Want to get a feel for how GIS mapping is being used effectively as a tool in the progressive community? Then read this: The Revolution Will Be Mapped, a recent article published by Miller-McCune Online Magazine. The article highlights the well regarded work of the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities. And here’s a plug for the home team: The article also quotes Eric Schultheis, former GIS honcho at LSNC’s Race Equity Project, the gravitational center of LSNC’s ongoing GIS mapping projects.

This is a cross post from a LSNC sister site, but a well worthy share at this site: Mapping Out Success, an article from the current issue of California Lawyer, features Legal Services of Northern California as an example how California lawyers are increasingly relying on mapping to better analyze data, to get the job done. “One example is when LSNC in 2007 began using maps to show how a proposed gas-storage area in Sacramento would place a ‘disproportionate environmental burden’ on a densely populated minority neighborhood. … Similarly, LSNC has targeted its foreclosure-outreach program by mapping foreclosure data.”

The examples cited in the article are both products of LSNC’s Race Equity Project. For more information about mapping, visit the LSNC GIS Mapping Resources page.

Here at Webdogs 2.0, there have been periodic postings on GIS. But there is vastly more GIS information available at LSNC’s GIS Mapping Resources page.

This morning LSNC — with considerable help from Eric Schultheis at the Race Equity Project, reigning GIS guru at LSNC — completed a major update, minor reorganization and full-on link refresh of that page.

Among new additions are links to GISTools Freeware, an especially effective tool for extracting census data; Websites for Digital GIS Data, a comprehensive listing of GIS resources available on the web, courtesy of Stanford University; the Free Geocoding, Address Processing and GIS Data Capture web-based application created by the GIS geekmeisters over at the University of Southern California; and a handy dandy compilation of links to the growing collection of Race Equity Project GIS Tutorials.

Worth a revist, if you haven’t been over there for a while.

A quick heads-up to readers interested in all things GIS: Eric Schultheis has posted a new, detailed GIS tutorial for identifying where low-income homeowners reside, to better target foreclosure related services. The tutorial uses the well regarded DataPlace web-based GIS platform, in combo with instructions on using the GISTools freeware to extract the data for use with DataPlace. Just the latest in a long series of posts at the LSNC’s Race Equity Project site to help advocates take advantage of GIS and other resources to better understand race issues. Good stuff.

This is one of those occasional cross-posts I make to draw due attention to LSNC’s Race Equity Project (REP), where our colleague ElektroMoose (aka Eric Schultheis) and resident GIS czar at REP reports on mapping HUD subsidized housing, an interesting innovation at the HUD User – Data Sets site. The REP post provides a snapshot of how it all works and how well. If you take a second to view and scroll down the HUD’s Picture of Subsidized Households – 2000 article discussed by Eric, you find all the datasets you need and ArcGIS-specific instructions on creating maps with those datasets.

And Eric’s latest post is another reminder that the REP is available to help other legal services folks get in the swim with GIS mapping. The ElectraMoose is at your service, people. As the ‘Mooser himself says, “Feel free to contact us if you need some help.”

Just a quick heads up about a DataPlace online “expert chat” scheduled for Tuesday of next week, July 31: Using DataPlace to Make Your Case. We’re great fans of DataPlace, which provides a national platform for exploring, exploiting and visualizing Census and other data — including your own, via upload. This may be especially helpful for exec types who are still on the fence about committing institutional time and resources to the whole GIS mapping and statistical data thing they keep hearing about. This is a good starting point for learning more.

And since we’re on the topic of GIS, consider hooking into the feed at or at least an occasional visit to one of LSNC’s special project sister sites, the Race Equity Project. (Folks attending the NLADA Substantive Law Conference in San Jose had the opportunity last week to meet and learn from a stellar cast of advocates (led by Bill Kennedy of LSNC) who created a wholly new track on race equity issues in legal services practice. There are regular postings on use of GIS as an advocacy tool, with examples of how LSNC and others are using GIS and statistical data to get the job done. Plus, tips and reviews on mapping options, generally. For example, take a look at Swivel me timbers . . . arrrrgh, with a concise review of the new mapping features integrated into the Swivel platform? There, aren’t you happy you know that?

Well, not necessarily. But it can seem that way. In any event, following up on our post of last week on zippy love, a modestly punched up collection of zip code-related links, we’ve added a few additional links to the LSNC GIS Mapping page:

• GIS Dictionary, which derives from ESRI’s hard bound A to Z GIS published last year. Befuddled by the difference between a quantile and a natural break? We can’t promise you’ll understand it but at least you can get a legit answer here.
• It bears repeating: Some of the most interesting things LSNC is currently doing with GIS are being documented over at the Race Equity Project. For example, last week Eric Schultheis (who has amiably been riding herd over the project since its inception last November) posted an item about TGR2SHP, a piece of freeware from the geography department at the University of Tennessee that enables you to convert TigerLine files into shape files. Plus, they offer other tools as well that facilitate extraction of select Census data. (Caveat: At the time of this posting, the UT geography department’s server appears to be down, so check back later as needed.)
• Last week the folks over at LSNTAP conducted their first official training on use of the Legal Services GIS Mapping National Server Project. (LSNTAP’s prototype site is also hosted at the University of Tennessee, so may not be accessible this weekend for the same reasons described, above.) For those interested, you can download the training. (We wish them well. And for what it’s worth, we feel your pain.)

So many postings, so little time. So we’re going to punt today and offer a modest but worthwhile set of self-promoting cross-postings. (You get what you pay for, people.)

LSNC a few months back launched an innovative sister site called the Race Equity Project, previously noted here. (Everybody here calls it “The REP.”) So, now you’re asking, “Okay, but what’s that got to do with tech stuff, bunky?” Well, the answer is that Webdogs 2.0 most definitely has plans, yet unrealized to add content to the still empty Data : GIS : Analytics page. For starters, we will (hopefully) soon be posting some real-world examples of how GIS has been used by LSNC as both an advocacy and an administrative tool. And that work has synergy with the goals of the REP. As explained in its most recent newsletter, the REP is available internally at LSNC and externally to the larger legal services community to assist with identifying, analyzing and presenting race-based data. It is worth tracking what is happening at the Race Equity Project site, which is incrementally building a specialized “syllabus” about key data and demographic resources, and periodically posts items about GIS mapping and data sites that may not be on your radar. For example, last week REP impresario Eric Schultheis posted a great write-up about the Prisoners of the Census site, which inlcudes a heads-up link to FairData, one of the many community-based mapping projects that has helped build the GIS movement to a point of critical mass.

(For those interested, yes, there actually is a Data is So Dope I, posted pre-Webdogs at LSNC.net.)