The Mattapan Mapping Project

The Mattapan Mapping Project is a community-based initiative that collects and shares resident stories alongside quantitative and spatial data about how Mattapan is changing with respect to development, policy and planning, and community organizing. By providing diverse, relevant, and coherent information on a single open-source online platform, the project seeks to empower residents to take civic action and advocate for equitable policy and urban development.

The Mattapan Mapping Tool is a creative and user-friendly online mapping tool designed to track nuanced data—demographic and land use statistics, audio and video files, cognitive maps, alternative housing, and land use typologies—that affirm and amplify the place-knowing and spatial claims and aspirations of community members.

Participatory action research and community capacity building around data gathering, analysis, visualization, and narratives seeks to shift extractive practices of knowledge production and scholarship led by outsiders to democratic modes of knowledge creation and applied learning which are contextual, participatory, and change-oriented.

Participatory planning engages Mattapan community members in using multi-faceted data to inform and educate other residents, neighborhood and civic leaders, organizational and institutional representatives, researchers, planners, designers, policymakers, and city staff about displacement pressures and advocates for equitable development in Mattapan.

Since cultivating community knowledge for influential action is an emergent process, the project proceeds in three iterative phases:

• Community-informed Design: Greater Mattapan Neighborhood Council members and other residents informed the initial design of the tools and the prioritization of data collection.
• Community-engaged and Empowering: Residents are collecting and interpreting data to inform community education, planning, and advocacy while mobilizing their neighbors to join the effort.
• Community Ownership: Ultimately, Mattapan residents will co-lead the project to foster ongoing community learning that shapes Mattapan’s future while honoring its past and celebrating the present.