Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a computer mapping program that can superimpose various map layers over a single area, allowing users to obtain answers to queries of a spatial nature. For example, a GIS database can answer quantitative questions such as: how many playgrounds are within walking distance of a neighborhood or how many people live within a certain radius of a contaminated site? A GIS database can also be used to analyze regions qualitatively; for example, you could use it to determine how one neighborhood compares to another in terms of the population of children or to find what kind of pattern the abandoned structures on a certain block form. Furthermore, a GIS database can be used to make measurements within an area. For example, suppose you want to put in a basketball court in an empty lot; you could use GIS to measure the lot and determine the suitability of the site with regards to size. And these are just some of the applications GIS offers.

In my project, I am critiquing the ways in which GIS has been traditionally used to study poverty, as well as proposing more creative ways of using the technology. Most poverty maps of Philadelphia show Belmont-Mantua as one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city - poor meaning low income. Then other maps such as the distribution of races, female-headed households and welfare recipients are overlain on the poverty map, as if such variables help explain why the neighborhood is poor. But these kinds of maps do not help very much in terms of building community; they simply perpetuate the negative stereotypes of urban neighborhoods. I am using GIS in the Belmont-Mantua area in an affirmative way, mapping the internal resources within the neighborhood.