By Shaifali Prajapati, Spring 2024 Community GIS Student

I’m currently a student in the Community GIS class, pursuing my first year as a PhD Geography major at the University of Georgia. Even before attending UGA, learning about the ongoing work Dr. Jerry Shannon’s Community GIS class has been doing with the Linnentown Project made the course stand out to me. Students across different iterations of classes each year were able to utilize GIS as part of efforts to bring the stories of the people of and connected to Linnentown to the surface. I was intrigued to hear about a course that strives to integrate service-learning and GIS together, guided by community mapping and critical GIS. While I took several GIS courses as a Geography major in undergrad, all of them focused on learning to use various associated software through projects meant to emulate topics students would use for layered spatial analyses geared towards industry job prospects. Beyond completing deliverables for the labs, there was a lack of instruction in understanding why and how these processes were carried out. Considering all of these factors, I had set my sights to take this class if I ever attended.
 
For this semester’s Community GIS class we’re working with community partner Rashe Malcolm, the local business owner of Rashe’s Cuisine located right in the Triangle Plaza area of Inner East Athens. We’re developing a project to aid in her proposal to revitalize Inner East Athens with consideration to the already-established culture and demographics in the neighborhood. As part of this project, we are working to provide a profile of Inner East Athens through mapping current demographic and business dynamics, processes of studentification (similar to gentrification in which the needs of student populations of higher education institutions drive social, cultural, and economic displacement of local residents), property ownership and food access affecting the area (Pickren 2012).
 
While I’ve had prior experience working on community-based mapping, it is through this class that I’ve been able to take part in the praxis of community geography by applying critical theories of mapping with a critical lens on GIS through attention to conducting inclusive research. This blog itself is one aspect of this ongoing process to critically reflect on the implications of our work. So far, we’ve discussed and reflected on being conscious of using GIS through a critical lens. One of the core ideas we’ve been paying attention to is avoiding extractive (extraction of knowledge and resources) research and instead striving to carry out inclusive (mutually beneficial) research that examines implications of the research we’re doing for the people and places that are being studied. Some of the ways we’ve been conscious of these implications are through conducting interviews with prominent local figures also advocating for Inner East Athens to gain their perspectives on the prospects of revitalization as well as key concerns affecting the area. We also took a trip to learn about the Inner East Athens community and the historical legacy of Triangle Plaza from Rashe. As Rashe was guiding us through locations where she was planning for revitalization by building a community garden, grocery store, and affordable housing, I was able to situate myself in the actual locations we’ll be collecting data for and have a more nuanced understanding of local business owners and residents from Rashe’s perspective.
What stuck with me most during this visit is Rashe pointing out murals dedicated to women in the neighborhood that were commemorated for their strong community leadership, and her dedication to continue those efforts as a community leader herself.
 
With these informed perspectives in mind as well as our own perspectives of being students and residents of Athens, we are using our skill sets as a class by researching, compiling, and presenting spatial dynamics that Rashe has requested for her plans of continuing development in this community. Throughout this process, I really appreciate having discussions with Rashe as a class because it gives us the opportunity to hear her thoughts directly and time for us to ask questions. Additionally, getting feedback from her and the interviewed local figures on our project deliverables has been an integral part of approaching work with a critical perspective centered on community partners through working with informed perspectives and having strong communication. My hope is that our project is helpful to Rashe and that future classes can continue working with her in her goals to revitalize Inner East Athens, and I’m curious to see how the project develops and changes over time as well as how Inner East Athens is viewed and the people residing there view their neighborhood themselves.
 
Presently, as we’re nearing the end of class, I’m glad to be able to take part in this unique blend of learning and practicing GIS. While it can help with job prospects through the project management skills we’ve gained as a class along with learning how to use GIS software and carrying out spatial analyses, the goal throughout the semester to me has been to guide students to critically consider the impacts of what it means to be “doing community geography ” (Fischer 2022).
 
 
Keywords: community mapping, Critical GIS praxis and pedagogy, inclusive research

References:
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Fischer, H., Block, D., Bosse, A., Hawthorne, T. L., Jung, J. K., Pearsall, H., ... & Shannon, J. (2022). Doing community geography. GeoJournal, 87(Suppl 2), 293-306.
 
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. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26229005

By Andrew Mote, Spring 2024 Community GIS Student
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As a fifth year Geography major at the University of Georgia, I have learned a lot about how the world changes and why it does so. All of these classes, such as Commodification of Food and Urban Geography, have taught me valuable concepts like how urban spaces sprawl and how that’s changed over time, or how food is commodified and globalized. I have acquired plenty of valuable skills and foundational knowledge to help me understand the world but Community GIS is the first class that really has taken what I’ve learned and applied it to the real world. I’ve always strived to do good in the world as I move forward and learning about these concepts was my answer to doing so. I want to learn about the people around me so I can help them if they ask for it. So far, my coursework has really solidified my understanding of power structures and the systems we live in, but I haven’t had many chances to learn how I can help in a more direct manner or how I can move forward and help the others around me do so as well. Community GIS along with a few other experiential learning classes have become my foundation for the so-called “art of research.”
 
Research, just like any other worldly endeavor, has its own artform that guides its creation. Just as with a canvas, the person behind the brush has control over how it forms but not entirely. The art is in the process. You can plan out your artwork as much as you want, cover the canvas in sketch lines, but it’s not until you’re halfway through and asking questions that the art begins to take shape. Similarly in research, you can plan it out as much as you want, but only when you step out and start talking to people and looking at patterns that the artwork starts to form. This idea is reinforced by a concept I learned in Community GIS, called co-production of knowledge. The kind of research that focuses on incorporating community voices that the data is based on, the kind that avoids extractive tendencies that often go with studies of society. Before this class, I didn’t think I was the type of person to promise to help a community with my research and leave without completing my end of the deal, but to see this concept had a name and a study of its own was quite intriguing.
 
            “Co-production of knowledge” focuses on doing research in a manner that supports all the parties involved. It not only does this, but it also recognizes the varying positionalities involved in the project and how those multiple types of expertise can be best utilized. It’s not just about academic experience but also the lived experience of the community partners which helps produce knowledge collaboratively. The goal of it is to step away from extractive forms of research, the ones where a professor at a university goes into a community, makes a bunch of promises, and then as soon as they have their data, they leave. The knowledge created by these practices is more pure because it incorporates many perspectives. Producing research with this in mind, grounds the knowledge in place and establishes context which makes it more true to itself. It is artistic in nature because it accounts for the process in and of itself. It recognizes that the process taken to acquire data shapes the data itself but it’s also important to understand how it emphasizes that this process is impossible to empirically show and can only be truly understood by the people involved.
 
Not only is it about how the research is used after the fact, but I think it also helps guide the research process as a whole. One of the biggest things I learned is how important it is to understand everything you can about your study area before you even look at the relevant factors to one's research. I got a better understanding of this outside of Community GIS as I was interviewing a UGA Geography graduate student. Pablo Arias-Benavides is a PhD student who  focuses his research on Costa Rica and how sustainability policies affect locals going through their day to day life. A lot of his research hinges on interviewing locals and the way he talks about the interviewing process really shifted my view on how to conduct research in general. While you’re interviewing or in the middle of researching, you have to let the process itself guide you. Particularly in interviews, often it takes its own direction and you have to let that happen to a certain extent as that will show more truth than any question you can ask. Though, if you don’t understand what you’re researching beforehand, you are bound to get caught up in the tiny details when it’s time to figure out the big story.
 
There is so much value in understanding the basic demographics of an area before diving into the more specific research related questions. It goes so much further than this though, I learned that if you only study the quantitative data of an area, it is impossible to truly understand how a place functions. I think that’s a common thing Geographers get stuck on, they focus on telling the story through a map but forget that it’s only a single paint brush on a massive canvas. This is why it is crucial to allow time for verbal knowledge to be exchanged. While a zoom call with the client may never create a useful data point that can be used in the final document, one single discussion can make a huge difference in the quality of the data down the line.

By Zane Frentress, Spring 2024 Community GIS Student

This winter, our Community GIS class began work with Rashe Malcolm, a local activist and proprietor of Rashe’s Cuisine, to compile a neighborhood profile of Inner East Athens. Rashe is working on a redevelopment plan for Triangle Plaza and the surrounding area that would increase food access and affordable housing options for neighbors. Triangle Plaza is located at the point where Vine St. and Nellie B. Ave intersect, across the street from Bert’s Grocery and just down the road from the Nellie B. Community, in the heart of Inner East Athens. This historically Black neighborhood, roughly bounded by the Oconee River to the west, the Loop to the south and east, and North Avenue, has experienced dramatic socioeconomic changes in the past few decades. Many long term residents find themselves vulnerable to displacement as developers and real estate agents steer homebuyers “across the river” to the East side. As a geographer-- and a renter-- in Athens, I’m more than aware of the predatory housing market and how skeezy developers are driving up the cost of living, pushing out anyone who can’t keep up with the astronomical rise in rent and property taxes. I knew this was happening in East Athens, but I had personally never spent time in the area. What I knew about the neighborhood was filtered through my connections at the University and secondhand sources. Now, I found myself in a Community GIS class collaborating on a project with Rashe Malcolm and other community members trying to find ways to connect our ways of knowing Inner East Athens, as geographers and community members, that can support Rashe in her food access and economic justice initiatives. The project we are working on with Rashe is an act of translation-- we are building a  bridge “across the river.”
 
We first met Rashe at Triangle Plaza this January. For the first time in my personal experience, I came to Inner East Athens by crossing the river, not by zooming in on Google Maps. Many of my classmates had the same experience. Instead of reading through computer screens, we squinted through the winter sun to see Rashe’s vision for the neighborhood. We met Rashe in the community hall in Triangle Plaza, where she pointed out the empty rows of electrical outlets left over from previous salon and laundry businesses, and talked about what bringing back businesses could mean for the community. We stood with her in the parking lot, where she saw potential for garden beds and an industrial kitchen. We followed her to the (mostly) empty lot behind Triangle Plaza, where she saw a full service grocery store to serve the surrounding community. As we spent time with Rashe, her vision for the neighborhood embedded itself in the way I saw the landscape. The maps and census groups we used to define Inner East Athens in our early GIS labs materialized as roads and homes and businesses and we were able to think through the ways that Rashe’s material vision and our virtual one connected, and how these perspectives could build on one another. These connections informed the way we designed our research questions for the rest of the project. We are currently working to finalize a document that focuses on five geographic aspects of Inner East Athens: demographics, property ownership, businesses, gentrification, and food access.
 
Our meeting with Rashe was informative, not only because of what we learned but from the ways it highlighted how much we still had to learn on our own. Back in the classroom after our visit, we learned more about business turnover through data on business and property transfer over time. We read more about the complexities of defining food access and how location alone cannot predict which residents might experience challenges in having access to nutritious and culturally appropriate food. During our visit to Triangle Plaza, we noticed that the residents passing by-- most of whom were Black-- were eyeing us with reasonable suspicion. We learned about “studentification,” and the ways that the University we represent has wrecked the housing market in Athens by accepting more and more students from wealthier backgrounds without building new on-campus housing for them. This has forced many Black residents out of their neighborhoods as developers rush to cash in on the student boom by buying up housing with a low market value and flipping it back to students with a high price tag. As students ourselves, we spent a good deal of time talking about “positionality,” and what kinds of knowledge we do and do not possess as outsiders from the University, and how we can be both learners and contributors in the translation project we were working on with Rashe.
 
Collaborative knowledge production has a nice ring to it. I was particularly excited to learn more about the various ways to approach research in community geography. Over the next couple of months, our class went back and forth not only with Rashe, but with other people affiliated with the neighborhood such as artists, business owners, city commissioners, and journalists. Then, we went back and forth with ourselves over how to process the abundance of information we just got. Then, we revisited our own cartography and data processing skills, and learned some new ones along the way. By cycling through these stages of asking, learning, doing, reflecting, and reworking, we are engaging in my favorite word from this class: praxis. Praxis is the process of applying the things we learn to the things we do, learning from that process, and doing it all over again. After a few weeks of this, though, we found that we needed to break the ice and address how deeply uncomfortable it can be to learn and unlearn this way.  Working with large groups and partners requires maintaining a delicate balance between listening and realizing what you can or can’t offer in discussion. We’re trying to render visible something we’re only just starting to see, and pass it on to someone who has a clear vision, who doesn’t need the color gradients and zipped .csv files to verify her lived experience.
However, throughout this class we have also seen over and over how powerful geospatial data can be as a tool to communicate. We learned how to sort through census data to isolate specific information that could help us back up our collaborators’ experiences in Inner East Athens. We found we could track things like studentification over time by looking at fields like “percent of residents between 18-24 years of age,” “percent of residents renting vs. residents who own a home,” and “percent of residents with secondary education or higher,” over several decades. We learned how to use tools like Business Analyst to show how Inner East Athens stacked up against the rest of the city in terms of amenities, and who was using them. We learned how to track down whether property owners and business owners lived in the neighborhood to see just how much of the money spent in the neighborhood actually stayed in it to support the community. We learned how to run programs on GIS software that could calculate walking and driving times from a given point so that we could see how far away residents had to travel to get food. Even though many of us in the Community GIS class had only crossed the river for the first time this winter, and still consider ourselves outsiders, we still found that we were able to contribute to this larger project through praxis: We work with Rashe to bridge the world that we have come to know with the world that she wants to build in a way that accommodates multiple ways of knowing Inner East Athens. It’s been messy, but the work we do will continue to live and change through Rashe’s long term investment in redeveloping the neighborhood.
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By Kali Lyons, Community GIS Student Spring 2024

When deciding which course to take, this class stuck out to me as it was focused on providing a real-world experience. We would be building a project from the start and would responsible for data sourcing, creating deliverables, and working with one another and community members to create useful projects. I expected most of our class time to be spent working independently on computers with occasional communication with community members to guide us. I was wrong. Before we even started talking about the topic of our project, Dr. Shannon helped build our knowledge of research methods. Rashe Malcolm, a local entrepreneur and proponent of East Athens, helped build our knowledge of local history, introduced us to East Athens, and helped direct our goals.

As an Athens resident, I was aware of gentrification in Athens but was not aware of the concept of “Studentification,” or even the full extent to which gentrification had taken place. I have only lived here for three years and hadn’t visited much prior to moving here for school so, I had no concept of what had changed. In the time that I have lived here, though, there have been apparent changes made for the benefit of those that attend the University. Apartment complex after apartment complex has been built. Many of these places are only available to those who can afford them, namely students who receive financial help from their parents.

In Athens, historically underprivileged communities that are predominantly occupied by people of color have been the most affected by this process. The Lodge, for example, located on North Avenue was once a mobile home park. Residents were forced to relocate, or even worse, ousted from their homes that were deemed unfit by local zoning ordinances as they did not meet the codes at that time. These displacements caused compounding negative effects that community members are still striving to overcome today. 
 
The severity of studentification has been a major focus in this class. In one of our very first labs, we used house sales data to track how the price per square foot of home sales in Athens-Clarke County has changed over recent decades. Although prices generally increased across Athens-Clarke County, there was an increase of at least $50 per square foot in Inner East Athens specifically, with some homes selling for at least $500 per square foot. Increasing property taxes have added to the burden, forcing many residents to sell to developers. This can be detrimental to a community that is already under so much stress. The loss of familial homes and affordable housing from local residents to temporary students as rental homes can have a trickling effect leading to distrust and disengagement with the community. 

As we visited Rashe Malcolm at the Triangle Plaza, the heart of Inner East Athens, she emphasized how a once thriving business community has been lost in recent decades. Options to purchase foods are limited, as convenience stores are the primary sources for purchasing foods and most grocery stores require travel by car or bus. Travel time, time allotted for cooking meals, and the cost of fresh food may also be factors discouraging IEA residents from consuming nutritionally dense foods. Affordable available foods are usually restricted to processed foods that provide almost no nutritional value.  A local grocery store (developed for community members), a thriving community center and garden, and affordable housing will hopefully restore Inner East Athens. Her hopes are to reinvigorate her community and to increase community engagement.

My team is working to create deliverables that accurately reflect the current and historic demographics of both Inner East Athens and Athens-Clarke County. Changes in demographic variables, like income, renter/homeowner status, and rent burden over the past 20 years might indicate how the draw from the University is affecting different areas of town. We have yet to produce a final product, but I am excited to aid in the development of supporting materials for Rashe’s plans. Aside from creating real usable material as a final project, this class has also been heavily group oriented. The research questions, methods, and plans have all been meticulously made through the course of the semester by the students (with guidance of course). It is challenging but has also been a valuable experience that I feel will be applicable to real world GIS work.

Kali is an undergraduate student at the Odum School of Ecology pursuing a GIS certificate.

Keywords: studentification, community GIS, housing

By Paige Robinson 
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As an ecology major, my perspective on engaged research is perhaps a bit different from some of my fellow geography students. In my previous experiences working on research projects, I am used to taking a very traditional scientific approach. We come up with a hypothesis, create an experiment to test it, and then interpret results. It is very logical and straightforward with everything being guided by previous research. I have enjoyed that approach in the past because of how straightforward it is; there is no outside noise to worry about, and it’s all up to you and your small team to work towards the results you want. I will say there is of course ecological research that involves social science and there are different methods in ecological research that may mimic this class more, but they are projects to which I have not been exposed. For our specific project in Community GIS, we have been tasked with assisting Rashe Malcom, a business owner in Inner East Athens, with her goals of building a community garden, a new grocery store, and more affordable housing in this community.

Rather than the traditional scientific approach of question-answer, this project is far more nuanced and open ended. We will get quantitative results, sure, but what to do with them will be a very complex answer that isn’t up to us. We are serving as the grunt work for Rashe to research her questions about the Inner East Athens community to better inform her decisions moving forward. Her input is part of the process of co-production, which involves ensuring that researchers and the people being researched both have a voice in the production of the research and how it is used. This is an important concept for this project, as it's meant to ensure that people aren’t taken advantage of. These questions are: What is the business demographic of Inner East Athens(IEA)? What does food access look like in IEA? What are the demographics of the people in IEA and how does that compare to the rest of Athens? Who owns property in IEA? What areas of IEA are gentrified and which areas are most susceptible to future gentrification? Doing a whole project working towards what we know will be a complex answer rather than black and white results will take some getting used to. Over the course of the semester, I have shifted my mindset from being used to the satisfaction of a definitive answer, to more of a satisfaction from knowing our work will eventually be used to help inform future decisions out of our control. It’s more hands-off in the long run but I am excited to see where these results take Rashe’s goals and how she will use them to uplift her community.
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Another aspect that is perhaps a bit less familiar for me is having our work split up so much into smaller groups. It can almost feel like we are working on entirely different projects at times, rather than just working on different aspects of the same project and working towards the same goal. The scientific research I am used to can also involve a team aspect of course, but it is usually on a much smaller scale. Working with such a large group and coordinating so many different people’s opinions and ideas on the best way to perform our tasks has been overwhelming at times. However, I think having multiple perspectives is also useful, especially when the results of our work will not directly affect us. Most of us do not live in IEA, and will likely not be involved in this project once we leave this class. Therefore, hearing out everyone’s opinions and making sure we do this right is very important. In comparison, working on ecological research in a lab feels different because the stakes often feel more personal; it feels as though since there are fewer of us working on a project, we are all more personally tied to its results- especially because the projects are usually not tied directly to another group of people (as is the case with our research on IEA).

While there are pros and cons to both methods/types of research, I think co-production is extremely beneficial for this project. I have really enjoyed learning how to incorporate other people’s perspectives from outside of our group into this project, and I understand its immense importance. Working with animals or plants or any other non-human part of ecology, it is rare to see a perspective like this that is so conscious of the impact of research results and processes. Having experience with both during my time at UGA has already changed the way I think about research and will only continue to improve my skills in the future. I think more ecologists should be aware of concepts like co-production and be better about division of labor, impacts on the people living in study areas, etc. I hope that as I enter my career, I will be able to take what I have learned about these things from this class and improve my research going forward.

Paige Robinson, a third year Ecology student with a minor in geography and certificates in GIS and Sustainability.

Keywords: Scientific Research, Research Methods, East Athens, Co-production

By Nishad Kute, Community GIS Student Spring 2024

Intrigued by the intersection of community development and Geographic Information Systems, I decided to enroll in the Community GIS course taught by Dr. Jerry Shannon at the University of Georgia. As a 4th year ecology major completing the Geographic Information Science certificate, I was drawn to the opportunity to apply my newly acquired GIS skills to real-world challenges facing Athens. I had never taken a service-learning course before, so I was not entirely sure what to expect. My initial expectations for this class involved fine-tuning my pre-existing skills in GIS and learning how to apply them in a real-world environment. I quickly discovered that this was not the case, as I found myself having philosophical discussions and interviewing local political figures.  The core of Community GIS focuses on the co-production of knowledge by working collaboratively with community partners to contribute to positive change in underserved communities like Inner East Athens.

Located roughly a mile from downtown, Inner East Athens seems to be in a central location in the city but in reality feels much more isolated than the rest of Athens. East Athens has a long history of neglect from Athens Clarke County,  leading to issues regarding food access, education, public transportation access, and poverty.  Our project focuses on the area in and around the Triangle Plaza in Inner East Athens. Triangle Plaza currently has several small businesses, including a grocery store and liquor store, as well as a police precinct. Also located in the plaza is Rashe’s Cuisine, a Jamaican restaurant owned by Rashe Malcom, a local business owner and community partner for our class project.

Rashe’s vision for East Athens involves the redevelopment of the area in the Triangle Plaza, including plans for affordable housing units for residents, a grocery store, and a community garden. Our role as students in this course is to assist Rashe by providing any data and maps that supports her vision for redevelopment of Triangle Plaza. Rashe recognized the lack of access to healthy foods in East Athens, and her plans for redevelopment aim to encourage entrepreneurship and increase access to affordable, healthy food within the community.

Recently in this class, we have started the pre-proposal phase of our class project. Students have been grouped into different issues that are impacting East Athens, such as gentrification, demographics, food access, and more. Food access was something that had piqued my interest, especially after interviewing District 3 Commissioner Tiffany Taylor. My interview with Commissioner Taylor provided me with valuable insight and context to the issue of food insecurity in East Athens, inspiring me to choose it for the topic of our group projects.

Commissioner Taylor is an East Athens native and has deep ties to the community. She currently serves as the director of the Mothers of Black Sons Development Program, a non-profit organization aimed at mentoring young men and boys in East Athens to learn work ethic, trades, and fostering a sense of brotherhood within the community. When asked  about food accessibility and her role as district commissioner, she acknowledged the lack of access to affordable and healthy food, defining East Athens as a “food-swamp”. A food swamp is different from a “food-desert” in the sense that it is characterized by a wide availability and accessibility of foods with low nutrient density, often provided by fast food restaurants and corner stores. Food deserts on the other hand are simply characterized as areas with limited access to healthy food. Within Inner East Athens, the only close-by options many residents have for groceries are either the Family Dollar or the Pan AM Supermarket. Both stores sell mainly overly processed foods, and don’t have many options for fresh produce and meat. Commissioner Taylor reflected on her childhood growing up in East Athens when there were many more options for fresh produce and meat. She mentioned that the Pan AM Supermarket sold fresh food in the past, but now she claims that it’s more of a hair product store than a supermarket. She also mentioned a grocer called the Quality Market, which sold fresh food but was unfortunately torn down for the construction of the Firefly trail, a recreational walking and biking trail that spans from downtown into East Athens. Learning that healthy food was more accessible in the past made me realize the scope in which the city's government  has failed this community and has highlighted the need to create resources that provide healthy food to residents.

Commissioner Taylor was also in full support of Rashe’s plan for a community garden, placing emphasis on the importance of creating a community initiative to teach children sustainable gardening practices and cultivating relationships through shared work and collaboration. The benefits of building a community garden go far beyond providing affordable and healthy food to the community, as they also provide opportunities for education and skill development, promote physical and mental health, serve as local sources of economic empowerment, and revitalize the neighborhood. I am learning a lot from this class about how large-scale community projects are carried out, and I hope to one day see the results of our efforts come to fruition.

Nishad is a 4th year undergraduate student pursuing a bachelor’s of science in ecology along with a minor in landscape studies. He is working on finishing his GIS certificate this semester and plans on starting his master’s program in landscape architecture following graduation in May.

Keywords: food accessibility, food justice, community engagement, East Athens

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.
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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