrome

By Radu Casapu, Community GIS Student Spring 2024

I think we’ve all done class group work in the past where no one can work together and no good ideas come out of the discussion. You leave the class wondering, “Did our group just not mesh well?” or “What is the professor even asking of us?” It can certainly be frustrating to propose group work and end up with a less-than-ideal end result. While I don’t claim that there will always be a solution to this, I found that through our collaboration and group discussions, we were able to overcome these issues in our UGA Community GIS class. So how were we able to do it?
 
For context, our Community GIS class took on a challenging project this semester, working with East Athens business owner Rashe Malcolm in researching and analyzing data involving the neighborhood as she hopefully looks to build a grocery store and community garden for the historically Black neighborhood. Her idea is not simple - it will take into account food accessibility, gentrification, and business ownership, among other things. Rashe’s got plenty on her plate, so we as Community GIS students accepted the challenge.
 
First and foremost, we had to make sure that our project does all it can to be to the utmost benefit for Rashe and gets her approval through every step. We applied a valuable method known as co-production of knowledge, which would best help us work in the environment of multiple parties being involved. After all, “High-quality co-production requires frequent interactions among participants to occur throughout the process” (Norström et al., 2020), therefore taking in the input of everyone involved. The strategy of co-production emphasizes that both parties involved should bring knowledge and ideas to the table when possible. That way, the final product brings more value to everyone, including both Rashe and us students. Before even asking the questions for the project, we made sure to collect as much experience and knowledge as we could through various means, whether it be interviews with community leaders or on-site exposure. With all that under our belt, we reached the most daunting part yet: the planning process.
 
We allotted ourselves multiple class periods to work through this process. As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day. We needed time to disassemble the pieces of the project and then put them back together in a way we could handle. Our first task was brainstorming questions. These questions involve what we are trying to find out through our project. The goal here was to come up with as many as possible - we would make them more defined and concise later - but at that moment it was best to simply get everyone to ask questions. This way we can see our project through every perspective. Through our multitude of questions we practically got to see the thought process of every group member. There are no wrong questions, but there are very many right questions that could be asked. After a lot of discussion between each other and together with Rashe, we steadily narrowed down some questions, combined others, and got to a few solid ones that encompass all that we want to research.
 
Next, we brainstormed potential data and methods. For every question we thought of the different ways it could be answered. These methods don’t necessarily have to be directly answered by GIS, since even though our class is centered around GIS software, not every student comes in the class with the same knowledge or background. Technical skills vary, college majors vary, and obviously our personal experiences are all different so we will have different ideas. This is an important value of Community Geography in general, which as Fischer et al. (2021) point out, promotes flexibility and diversity of methods when approaching a project’s goals and research questions. We worked through our ideas and assessed how feasible they were and which were our favorites. We went around and identified our favorites from other groups and gave edits or suggestions on how to improve them.
 
Finally, with questions and strategies established, we could come up with centralized goals that we want to achieve. We had to do many rounds of categorizing and dividing up the questions and strategies but ultimately we found five paths we could take to address all our goals. These five paths would become our 5 groups in which we take on different aspects of the project. And so, within a few rounds of brainstorming and discussion in our groups, we were able to get a good start on our project. This was simply possible through the cooperative effort of everyone, making sure that it made sense for us as researchers splitting up this work and for Rashe, who will benefit from a well-organized final product which provides just as much valuable information from each of the five aspects of the study.
 
My conclusion from this experience is that there are a few things we can take on how to have more productive group work. Firstly, use your groups’ differences to your benefit through different experiences and perspectives which allow for entirely different solutions which you might have never thought of otherwise. Stressing the importance of contributions from all parties involved is a crucial point of co-production, whether it be through asking questions or discussion. In addition, don’t go into the discussion expecting a final product. It can take a while, and it might not come through in the way you expected it, and that’s perfectly fine. Refining our questions or goals was a very steady process which we did over time by involving everyone. Finally, be willing to take risks or unexpected approaches. Bringing a completely new question to the table might spark discussion on something that had not come up at all before. Once again, the power of involvement in co-production allows for this to come from anyone engaged in this research on any side.

Radu is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Geography and pursuing a certificate in GIS science, interested in urban planning and mapping.

Keywords: Co-production of knowledge, research planning, community projects, Inner East Athens

References:
Fischer, Heather, et al. “Doing Community Geography.” GeoJournal, vol. 87, no. S2, June 2021, pp. 293–306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-021-10457-8.
​
Norström, Albert V., et al. “Principles for Knowledge Co-production in Sustainability Research.” Nature Sustainability, vol. 3, no. 3, Jan. 2020, pp. 182–90. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0448-2.

By Jake Ferus, Community GIS Student Spring 2024

I am a fourth year Ecology major at the University of Georgia currently enrolled in GEOG 4385 “Community GIS'' taught by Dr. Jerry Shannon. Not having previously taken a service learning class, I was ecstatic to get this experience even though I wasn’t sure what to expect going in. All that was known was that my skills in GIS, Geographic Information Science, will contribute to a community partner in Athens. I was surprised when the first half of the class focused on the relationship between the researcher and community partners instead of going straight into work. The many readings we discussed helped us think through the positives and challenges of doing community engaged research. One concept we discussed really put in perspective what it means to be part of this relationship, the idea of strategic positivism.
 
Positivism is the concept that there is an objective truth that can be derived scientifically. Often, this is proven mathematically through empirical observation and models, which creates laws.  Scientists in the search for truth are disinterested, meaning they observe outside their own subject matter resulting in conclusions without personal bias. This theory seemed to align with my own personal values because I believed science shows the truth of the world through research and fact-finding. An objective perspective in research seems like the best way to learn about the world around us. However, as we discussed in class, I learned that looking at the world through universal truths can be dangerous and limiting to progress. This is because knowledge and truth is context-specific. What is true for one time and space is not necessarily true across all time and space.  Everyone, whether they want to or not, has a bias they look at the world through. This is something that can’t be avoided and is beneficial in the context of service learning. Consider a community that was forcibly removed so new stores could be built: Using objective numbers would not be able to correctly display the effects this had on those families. The quantified data would highlight the increase in economic revenue instead of correctly showing the hardships put on the families since it is hard to quantify emotional weight.
 
Correctly showing the afflictions on communities is why Strategic Positivism is essential when doing community service work. Strategic Positivism is the realization that science can’t be objective and that subjectivity in science can be intentional in helping those studied. Realizing that everything has subjectivity allows researchers to create emphasis on their claims to guide the information collected to a desired outcome. Let's return to the thought experiment given earlier about the families being displaced. Using strategic positivism, information can be collected and presented in a way that could benefit those families by presenting the extent of the wrongdoings and earning reparations. In hindsight, this concept of presenting data with a goal in mind makes sense, but it was something I never really considered  before considering my very objective mindset.
 
In the second half of the class we learned about our community partner Rashe Malcom, the owner of Rashe’s Cuisine located in the middle of Triangle Plaza. She is a community member in East Athens and is proposing a plan to revitalize Triangle Plaza into a commercial center where the community will be able to invest in themselves. She plans on adding a grocery store, a community garden where people can learn to grow their own food, and an open kitchen which allows for people to gain the skills necessary to start their own business in the area. This plan is vital to the health of the community as Inner East Athens is in a food desert, a community where their nearest food source is an unreasonable distance away.  Our class is tasked with providing Rashe with local geographic information of Inner East Athens so she can present the information for further grant money. Grant money previously has been given to Five Points and Downtown Athens in large amounts while Inner East Athens has been grossly overlooked.  The Inner East Athens is not considered commercially viable and is at constant threat of gentrification from the ever growing UGA student population. The information we can provide can help Rashe showcase the area as a viable center for commercial business to not only improve the lives of the people living in the area but also help strengthen the community as a whole.
 
A large portion of our class was trying to figure out the parameters of our project with Rashe. Besides the frequent talks on what information we should provide, we as a class have been wrestling with how we should compile and use the information we collect. This falls onto strategic positivism to guide our research to meet Rashe’s goals instead of a removed objective stance that positivism would create. As students at the University of Georgia, we have an outsider's perspective that also can be seen as perpetrators to the gentrification in the area. It is important to present the information in a way that not only helps Rashe and her goals but keeps locals informed and benefiting from our information. Some ways our class is trying to put emphasis on our research is by making sure to explore how people in the community are affected by mapping out food sources, walking distance to stores, percentage of ownership of land, and other ways to show how the population demographics is faring compared to the rest of Athens. Highlighting and presenting this information is strategic positivism as it focuses on presenting the side of Inner East Athens that was being neglected with the goal of benefiting the area.  Hopefully, the information we will provide will result in Rashe getting the grant money she is aspiring for the betterment of the Inner East Athens Community.

Keywords: East Athens, Strategic Positivism, Inner East Athens

References:
Wyly, E. (2009). Strategic Positivism. The Professional Geographer, 61(3), 310–322.

By Paige Overmyer, Community GIS Student Spring 2024

As we are over halfway through the semester in my Community GIS class, a collaborative research course studying a section of Athens, I have gained a better understanding of what it means to be an intentional researcher. We’ve spent weeks reading about the science of displacement, positionality, and ethical mapping, and have just finished the planning phases for making a detailed profile report on Inner East Athens (IEA). Over the years, IEA has been experiencing demographic shifts and housing pressure. Due to this, it is critical to make maps and charts displaying businesses, food access, and demographic dynamics that can properly aid future development plans and maintain the core community structure of this area.
 
The concept of studentification introduced in this class from a reading by Graham Pickren has deeply resonated with me, and I strive to use this newly found knowledge to be a better researcher both in this class and in the future. To understand studentification, it’s critical to first understand gentrification: the process of displacing people from an underserved community to bring in wealthier inhabitants and thriving businesses, without sharing that wealth with the original community that was driven out. Studentification involves displacement driven by the needs of students, leading to changes in community dynamics through the repurposing of housing, amenities, and recreation to better accommodate growing student populations from nearby colleges. These go hand in hand because studentification “builds a student’s cultural capital that leads them to be gentrifiers later in life” (Pickren, 2012).
 
As I read Pickren’s paper on studentification, I was immediately uncomfortable. That discomfort stemmed from being confronted with my own actions that promoted students dominating an area when I went to college in Milledgeville. I was complicit and even advocated for nearby housing to be more accessible to students when I lived in a historic home with four other women and was faced with city fines from having too many unrelated roommates in a single home. My thought process was that since my college was the driving force in tourism to the city (it is not), students should be able to have housing that is close to campus. I felt so threatened that locals didn't want us there, but I didn't consider the fact that students have been slowly pushing them out, deteriorating their sense of community. I tried to fight for something I didn’t fully understand because I was clouded by my own wants, but I am thankful that I have been more exposed to inner workings (and impacts of) studentification and gentrification through readings and community interactions.
Studentification isn’t as simple as students deciding to slowly migrate into underserved areas, it’s a complex process that has political and environmental components. As one of the largest universities in the state, University of Georgia has an immense amount of money and power, enabling it to prioritize serving students’ educational needs by acquiring land to enhance school programs and accommodate a growing student population. This puts the university in conflict with the Athens community as both fight over the best utilization of the same land. Other key stakeholders include environmentalists, who prioritize the safekeeping of greenspaces around the community. From the reading, I learned that this group largely helped in developing the 1999 comprehensive plan for Athens by keeping rural areas rural to preserve the community’s rich greenery. This meant that redevelopment would have to be located in urban areas where services are already in place. Areas that are underserved with affordable housing are now targeted since they’re seen as the cheapest to redevelop. Though this process is meant to benefit students, the reading made me realize that it’s not (completely) student-led.
 
Our class has spent this semester learning how to properly research the East Athens Community with the help of Rashe, a community member who owns a restaurant in the area. Being intentional with researching the East Athens Community means delivering a report while understanding the biases we may have considering our position as students at an institution that promotes gentrification. Though gentrification may happen in this area regardless, it’s critical to this community that the changes are beneficial and do not drive anyone out. Since we are outsiders in this area, we are continuing to talk to those in and around the community to get a better sense of what they want out of this research. I was part of a group that interviewed Broderick, a community organizer, artist, and Executive Director of the Economic Justice Coalition in Athens. Listening to his journey on making positive change within the city reinforced my thinking that the university has a lot of power over the community, so a lot of decisions that are made are driven by the goal of university prosperity. As an institution, it’s crucial that we do everything we can to be intentional and understand how our expansive actions affect locals.
 
I’m in a group within the course working on mapping gentrification and studentification in Inner East Athens and how it compares to the county as a whole. While this is a daunting task, it’s one that will be able to highlight demographic variables over the last decade or so to provide a clearer picture of trends. We are planning to build a matrix that quantifies the susceptibility of an area to gentrification using prior research models. Throughout this process, I aim to be both inquisitive and considerate, as we map out and make visuals of the changes East Athens has experienced as well as its future potential. Both residents of the Athens community and students deserve to know the impact of gentrification, especially since student needs are what drive these changes that inevitably affect the entire community.

Paige is a 2nd year graduate student studying Disaster Management and Public Health. She is interested in hazard mapping and infrastructure resiliency, with a focus on prioritizing protection for vulnerable populations.

Keywords: Studentification, Gentrification, East Athens, GIS

REFERENCES: 
Pickren, G. (2012). “Where Can I Build My Student Housing?”: The Politics of Studentification in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia. Southeastern Geographer, 52(2), 113–130. https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2012.0019

By Catherine Campbell, Community GIS Student Spring 2024

You might notice a Starbucks popping up where a local restaurant once stood and see economic growth in a low-income area. On the other hand, you may view this change as a warning sign of dangerous community displacement. Either way, you’ve likely witnessed the effects of gentrification. Less familiar, however, is the concept of studentification.
 
This semester, I am taking a Community GIS service-learning course during which we’re exploring the ways we can apply GIS to better understand and address issues in our local community. So far, our primary focus has been studentification and how it’s affecting communities in the East Athens area. Throughout the past few weeks, we’ve been learning different GIS tools and methods through the lens of exploring these effects.

​In my short time here at UGA, I’ve watched Athens rapidly change. Luxury apartment complexes seem to pop up like weeds, and chain restaurants replace local cuisine. In the beginning of the semester I learned that this phenomenon is called ‘studentification’. More specifically, studentification refers to the gentrification-like effects of student residencies in communities neighboring Higher Education Institutions. Like gentrification, studentification has impacts on economic, social, and cultural aspects of neighborhoods with a high density of student residents. The consequences, by nature, tend to have disproportionate impacts on low-income and marginalized communities.
 
In class, we learned how to map U.S. census data in QGIS as a facet for establishing a baseline understanding of such conditions in Athens. This allowed us to visualize the distribution of undergraduate students in comparison to the demographic characteristics of the areas in which they’re located. Using data from the 2018-2022 census, we calculated variables such as race, income, and number of undergraduate students as a percent of the total population and mapped them in QGIS.

Something I hadn’t considered before this course was how the recent changes in student lifestyles exacerbates gentrification in college towns. In the past decade or so, it’s become increasingly common for students to move into apartment buildings specifically designated as student housing, rather than living in dorms or renting local houses. This is especially true in Georgia where residents of high academic achievement have access to the Hope and Zell Miller scholarships. While they generously cover a large portion of tuition, this means that UGA students tend to have more money to spend on amenities like expensive student-oriented apartments.
 
As a result of a larger student demand for luxury apartments, property taxes increase in nearby neighborhoods. Often, local residents can no longer afford housing and/or are more susceptible to being bought out by private developers. Property management companies repackage single family homes as multiple occupancy student housing or rebuild the property entirely. Unfortunately, these are rarely equitable transactions. Residents are frequently unaware of their property’s real value or have been desperately rushed into the sale.
 
In our Community GIS lab, we explored these changes in property sales prices through the process of learning how to perform point pattern analysis techniques in ArcPro. Using housing data from the county tax assessor, we georeferenced residential properties in Athens and mapped their sales prices per square foot using ArcoPro. To more effectively visualize the patterns in this data we then overlaid the map with a hexagonal grid and aggregated values into a mean sales price per square foot for every property within each hexagon using the Generate Tessellation and Summarize Within tools. In addition to calculating average sales price per square foot for 2010-2012 and 2020-2022, we created maps showing the difference in averages between these two time periods, as well as the percent difference.

Locations like our study area in East Athens, conveniently located nearby college campuses or downtown areas, are disproportionately affected by studentification. Affluent student populations are able to congregate in large numbers in these areas, not only raising property prices but occupying areas with highest access to necessities like public transportation and grocery stores.
The scarcity of access to basic needs only makes things harder, costing valuable money and time for residents forced to find housing further and further from optimal locations. Like gentrification, the effects of studentification are compounding.
 
These first few weeks of class have allowed me to practice using GIS software while beginning to understand what studentification is and how it’s impacting Athens. This has opened my eyes to the deeper ramifications of the changes I’ve noticed around me throughout my time as a student here at UGA. Not only did our class learn useful techniques and programs, but we built a foundational understanding of the conditions in our study area.

By Jamie Jordan, Community GIS Student Spring 2024

Through reflection on the initial six weeks of our Community GIS class, I noticed several things that have stood out in our project working with East Athens. Our project will mutually benefit students and community members. Given my intrinsic longing for structure, I have appreciated Dr. Shannon loosely sequencing the course through a series of conceptual frameworks with which to interface and better understand community-engaged research. Regularly revisiting these concepts has proven useful in planning our project.

One major through-line in our course is the co-production of knowledge. In community-engaged research, developing co-produced knowledge involves a collaborative, inclusive approach to generating knowledge. It demands active and equitable participation of researchers and community members throughout the research process, from defining goals and questions to interpreting findings and implementing solutions. Co-producing knowledge emphasizes mutual learning and shared decision-making, recognizing the expertise that researchers and community members bring to the table. By breaking down traditional research hierarchies, we aim to create meaningful knowledge by respecting diverse perspectives. In our specific project in East Athens, we believe involving local residents will help us produce research that better addresses the community’s needs and visions, integrating their firsthand knowledge with our analytical skills as community geographers.

Early in the semester, Dr. Shannon challenged us to understand “strategic positivism,” which involves carefully considering power imbalances, cultural differences, and community details in research. This approach is great for community-focused research because it examines the bigger picture of social, cultural, and power structures. Unlike purely objective views, strategic positivism acknowledges that community partners’ personal experiences matter. It aims to balance thorough research methods with an understanding of the complex dynamics within a community. By using this approach, we can create a more inclusive and relevant research process, specially tailored to East Athens.
​
Another important concept is praxis, which, in community-engaged research, means combining theoretical knowledge (from the strategic positivism approach) with practical application. Praxis is a cycle where theory guides action, and critical reflection helps refine and question existing ideas. For our research, praxis highlights the relationship between abstract theory and context, recognizing that enlightenment and adjustments will arise from this interplay. By using praxis, we will bridge the gap between community research principles and practical engagement in East Athens, rendering our approach more comprehensive and reflective. Ideally, our project will benefit from both archival research, conducted in Dr. Kurtz’s supplementary course studying local historical geographies, and input from East Athens residents.

The importance of maintaining awareness of researcher positionality in community-engaged research cannot be overstated. Positionality refers to a researcher’s social orientation, including their identities, characteristics, and roles as they influence their perspectives and interactions within the research process. Acknowledgment of researcher positionality in the context of our analysis of East Athens is crucial for several reasons. For instance, positionality informs the design of the research and often the format of the deliverable. Scrutinizing researcher positionality ensures that methods, structure, and stylistic choices are culturally appropriate, and that data collection and analysis techniques are sensitive to the community’s context and needs.

In the context of my engagement in researching East Athens, I have reflected on my status as a student of GIS, rather than a professional geospatial analyst, which has made me realize that the way I understand and utilize GIS software is different from that of, say, someone working in supply chain management. This awareness encourages a more nuanced approach to integrating GIS analysis within the community, respectful of local context. Recognizing positionality also prompts researchers to critically reflect on their own biases, preconceptions, and potential power dynamics. The reflexivity achieved through examining my positionality helps mitigate the risk of imposing outsider perspectives that otherize the community, fostering a more equitable research process.

Beyond the scope of research design, positionality is fundamental to building trust and nurturing relationships within the community. Transparency about our backgrounds and intentions as researchers is paramount for establishing credibility, allowing community members to understand our perspectives better. Responsible researchers consider positionality frequently to ensure the research process is collaborative and respects the autonomy and agency of community members. For example, it has proven useful for our class to consistently remind ourselves that as students, we are in fact complicit in the gentrification of East Athens through our patronage to student housing complexes. Embracing positionality is needed to conduct ethical, sensitive and effective community-engaged research, as it contributes to the development of genuine partnerships, enhancing the sustainability and applicability of research outcomes to the community. This does not mean I should feel guilty for attending the University of Georgia, but that I should expect my enrollment status to affect my relationship with East Athens and its residents’ disposition toward our class’s research.

I trust that the class time spent this semester interpreting the relevance of various research concepts in the context of East Athens will render our deliverable and analysis more comprehensive, tactful and socially impactful.

Jamie Jordan is fourth-year geography major interested in urban planning and housing inequality, exploring the intersection of archival and analytical community-engaged geographic research.

Keywords: Collaboration, Engagement, Participatory, Positionality

By Steven Peay, Community GIS Student in Spring 2024

I am a fourth-year geography major at the University of Georgia with certificate programs in Geographic Information Systems and Urban and Metropolitan Studies. This is my third semester at UGA. One of my classes is “Community GIS” and we are currently learning about the city of Athens outside of the university and downtown, specifically East Athens. Despite living on East Broad Street for over a year now, I have never visited East Athens until our class took a trip to Triangle Plaza last month in January. Rashe Malcolm, a local business owner and resident of East Athens, spoke to our class about her personal experience with studentification, housing prices, property taxes, and racial zoning.
           
East Athens, located immediately east of Downtown Athens, seems cut off from the rest of the city, even though Triangle Plaza in the center of the community is less than two miles from the UGA Arch. The neighborhood has a lot of old houses that could use some renovation, roads full of large cracks and potholes, with two small strip malls in the middle of the neighborhood. While some major roads of Athens go through this community, like East Broad Street and Arch Street, I saw very few people driving through East Athens, and Google Maps always directs me to take either North Avenue or Lexington Road when driving to either Atlanta or Lavonia. Most of the ACC bus routes drive around East Athens with few stops in the actual community, which is odd, as East Athens has a low median household income and likely also a low car ownership rate. I don’t want to jump to conclusions or make unreasonable claims, but it feels like I’m not supposed to know about this neighborhood and it is being hidden from people who live outside of Athens. When I first heard “East Athens” I originally thought of places like Georgetown Square in the eastern part of Athens-Clarke County near Winterville, rather than immediately east of downtown.
           
Rashe is the founder and CEO of Rashe’s Cuisine, a Jamaican soul food joint. She has run this small business for over 30 years and since not many people drive through East Athens, most orders are deliveries and takeout/pickup orders. During her speech to our class, she stated that many old houses are being destroyed to make space for new student housing, as the community is seen as “ghetto”, while most of the rest of Central Athens is seen as historic. Rashe wants a community garden and a grocery store in or near Triangle Plaza, as East Athens is a food desert, meaning there is no easy and affordable access to fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meat, bread, and dairy products. She also advocates for tax breaks on life-deed houses, or houses willed to their current occupants by previous generations. Most houses are owned by the current residents, but they can’t afford the rising property tax caused by gentrification, studentification, and inflation.
           
East Athens is a majority-black neighborhood and is a result of historic redlining and racial zoning, which has led to the community’s status as a food desert, poorly funded schools, little public transportation access, and poor infrastructure, leading to the high poverty rate, keeping the community underdeveloped. There is hope for this neighborhood, as people like Matthew Epperson and Imani Scott-Blackwell run non-profits to help integrate the isolated community with the rest of the city of Athens. They both work for Hivemind, a cooperative that strives to fight poverty and elevate low-income communities in Athens and surrounding counties.
           
I hope that using open-source and easily accessible GIS information the people of East Athens can make their voices heard and achieve funding for affordable housing and mixed-use business and apartment buildings for residents to live and work, more access to public transportation through East Athens, slower gentrification in the area to allow them to build wealth and afford to live, and eventually break barriers and “invisible walls” dividing them from the rest of the city. With the spread, popularity, and increasing access to the internet and public information, it has become much easier to find out more about how to find resources for rent/tax assistance, location of affordable housing, and local nonprofits. I am very optimistic that these goals can be reached, not only in East Athens, but in every low-income community in the United States still suffering from racist political and financial decisions made nearly a century ago, creating more integrated and united cities and localities, at the cost of no one’s life or financial prosperity.

By Brandon Latimer, Community GIS Student in Spring 2024

Community GIS is a class offered at the University of Georgia each spring semester and is taught by Dr. Jerry Shannon. As described on the Geography Department website, it is a course designed around a service-learning project that “[provides] GIS support for a group in the community.” I signed up to take the Community GIS class this semester with little idea of what it actually entailed. I was excited to apply GIS, a field I have been interested in throughout my time at UGA, to local issues. However, I had a poor understanding of what that work might look like. I came in eager to hop on the computer and begin to map whatever it was I needed. I quickly learned that this is just one small part of what community mapping projects, and research projects in general, look like. I will use the concept of knowledge co-production as an example of how my understanding of research has shifted.
 
Co-production emphasizes the importance of collaboration in order to create knowledge that incorporates a diverse set of information and experiences within relevant contexts. It is a holistic approach that attempts to limit partiality and maximize the positive impacts of knowledge production. Norström et al. (2020) write about the four fundamental aspects of knowledge co-production, noting that research should be context-based, pluralistic, goal-oriented, and interactive. Pluralistic and context-based work results in the implementation of a variety of skill sets and information to address a specific problem, along with the many contexts in which that problem exists. The research is goal-oriented in order to create a clearly defined objective for all involved parties to work towards. In order to do this, the work must be interactive, ensuring that everyone is involved throughout the entirety of the project. This guarantees that each party’s voice and expertise are accounted for.
 
As our class read about and discussed this concept at the start of the semester, I appreciated its emphasis on transdisciplinary research. However, it was still very early in the semester, and I was a little unclear about its role in our work. Once again, I was looking forward to just sitting down with some music and mapping out some local topics of interest. As the semester has progressed, we have learned more and more each week about what a community-based project entails, including our role in knowledge co-production. One of the most essential elements of this type of work is learning how to properly engage with community members in order to understand how we can best help each other.
 
Our specific task in the Community GIS course is to work with Rashe Malcolm, a business owner in East Athens. East Athens is a community that has long been neglected and mistreated. As the University of Georgia continues to grow practically across the street, East Athens remains less developed than other surrounding neighborhoods. With the student population expanding each year, studentification creeps into East Athens. Studentification is a form of gentrification with social, cultural, and economic changes that are specifically related to the influx of college students (Pickren, 2012). Broadly, Rashe is attempting to redevelop East Athens for locals to enjoy, not for a constantly overturning student population. Included are plans for apartments, a grocery store, and a community garden. Rashe is encouraging entrepreneurship and improving the community’s access to healthy foods. Our role is to provide Rashe with any data and information she might find useful in this process.
​
While I could always read about these issues, my understanding would be insufficient without our class's partnership with Rashe. As a longtime business owner in East Athens, Rashe is an integral part of our work. Throughout the semester, our class has remained in touch with Rashe through Dr. Shannon, including visiting her in East Athens. Listening to Rashe’s perspective and vision for the community was far more informative and inspirational than anything I could read or hear in a classroom. This trip helped me learn more about the context in which studentification and the uneven development of the city occur and more clearly outline the goal of our collaboration. Currently, the class is preparing to interview local individuals, including members of the East Athens community, East Athens representatives, and more, to further our understanding of the neighborhood. Additional interviews will expose us to new perspectives and concerns regarding the East Athens community. This process is one of the ways in which we can stay engaged throughout the project, as well as providing us with a variety of valuable viewpoints.
 
Co-production of knowledge is a concept that applies well to what we are doing in Community GIS but is also a valuable tool in many types of research. As the first half of this semester has flown by, I am learning more and more each week about how to properly engage with community members to conduct ethical and impactful work. I now see an incredibly important side to research that I had previously been overlooking, and I am excited to discover anything else that I might have been ignoring.

Brandon Latimer is an anthropology and geography major, graduating in May 2024. Brandon is working on Urban Studies and GIS certificates and will be getting into the field of global development after graduation.

References
Norström, A. V., Cvitanovic, C., Löf, M. F., West, S., Wyborn, C., Balvanera, P., Bednarek, A. T., Bennett, E. M., Biggs, R., de Bremond, A., Campbell, B. M., Canadell, J. G., Carpenter, S. R., Folke, C., Fulton, E. A., Gaffney, O., Gelcich, S., Jouffray, J.-B., Leach, M., & Le Tissier, M. (2020). Principles for knowledge co-production in sustainability research. Nature Sustainability, 3(3), 182–190. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0448-2
 
Pickren, G. (2012). “Where Can I Build My Student Housing?”: The Politics of Studentification in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia. Southeastern Geographer, 52(2), 113–130. https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2012.0019 
​

By Peyton Gunn, Community GIS Student in Spring 2024

For our Community GIS class this semester, we are studying the area of East Athens. This area is relatively east, but not in the way I was thinking when I first joined the class. Personally, I thought it was referring to the area near where I lived off of Barnett Shoals, and when I first heard the words East Athens used, I thought “Whoa, this is awesome! I know this place so well!” Little did I know that I was completely wrong, and that the area we were talking about was one I had never even heard of before.

​East Athens is actually very close to campus, but seems very isolated when driving around. Some places other people might know are near it are the North Oconee River Parks and Firefly Walking Trail. There are many ways to get to it, but I would say the most common ways people get there is by turning off Oconee Street or North Avenue. From there, many roads can be used to traverse the area in what is considered East Athens: Peter Street, Vine Street, Arch Street, First Street, and Nellie B Avenue. We had talked about the area once our class really got more involved in studying East Athens, and it seemed like a decent place. We had been looking at the area to hopefully help Rashe with some government funding for the area, but exactly what she wanted to do I wasn’t sure of yet. A nice shopping area with Rashe’s Cuisine and a barbershop, plenty of houses for people to live in, and a police station nearby to keep the area safe. These were my perceptions of East Athens before I went there, but now it was time  to see it for myself.

On a Friday in late January, a few different classes made the trek over to Triangle Plaza, the shopping center to which I alluded before, and it felt a lot different than the picture online. Lots of people walked around the streets like they were sidewalks, which struck me as fascinating just because that wasn’t something I had not seen on Google Maps (which would be hard to depict, but that was my only frame of reference). Once most of the people had gotten there, we went into one of the rooms of Triangle Plaza, which looked like it was being used as a community center. Rashe, our East Athens tour guide for the day, told us that in the past it has had multiple different uses. It was originally a barbershop, hence the raised flooring at the front. Afterwards, it was a laundromat, hence all the outlets along all of the walls. It has had other uses, but those were the ones that had lasting impacts of the room. It was interesting to learn this, as it was kind of learning about the history of the geography of just that room, with so many uses showing what was important to the people at the time.

Once we left the community center, we went up to the outside of the building to a mural that had been painted by Broderick Flanigan of some of the most important advocates and civil rights activists from the East Athens area. Jessie Barnett, Evelyn Neely, Miriam Moore, and Virginia Walker were all very important black women of Athens civil rights, and them being on the main business building in East Athens shows that they were very important to not just the progression of Athens as a city, but East Athens as a community. After this, Rashe had a wonderful proposition for us. She said she wanted to build a multi-use building outside Triangle Plaza that had a laundromat, grocery store, and apartments on top of them. She explained how she would keep the rent of those apartments low by using the potential renter’s income to see if they make enough money to pay it, but not enough to where the rent would increase to where no one else could afford it. She said she needed our help, though, with maps and diagrams to show county commissioners and other important government officials to get grants to pay for the ideas she had for the area. This is very exciting, as what we will be doing is going to have a real life and long term effect on the community for the better, such as helping the process of having a central place they can go to do their everyday needs, as well as add living space that would not be there unless we were, which can help people live where they want that is affordable.

Learning about East Athens has taught me a lot about being aware of where I live. Certain aspects of East Athens definitely stuck out to me, such as the strong African-American pride exhibited in a lot of businesses and murals as well as a strong community with people everywhere talking and walking together. The goal of this project is to help the people of East Athens grow more as a community, as well as adding amenities that currently are not there, such as a grocery store and laundromat. Using public opinion and GIS work could help figure out exactly where amenities can go to have the most impact on the people that live there. Personally, I believe this will definitely move the community in the right direction going forward. Like I said, I had never heard of or seen this area before, so it was interesting getting to know the place and learn more about it, and I cannot wait to be more involved in the community as we move further towards the project. 

Peyton Gunn is a third year geography student at the University of Georgia pursuing a degree in geography with a minor in geology.