NACIS 2020

Planned Destruction
LaToya S. Gray, Master of Urban & Regional Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University
During the Urban Renewal period, planners used maps to display density and racial boundaries. These maps would establish the future of development in an area. Despite severe restrictions during this period, African Americans were able to create thriving neighborhoods which would be intentionally targeted and destroyed through “slum clearance”. This story map offers a historical primer on the maps used to destroy black neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia. It also includes a reconstructed map displaying the original residents and establishments displaced from downtown Richmond. The purpose of this map is to educate and encourage public engagement in the planning process.

Geochicas and the path into mapping more inclusive spaces for women
Selene Yang Rappaccioli, National University of La Plata, Argentina
Within the mapping community, data is often presented as objective, and we have yet to generate a sustained analysis of gender bias as a structural problem. The data structures, meanings, symbols and epistemologies that are expressed in voluntary geographic information (VGI) projects (such as OpenStreetMap) generate “invisible” exclusion factors that do not encompass the diversity of experiences of some social groups that participate in their creation. In the case of OSM, the ratio of participation by gender is 97% male and 3% female (Budhathoki,2010), resulting in cartographies that reproduce male-centered experiences of space. The change of paradigms on the construction of cartography has made evident that regardless of the massive amounts of VGI that’s put into the collaborative mapping projects, truly only a few people’s experience is part of the creation of the maps. The technological and academic communities that I belong to do not have the tools to analyze this type of bias and the consequences it has in the field of research. My work intends to generate the data that might make this kind of analysis possible.

Mapping with Action: serving underrepresented communities
Raynah Kamau, Whitney Kotlewski, Black Girls M.A.P.P
Black Girls M.A.P.P. is a community that started out to celebrate black women in the field of mapping and then later evolved to evangelizing mapping by using it to visualize and amplify social issues often faced by underserved communities. Join founders Raynah Kamau and Whitney Kotlewski in an example-rich discussion on the projects they have worked touching on community disparities while dealing with the pandemic, social justice and most recently their latest project in the electoral realm.

Our Home on Native Land: Connecting People and Stories using Indigenous Geographies
Christine McRae, Executive Director and Rudo Kemper, Board of Directors, Native Land Digital
You may be familiar with the native-land.ca website being used in land acknowledgments or seen the colorful tapestry of Indigenous lands go viral on social media on Columbus day and Thanksgiving. What you may not know (yet!) is that Native Land is evolving as a not-for-profit organization, with an Indigenous Executive Director and majority Indigenous-led Board of Directors and Advisory Council who are passionate about thinking creatively and critically about using maps to share stories about Indigenous territories, challenge concepts linked to settler colonialism, and increase Indigenous community sovereignty over their own data. The goal of this presentation is to stimulate a lively discussion around what it means to map native lands from an Indigenous perspective.