Rina Ghose

Big Sky or Big Sprawl? Rural Gentrification and the Changing Cultural Landscape of Missoula, Montana

The Rocky Mountain region has experienced significant growth in the last decade, caused mainly by in-migration of population. This paper explores the case of Missoula to examine the nature of this growth and its impacts upon the cultural landscape of the Big Sky country of Montana. Impacts from growth include increasing urbanization and sprawl, changing housing tastes, conspicuous consumption of open space, and spiraling real estate prices. The paper contends that such changes are caused by the in-migration of the new middle class in search of a Rocky Mountain lifestyle, creating a process of rural gentrification in which long-term residents are increasingly displaced. Vociferous public responses to these changes have created demands for affordable housing, control of sprawl, and protection of open space, leading to the implementation of new policies and regulatory measures in a state that is famous for its history of fierce, rugged individualism and an anti-regulatory culture.

PPGIS in Community Development Planning: Framing the Organizational Context

This article examines the local variability of public participation GIS (PPGIS) by urban community revitalization organizations, arguing that this variability is in part shaped by a variety of organizational factors. Existing research has shown PPGIS production to be highly context dependent, identifying an ever-growing set of key elements of this context, including a variety of locally available resources for GIS access and use as well as organizational capacities and characteristics. Contributing to current efforts to expand the conceptual basis of PPGIS research, this article argues that the conceptualization of organizational context must be expanded beyond internal capacities to include organizational networks with local actors, institutions, and resources; organizational knowledge and stability; and organization mission and priorities, all of which shape its activities and relationships, as well as the utility of available GIS resources. This broadened conception of organizational context enables a ...

The complexities of citizen participation through collaborative governance

Abstract. In recent years, a number of collaborative planning programmes have been introduced in American cities, providing an opportunity for traditionally marginalised citizens to participate formally in inner-city revitalisation tasks. However, this process of citizen participation is quite complex. This paper explores the complexities of citizen participation through the case of Milwaukees Neighborhood Strategic Planning process. It contends that the NSP process has been shaped by neo-liberalism and contains a number of barriers to participation. It has also implemented a more technocratic approach in participatory planning. However, skilled navigation of it has given citizens opportunities to change their urban space.

Politics of Scale and Networks of Association in Public Participation GIS

The public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) research agenda has explored the issue of equitable access and use of geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial data among traditionally marginalized citizens, in order to facilitate effective citizen participation in inner-city revitalization activities. However, prior research indicates that PPGIS is a complex process, with uneven outcomes. The author contends that such unevenness can be explained by use of a new theoretical framework drawn from the literature of politics of scale and networks. The author contends that the PPGIS process occurs in ‘spaces of dependence’, containing localized social relations and place-specific conditions. The politics of securing this space leads to the creation of ‘spaces of engagement’ at multiple scales. Within these spaces, networks of association evolve to connect multiple actors from public and private sectors with community organizations. Such networks can contain structural inequities, hierarchical dominance, and fluctuating resources. But these networks also transcend political boundaries and are dynamic and flexible, enabling individuals to manipulate and modify them. In trying to control the revitalization agendas and the material resources required, the actors and community organizations construct politics of scale. For some community organizations, such scalar politics and creative alliances with critical actors allow them to navigate territorially scaled networks of power skillfully in order to gain an effective voice in decisionmaking activities. But other community organizations lag behind, and are not able to form relationships in order to secure their urban space. By the use of new empirical data, coupled with a new theoretical framework, the author aims to contribute both to greater theorization and to better understanding of the uneven and contradictory nature of PPGIS processes.

Complexities in Sustainable Provision of GIS for Urban Grassroots Organizations

Over the past decade there has been a significant increase in the use of geographic information systems (GIS) technologies by a plethora of social groups in various fields. Public participation GIS (PPGIS) has emerged to advance more equitable access to and more inclusive use of GIS among resource-poor and traditionally marginalized community-based organizations. The issue of sustainable provision of GIS for these community groups remains critical; thus, it is worth continuing investigation, particularly with respect to unravelling the dynamic process of GIS provision. This article presents such an attempt through a critical examination of the Data Center program in Milwaukee, which has been suggested as a valuable model of GIS provision in local PPGIS practice. This study proposes that a synthesized approach of scaled network analysis helps to better explain the dynamic process of social struggle for power and control within which the GIS provision is situated. The article illustrates how multiple scaled...

Public Participation GIS and Participatory GIS in the Era of GeoWeb

In the 1990s, public participation (PPGIS) emerged as an approach to broaden public involvement in policymaking as well as use of GIS to promote the goals of nongovernmental organizations, grassroots groups, and community-based organizations (Dunn, 2007; Obermeyer, 1998; Sieber, 2006). Researchers adopted participatory GIS (PGIS) as the focus shifted to the developing world, and more emphasis was placed on providing a voice to marginalized communities rather than on communities influencing public policy. PGIS also combined explicit participatory methods from fields like Participatory Learning and Action (Pain, 2004). Overall, the goal has been to integrate the qualitative and experiential knowledge of local communities and individuals, thereby empowering them to participate in political decisionmaking. By enabling the participation of local people, especially non-experts, PGIS, and PPGIS (shortened to P/ PGIS) have provided a platform where these people can map alternate views of the same problem and analyze the same data differently from those with political power.

Social Constructions of GIS in China's Changing Urban Governance: The Case of Shenzhen

Abstract GIS technologies have developed rapidly in urban China, particularly within local governments, over the past decade. However, such GIS practices in non-Western contexts have not been investigated in depth. The present study attempts to address this gap, drawing on insights from critical GIS and political economy. Scholarship in critical GIS has underlined the importance of power relations in constituting organizational GIS practices, and vice versa. Moreover, perspectives from scalar politics and network analysis provide a useful way to delineate and analyse the spatialized social relations shaping and embedded in GIS constructions. In particular, scaled networks conceptualize social connections and power relations in terms of networks of actors embedded in different spatial extents; within this synthesized framework, we contend, local government organizations serve as both sites and nodes in developing and employing GIS. Through an in-depth case study of the city of Shenzhen, we investigate in w...

Complexities in GIS Construction and Spatial Knowledge Production in Dane County, Wisconsin

The process of GIS spatial knowledge production within planning organizations is quite complex. Drawing from implementation and diffusion studies and GIS and Society literature, this study aims to examine GIS construction by Dane County in Wisconsin as a process that is shaped by the societal mores, institutional norms, and political conditions, as well as the internal organizational environment. This article specifically focuses on the role of the LIO (Land Information Office) that acts as the central coordinator of GIS activities in Dane County. This study examines the implications of establishing a central GIS unit on the overall GIS functions of Dane County. It also explores the role of external contextual factors beyond the confines of an organization that shape the role of the LIO office as the central GIS coordinator and its repercussions on the countys overall GIS and spatial knowledge production. We contend that an organizations GIS spatial knowledge production is shaped by the internal and external contextual environment, especially the political atmosphere and representation of departments or department heads requiring GIS assistance which in turn influence inter- departmental dissemination of GIS and spatial technologies.

Exploring the Complexities of Community Engaged GIS

Participatory GIS projects are increasingly popular in urban governance. This paper explores the complexities of a community involved pilot project that was implemented in the town of Verona, Wisconsin and critically examines their GIS Geographic Information Systems practices and the support structures that played an important role in facilitating GIS use. The paper first traces the evolution of the project, and the role of the various actors in shaping it and then shows that relations between key institutions and actors played a crucial role in shaping the pilot project. While inherently supportive, these actors occupied a dominant power position, setting a top down tone to the project from its onset. As such, the project simultaneously enhanced and constricted the process of participation and spatial knowledge production of the community residents.

Community-Engaged GIS for Urban Food Justice Research

GIScience research has enhanced citizen engagement through advancements in web-based geospatial techniques and qualitative GIS methodologies, which provide opportunities for new forms of knowledge production. This paper draws on two interrelated approaches to demonstrate the ways qualitative GIS and Web 2.0 can provide nuanced analysis and foster collaborations to advance, in particular, food justice goals, which include developing equity in access to quality nutritious foods. First, the authors create a multicriteria food environment index utilizing GIS-based multicriteria modeling to represent food environments as constituted by multiple food sources and access dimensions. This enables visualization of food environment quality and indicates that food environment quality varies within a single neighborhood. Second, they utilize web GIS technologies to capture and visualize volunteered geographic information about urban food environments, demonstrating the importance of citizen perspectives to developing more nuanced understandings of these environments.