Beyond Cooptation or Resistance: Urban SpatialPolitics, Community Organizations, and GIS-Based

Spatial Narratives

Sarah Elwood

Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of Arizona

The roles, relationships, and strategies of state and civil society institutions in urban planning, problem solving,and service delivery are in flux. In trying to understand how these changes affect community organizations,grassroots groups, and local-level institutions of civil society, existing research has tended to conceptualize theseroles through a series of oppositional dialectics, such as cooptation or resistance. This article shows instead thatcommunity organizations shift their technological, institutional, and spatial approaches to urban planning andproblem solving in creative and multifaceted ways. They produce a variety of spatial narratives to advance theiragendas by strategically enacting multiple roles vis-a-vis a diverse set of actors and institutions. Informationtechnologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) can play a central role in this approach. Communityorganizations apply their own interpretive frameworks to GIS-based maps and images to produce spatial nar-ratives of local needs, conditions, and assets that may be adapted to the diverse roles and relationships theynegotiate in urban spatial politics. These arguments are developed from ethnographic research carried out withtwo inner-city Chicago community organizations pursuing a range of neighborhood improvement activities. KeyWords: community organizations, neighborhood revitalization, neoliberalism, participatory GIS, urban politics.

The political relationships and material practicesof urban planning, problem solving, and servicedelivery have changed dramatically in the past

twenty years. These processes are increasingly carriedout through purported partnerships of actors from thepublic, private, and nonprofit sectors. Emphasis on lean,efficient state structures has furthered this handoff ofgovernance responsibilities to so-called shadow stateinstitutions (Wolch 1990) and has led to an overall re-duction in funding for planning, problem solving, andservices (Peck 2001; Brenner and Theodore 2002; Fyfeand Milligan 2003). Widespread attention has beengiven to this transformation of the roles, responsibilities,and institutional configurations of state and civil societyin urban spatial politics, with particular focus on theimplications for local-level institutions, such as neigh-borhood associations, community-based organizations,community development corporations, and other non-profit community agencies.1

Community organizations’ urban improvement ac-tivities, organizational structures, and institutional rela-tionships are changing as well. They participate in anexpanded range of activities, and the emergence ofmany new organizations has increased competition for adwindling pool of funds (Cope 2001; Perrons and Skyers2003; Vidal and Keating 2004). State and private fun-ders’ growing emphasis on technical expertise, use of

‘‘best practices,’’ and demonstrable achievement ofmeasurable outcomes has led to what some characterizeas a professionalization of the field (Morison 2000; Mi-tchell 2001). A growing number of community organi-zations use digital spatial technologies such as geographicinformation systems (GIS) to carry out statistical andspatial data analysis and mapping for program planningand implementation, fundraising, and monitoringneighborhood change (Sieber 2000; Sawicki and Peter-man 2002; Elwood and Leitner 2003).

These developments constitute fundamental shifts inthe processes and relationships through which local-levelurban change is negotiated, planned, and implemented.Understanding the strategies that community organiza-tions use to influence these processes and the relation-ships between state and civil society that may be alteredthrough their activities informs several key questions inurban geography. These questions include the nature ofdemocratic practice in the production of neighborhoodand the role of spatial analysis technologies and differenttypes of spatial knowledge in these negotiations. Spatialknowledge here refers to the characteristics and mean-ings that individuals, social groups, and institutions as-cribe to particular places. Spatial knowledge is a criticallyimportant component of the changing practices andpower relations of urban politics because it affects howand to what extent the needs, priorities, and goals of

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96(2), 2006, pp. 323–341 r 2006 by Association of American GeographersInitial submission, January 2005; revised submissions, April and May 2005; final acceptance, May 2005

Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, U.K.

residents and community organizations are expressedand included.

GIS and Society research has identified spatialknowledge as an essential element through which thesocial and political impacts of GIS technologies aremediated (Craig, Harris, and Weiner 2002). Much of thepublic participation GIS (PPGIS) literature, however,focuses on questions of technology and data access andoutcomes of specific participatory GIS initiatives. Al-though important, this focus has neglected richer theo-rization of how agency and authority are negotiated inmultiple ways among the actors and institutions in par-ticular spatial decision-making processes where a GIS isused. To explore these intersections, I examine the fol-lowing questions: How has existing research conceptu-alized the negotiation of community organizations’ roleand power in the politics of urban planning, revitaliza-tion, and service delivery? What roles and relationshipsdo community organizations enact within these urbanpolitics to try to maintain an influential and independentrole? How are spatial knowledge and GIS-based repre-sentations implicated in these strategic relations?

Informed by ongoing ethnographic research with twoChicago community organizations, I show how theyproduce flexible forms of spatial knowledge to supportdifferent objectives at different times, cultivating mul-tiple roles in urban planning, development, and sociallife simultaneously. The use of spatial informationtechnologies is central to this approach as they use GISto create narratives about neighborhoods that are in-terpreted and reinterpreted to support different roles andactivities. By producing flexible spatial narratives thatenable them to pursue multiple objectives, communityorganizations strategically navigate the institutional,spatial, and knowledge politics that produce and trans-form urban spaces, in a way that cannot be solely char-acterized as either cooptation by or resistance to morepowerful state and business interests. Instead, they havedevised a more complicated institutional and spatialstrategy that allows them to maintain opportunities toinsert their spatial knowledge into key decision-makingpractices, sustain long-term working relationships withother influential agents in urban spatial politics, andenhance their own capacities by drawing on funds, ex-pertise, and advocacy from other actors and institutions.

Negotiating the Agency and Authority ofCommunity Organizations in Urban Politics

Researchers across an interdisciplinary literature assertthe importance of community organizations’ capacity to

articulate their own agendas for social and spatial change,and to influence decisions that affect their communities.These efforts to explain how changing urban politics af-fect community organizations highlight three primaryarenas in which the autonomy and authority of theseinstitutions is negotiated: spatial politics, institutionalpolitics, and knowledge politics. Each of these elements ofurban politics has been framed by some as an arenathrough which community organizations can expand theirrole and power, and by others as a site of disempowermentrelative to the state and other urban government actors.

Spatial Politics

Urban geographers and others argue that the politicsof urban planning, problem solving, and service provisionare fundamentally spatial. Several scholars have shownthat the spatial scaling of these political practices, as wellas the production of spatial meanings, plays an importantrole in determining agency and authority of differentinstitutions, individuals, and social groups (Martin 2000;Wilson and Grammenos 2000; J. Fraser et al. 2003;Martin, McCann, and Purcell 2003; McCann 2003).State institutions, the private sector, and nongovern-mental organizations all engage in a range of spatialpolitics through which they attempt to influence urbanchange and decision-making processes (McCann 1999,2001a; Purcell 2001; Wilson and Wouters 2003). Forinstance, Raco (2000) and J. Fraser et al. (2003) showthat many policy regimes and planning practices aimedat improving urban conditions target ‘‘the community’’as an ideal, appropriate scale. They contend that thisdefinition of a local spatial scale as the appropriate onefor community organizations’ involvement limits theirautonomy in urban politics. In this understanding ofcommunity organizations’ changing role and power,spatial politics are used to mobilize local institutions inthe service of state-controlled urban improvement ini-tiatives, thereby limiting their influence on decisionsaffecting other spatial scales. Others argue that urbanspatial politics can be manipulated by local organizationsin order to increase their agency and influence. Com-munity organizations might subvert state control overthe planning process by resisting efforts to limit theirinvolvement to a particular spatial scale, or build pow-erful coalitions by jumping scale, redefining a problem intheir local area as part of broader political or economicinequities (Martin 2000, 2003b).

Similar debates revolve around the production andcommunication of spatial meanings in urban politics andtheir significance for community organizations. Wilsonand Wouters (2003), Newman and Lake (2004), and

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Stoecker (2004) argue that discourses representingneighborhoods as unhealthy and decaying or as oppor-tunities for capital investment and profit can dimi-nish community organizations’ control over planning,policymaking, and development. In contrast, Martin(2003a) argues that efforts to assign meaning to aneighborhood (which she terms ‘‘place framing’’) canserve as a powerful way for community organizations toenhance the legitimacy and power of their agendas forchange. In sum, the spatial scaling of participation,policymaking, or contestation, and the production ofspatial meanings, are understood as key determinants ofthe agency and autonomy of local actors such as com-munity organizations.

Institutional Politics

Other research has focused on the institutional poli-tics of urban planning and problem solving as a centralarena in which the role and power of community or-ganizations is negotiated. This aspect of urban politicsmight include lines of authority between different actorsin urban government, strategies that these institutionscan use to try to influence one another, and allowableterms of negotiation over urban spatial change. Suchinstitutional politics are sometimes explicitly definedthrough bureaucratic structures, such as positions on aplanning board formally allocated to elected officials orcommunity organization representatives. Alternativelythey may be developed through the repeated practicesand interactions among these actors, as in the case of acommunity organization expecting to review propertydevelopment proposals in their neighborhood becauseelected representatives usually ask them to do so. Giventhe sweeping changes in the institutional structures andrelationships of urban government, planning, and revi-talization over the past decade, this aspect of urbanpolitics has received a great deal of attention, thoughwith little agreement about the implications for com-munity organizations.

Two important shifts in institutional politics that haveaffected community organizations are altered organiza-tional structures and funding practices. An increasingnumber of community organizations, for instance, re-ceive a significant portion of their operating fundsthrough contracts to deliver local state-service programsand from philanthropic agencies, which some researchersargue can limit their capacity to pursue agendas not inline with the priorities of these other institutions (Lakeand Newman 2002; Martin 2004). Well documentedacross the United States, the structure of communityorganizations has shifted toward professionalized organ-

izations with greatly expanded budgets, ranges of activ-ities, and numbers of paid staff (Vidal 1997; Gittell andWalker 1999; Stoecker 2003). Stoecker (1997, 2004)contends that this shift in organizational structure is partof a broader change in community organizations’ ap-proaches to urban improvement. Characterizing this as ashift from a ‘‘community organizing approach’’ to a‘‘community development approach,’’ he argues that thenew approach limits the flexibility of these organizationsto work toward a diverse range of goals, focusing theminstead on capital investment in the built urban land-scape. In contrast, other scholars argue that the greaterfinancial capacity and expanded agendas of these largerorganizations expands their ability to implement positivechange in their communities and affords them a morepowerful voice in urban planning and policy making(Bright 2003; Smock 2004).

Changes in the institutional politics of urban planningand decision making also include new forums for deci-sion making and the devolution of responsibilities tocommunity organizations, both of which are frequentlycharacterized by local government as opportunities forparticipation. Some researchers argue that this devolu-tion of responsibilities has not been accompanied bysufficient resources nor any actual power to shapeagendas for urban planning and decision making. Fromthis perspective, institutional politics is understood as ameans by which community organizations are incorpo-rated into state agendas (Lustiger-Thaler and Shragge1998; Raco 2000; Peck 2001). In contrast, other re-searchers have provided examples of ways that com-munity organizations have used these restructuredinstitutional politics to insert their priorities andknowledge into local decision making. They suggest thatthe discourse of participation that characterizes thesenew decision-making forums provides an opportunity forcommunity groups to insist on an influential role (Mitlin2004; Taylor 2000; DeFilippis and North 2004).

Knowledge Politics

Planning, urban geography, and critical GIS researchhave highlighted knowledge politics as another keyarena in which the role and power of community or-ganizations is negotiated. This interdisciplinary body ofresearch has shown that different types of knowledgeand ways of representing the needs and conditions of aplace influence the power and legitimacy of differentactors’ claims in spatial decision making. For instance,Gaventa (1993), Lake (1994), and Heiman (1997) haveillustrated the greater power and relevance assigned tocertain types of quantitative data and ‘‘scientific’’ or

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‘‘expert’’ knowledge in spatial decision making, com-pared with the experiential knowledge often gatheredthrough community organizing efforts. Spatial knowl-edge and cartographic representations produced using aGIS and other digital technologies are often givengreater weight in planning and policymaking thanknowledge presented in other ways (Aitken and Michel1995; Elwood and Leitner 2003). In navigating thesepolitical economies of knowledge within urban politics,community organizations and other institutions makechoices about what knowledge to present and how, withthe hope of influencing decisions or bolstering the per-ceived legitimacy of their claims. In the past ten years,the knowledge politics of urban planning and problemsolving have been influenced by growing adoption anduse of GIS and digital spatial data by a multitude of newusers, especially community organizations (Goodchild2000; Sui 2000; Crampton 2001; Elwood 2002a; Sawickiand Peterman 2002).2 Debates about the impacts ofthese shifting knowledge politics on the role and powerof community organizations offer divergent perspectives.Some researchers suggest that community organizationsuse these forms of expert data and technologies tonavigate knowledge politics in ways that enhance theirabilities to advance own priorities and agenda (Sieber2000; McLafferty 2002; Elwood and Leitner 2003; Ma-succi and Gilbert 2004). Geographers’ work on ‘‘coun-termapping’’ highlights the ways that marginalized socialgroups have used maps to define and negotiate spatialgoals, claims, and perceptions to their own advantage(Harley 1988, 1992; Wood 1992; Nash 1994; Rochleau,Thomas-Slayter, and Edmunds 1995; Sparke 1998). Newapproaches to GIS-based visualization have sought toinclude the spatial knowledge of marginalized and un-derrepresented social groups (Kwan 2002; Schuurman2002; Sieber 2004). As well, there exist many examplesof participatory GIS initiatives that have enabled com-munity organizations and grassroots groups to disseminatetheir own spatial knowledge (Harris and Weiner 1998;Sieber 2000; Ghose 2001; Elwood 2002a, 2002b; Kyem2002; McLafferty 2002; Elwood and Leitner 2003; Kyem2004; Masucci and Gilbert 2004). Discussions of theknowledge politics of GIS and cartographic representa-tion are also fraught with examples of their capacity todisempower and to constrain the range of spatial knowl-edge and perspectives that may be advanced. Hoeschele(2000) and Crampton (2003, 2004) provide examples ofcartographic texts and GIS-based spatial knowledge beingused by powerful social and political actors to exact top-down control and quash dissent. Others raise concernsthat if community organizations advance their claimsusing forms of knowledge and information technologies

largely designed for and controlled by the state and pri-vate industry, they are vulnerable to incorporation oftheir agendas into those of the state, and a consequentdevaluation of local experiential knowledge (Aitken andMichel 1995; Rundstrom 1995; Clark 1998; McCann2001b; Hoeschele 2000; Crampton 2004).

In explaining the changing autonomy and authority ofcommunity organizations in urban politics, the existingliterature offers a multifaceted conceptualization of thearenas in which these roles and power relations are de-termined. This existing research also documents ongoingchanges in spatial, institutional, and knowledge politicsin great detail. But there remains a significant differencebetween the dominant claims made about the effects ofthese shifts on community organizations. The persist-ence of such vastly different conclusions suggests a needto restructure the frameworks through which we con-ceptualize community organizations’ roles and relation-ships to the state and other structures. I contend that, inpart, the divergent conclusions being made about com-munity organizations stem from a tendency in the liter-ature to debate their roles and contributions in terms ofseveral oppositional dynamics: cooptation or resistance,an activist role or a service delivery role, expert knowl-edge versus experiential knowledge.

Community organizations have been represented assubject to state-controlled imperatives that mandateappropriate scales and spatial strategies for urban im-provement efforts, or as enacting a resistant spatialpolitics by producing their own (necessarily different)spatial meanings and strategies. The role of communityorganizations within the institutional politics of urbanplanning and problem solving has been framed as eitheractivism and resistance or as service delivery on behalf ofthe state. Discussions of knowledge politics have tendedto understand the contributions of community organi-zations in similar terms, framing their engagement aseither producing alternative knowledge or reinforcinghegemonic knowledge of the state and other powerfulstructures. Conceptualizing the role and power of com-munity organizations in these terms is problematic forseveral reasons. It implies that community organizationsadopt a single role as they navigate spatial, institutional,and knowledge politics. Further, it suggests that differentroles within urban politics are mutually exclusive—thatproducing expert knowledge subverts the productionand power of local knowledge, or that serving in ashadow state capacity precludes also maintaining anactivist stance. Such conceptualizations overlook thepossibility that the practices of community organizationsmight produce multiple and diverse roles, relationships,spatial meanings, and forms of knowledge. Just as urban

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and political geographers have noted the difficulty offraming these complex politics and relationships throughdiscrete categories of identification such as citizen orbureaucrat, state or civil society (Brown 1994), it is simi-larly difficult to understand community organizations’role and spatial knowledge production in singular terms.

Such framings of the role and knowledge of commu-nity organizations in urban planning and problem solvingdo not encompass the diverse range of their involve-ments and positioning within urban political processes. Iwill show here that these organizations simultaneouslycultivate multiple roles as they participate in spatial, in-stitutional, and knowledge politics. They are, for in-stance, actively working with and for state institutionsand programs while simultaneously operating to mobilizeprotest. Far from being mutually exclusive, different rolesand relationships are intentionally cultivated by com-munity organizations as a strategy for increasing theirautonomy and influence. In these practices, communityorganizations directly engage N. Fraser’s (1992) notionthat politics (and publics) must be understood as multipleor hybrid. In so doing, they create a flexible and multi-faceted approach that targets emerging contradictionswithin the spatial, institutional, and knowledge politics ofneoliberalism, devolution, and collaborative governance.Although neoliberal governance regimes frequently pro-mote urban revitalization practices that try to involvecommunity organizations in neighborhood-level inter-ventions, the tremendous diversification of actors andinstitutions involved in urban governance affords com-munity organizations a multiscalar set of potential alliesand resources beyond this local level. Shifts in institu-tional politics of urban governance mean that communityorganizations relate to other actors and institutions insometimes contradictory ways. The state and the privatesector are resource providers, but also targets for griev-ances. Other community organizations are allies andpartners, but also competitors for dwindling resources.With respect to knowledge politics, state and philan-thropic agencies’ current preoccupation with best prac-tices standards, technical expertise, and accountabilitymeasures encourages community organizations to focuson production of expert knowledge. But, simultaneously,their access to these supposedly participatory decision-making forums is predicated on their perceived capacityto elicit and represent a diverse range of local knowledgeand perspectives to these forums.

Some community organizations are able to recognizeand exploit these ambiguities by adopting a variety ofcreative strategic approaches that work to the advantageof their communities. They produce multiple represen-tations of community needs and priorities, in order to

engage a wide range of actors in urban governance.Production of spatial knowledge, particularly throughthe use of digital technologies such as GIS, is a criticalelement of this strategy. Organizations are using GIS toproduce spatial narratives that represent communitypriorities and needs in shifting and flexible ways. Thesespatial narratives become a central part of their strategicenactment of multiple roles and relationships in thepolitics of urban planning, revitalization, and so-calledcommunity development.

These practices underscore a productive hybridity incommunity organization practices, as well as the rhe-torical power and epistemological flexibility of GIS, evenin the hands of relatively novice GIS users. It is alsoimportant to recognize, however, that these strategies arenot wholly unproblematic and that they encompass aninevitably partial array of political strategies and spatialknowledges. For instance, the kinds of spatial narrativesprofiled here are shaped by the greater ease in GIS ofrepresenting the built environment than social relations,as well as the propensity of contemporary communitydevelopment practices to focus on capital development.The politics and practices of urban planning, revitaliza-tion, and community development of course compriseonly a small part of a larger realm of urban politics andrepresent only some of the ways that nonprofit organi-zations and community activists produce space, place,and knowledge. But even within this relatively smallsphere, the significance of GIS-based spatial knowledgeproduction in negotiating complex political practices isclearly evident.

In this article, these arguments are developed withevidence drawn from an ongoing case study of twoChicago community organizations that are broadly in-volved in urban planning and revitalization activities inan inner-city neighborhood northwest of the downtownarea. This project is being conducted through a partici-patory research design that relies on ethnographic datacollection and qualitative data analysis techniques. Inaddition to its research on the significance of GIS-basedspatial knowledge for community organizations in urbanspatial politics, the project has several interrelated edu-cational and capacity-building goals involving universitystudents and community organization participants.These goals include developing effective strategies forsustaining GIS capacities in community organizationsthrough university-community collaborations, and en-hancing student learning through integration of experi-ential service learning activities into GIS curricula. Inthis context of closely overlapping research, education,and capacity-building activities, developing reliable androbust answers to the project’s research questions

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involves careful attention to the role and daily activitiesof project participants. Participating students, researchassistants, and I play technical facilitation and GIS in-struction roles, such as tutoring community organizationstaff as they learn new GIS skills or assisting with dataacquisition and preparation problems. The communityparticipants direct the GIS application themselves,making choices about which spatial data will be acquiredor developed, what analysis and mapping will be per-formed, and how the resulting output will be used bytheir organizations. In this manner, we hope to facilitatesustained GIS capacities in these organizations, whileensuring that the community participants are the onesshaping spatial knowledge production and application.

Project findings have been developed through col-lection and analysis of several types of ethnographicdata. I conducted twenty-five semistructured interviewswith community organization participants from April2003 to June 2004. All of the interviewees were staffmembers or volunteer participants in one of the com-munity organizations, and nearly all lived in the neigh-borhood. Reflecting similar demographics in theorganizations’ participants as a whole, the intervieweeswere primarily African American or Latino/Latina, andapproximately half were male and half female. In addi-tion to the interviews, I conducted approximately 160hours of participant observation in several differentsettings, including public meetings and events convenedby both organizations, staff meetings, and housing, safety,economic development, and other subcommittee meet-ings. I also conducted participant observation duringweekly GIS tutorial visits at each agency’s office. Thearguments presented here are further informed byanalysis of GIS-based maps produced by the communityorganizations, observation of their use of these maps andimages, and analysis of strategic plans, meeting minutes,and community information documents. These datawere analyzed through an interpretive analysis processinformed by grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967;Cope 2003), involving an iterative coding of field notes,maps, and interview transcripts around themes of spatialknowledge production, goals and strategies for urbanspatial change, and the roles and relationships of differ-ent actors and institutions.

Urban Politics, Institutions, andRevitalization Efforts in Chicago’s (West)Humboldt Park Neighborhood

The Near Northwest Neighborhood Network(NNNN) and the West Humboldt Park Family and

Community Development Council (WHPFCDC) arecommunity organizations that work in a rapidly changingneighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side (Figure 1).The area is characterized by a complicated range of social,economic, and infrastructural conditions. Growing rap-idly in the early 1900s when linked to Chicago’s down-town by streetcar, Humboldt Park comprised homes andlight industrial and manufacturing activities, as well asretail services meeting the needs of its then mostly whiteworking-class population. Beginning in the postwar years,the neighborhood was dramatically changed by suburbanwhite flight, departure of its industrial and manufacturingemployers, loss of many retail services, and concentrationof increasingly impoverished households in its residentialareas. For the past decade, the Humboldt Park area hasbeen the focus of intensive efforts by local government,community organizations, and residents trying to improvequality of life in the neighborhood.

WHPFCDC and NNNN are two of many institutionsthrough which these efforts are implemented. Both or-ganizations try to address high levels of poverty, lack ofaffordable housing, poor structural conditions, and highlevels of criminal activity. They work to retain the re-maining industrial and manufacturing activities. Gent-rification, most prominent in the eastern parts ofHumboldt Park, is creating problems for some long-timeresidents and businesses as property values and housingcosts increase dramatically. Both community organiza-tions draw on long-standing activist traditions in theirefforts to mobilize residents. In West Humboldt Parkcommunity participation has tended to occur throughan informal network of block clubs and faith-based

Figure 1. The greater Humboldt Park area of Chicago.

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associations, whereas mobilization in Humboldt Park hastended to occur through formal organizations, many ofthem established through Puerto Rican nationalist ac-tivism (Ramos-Zayas 2003; Smock 2004).

The identification of Humboldt Park and WestHumboldt Park as different neighborhoods and the at-tachment of meanings to these places are fraught withcomplexity around race, ethnicity, and income, anddifferent characterizations of the dominant conditions inthe two neighborhoods. The WHPFCDC and NNNNidentify overlapping service areas, and neither group’sservice area or self-definition of neighborhood bounda-ries corresponds with boundaries defined by the City ofChicago as ‘‘Community Areas’’ or as electoral wards.The area identified as West Humboldt Park is primarilyAfrican-American and experiences higher levels ofpoverty and crime and lower gentrification pressures.The area identified as Humboldt Park is primarily Latino(though ‘‘Puerto Rican’’ is used in some forums), hashigher income levels than areas to the west, and is ex-periencing significant displacement of residents andbusinesses due to rising property taxes and housing costs.Within the administrative geographies of the City ofChicago and within the target areas of NNNN and theWHPFCDC, the boundaries of these two neighborhoodsare not clearly defined. Rather, the identificationsHumboldt Park or West Humboldt Park tend to be usedsymbolically to connote differences in social, economic,and material characteristics.

WHPFCDC and NNNN frame their neighborhoodimprovement goals similarly, focusing on housing im-provement, better access to affordable housing, em-ployment training and job development, youth andfamily support, crime reduction, retention of employers,and prevention of residential and business displacement.The organizations differ in their structure, size, andscope. WHPFCDC has four staff members and threesubcommittees focusing on revitalization of the area’smain commercial corridor, crime and safety, and smallbusiness support. Participating residents tend to be ac-tive in block clubs in the neighborhood, though somehave additional involvements in the neighborhood, assmall business owners or operators of home-based busi-nesses. NNNN has approximately ten staff members,multiple interns, and five subcommittees focusing onhousing, economic development, employment, im-provement of public schools, and neighborhood strategicplanning. Nearly all participating residents have multi-layered involvement in the area, as business owners,community organizers, or employees for some of themany social service agencies and local government in-stitutions active in Humboldt Park. NNNN serves as the

coordinating agency for an alliance of approximately200 social service agencies and nonprofit organizationsthat plan and advocate for the needs and concerns of thegreater Humboldt Park area. As this coalition, theHumboldt Park Empowerment Partnership (HPEP) isnot a free-standing organization with its own staff, office,and programs; in practice, NNNN serves as the imple-mentation agency for goals and plans identified by thelarger HPEP constituency.3

NNNN and the WHPFCDC carry out their neigh-borhood improvement and advocacy efforts in an urbangovernance context that is fraught with ambiguities. TheCity of Chicago and other state structures are sources offunding and political advantage, as well as targets forgrievances. The public, private, and philanthropic in-stitutions they interact with promote a paradigm of in-ner-city revitalization focused on capital investment inthe built landscape. Unsurprisingly, given the extent towhich these powerful agents set the terms of debate andacceptable practices of neighborhood improvement inChicago, the activities of NNNN and WHPFCDC in-volve some of these material interventions. However,both organizations also have a central goal of preservingthe access of current residents to material and financialbenefits from these interventions, and try to influencesocial relations in the neighborhood through activitiesthat promote community organizing, popular education,and capacity building among residents.

Multiple Spatial Strategies for AdvancingCommunity Organizations’ Goals andPriorities

The NNNN and WHPFCDC organizations havedeveloped complex strategies for negotiating spatial,knowledge, and institutional politics in ways that affordthem greater influence over planning, revitalization, andpolicymaking in Humboldt Park. They demonstrate akeen awareness of certain tensions and fractures in ur-ban politics, and cultivate flexible practices that allowthem to exploit these ambiguities. This approach in-volves developing flexible forms of spatial knowledgethat can be used to pursue multiple objectives and toengage other actors and institutions in multiple ways.Flexible spatial knowledge is a critical element of thisapproach because it allows them to represent theneighborhood and its needs and conditions in a varietyof ways that may be shifted for different audiences oragendas. Later in this article I will show how NNNN andWHPFCDC use GIS to develop these spatial narratives.

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In this section I detail the spatial strategies beingenacted by the two groups as they cultivate multiple rolesin urban politics. The roles that NNNN and WHPFCDCadopt in their activities, summarized in Table 1, are notintended to be coherent, singular, or complete, but,rather, are pursued simultaneously. In some activities,they may object to or try to disrupt state policies orpublic and private development efforts, in other activi-ties they may deliver state-funded services or engage intheir own capital investment strategies. NNNN andWHPFCDC are cultivating spatial and political strate-gies that are not solely about cooperation or resistancebut engage elements of both, deconstructing any notionof a singular role for community organizations in urbanplanning, revitalization, and community development.

NNNN presents itself as a cooperative partner, whilesimultaneously acting in an objection/disruption role.One staff member explained their efforts to illustrate theorganization’s readiness to work with local government,which she explained as central to their efforts to culti-vate local government support for their activities:

First we put things on paper. The plan would be put onpaper and sent to them. Then I’ll follow up to make sure

they got it, what do they think about it, what needs to bechanged. In that aspect we work with them: ‘‘Okay, we’llchange this here, so it would be better for you. But wewant to change this over here.’’ So it’s a compromise.

—(Teresa, personal interview, 2004)

She went on to suggest that this conciliatory approachdoes not preclude a more aggressive protest role, arguingthat the willingness of local government officials to ne-gotiate is directly related to this potential for disruptiveobjections:

[City officials] know we’ll be out there and we’ll have themedia and that kind of tells them the community reallywants this. They think ‘‘how can we go against this? If wedo, [the media will] be talking about it and we’re going tohave bad feedback.’’ . . . Then the mayor’s going to sit thereand say to them ‘‘Well, wait a minute—this is all theywanted and you gave them a big fight?’’ . . . So usually justsitting down at the table with the department we need works.

—(Teresa, personal interview, 2004)

The organization uses a similar combination of thetwo roles in their interactions with commercial andresidential property developers, both cultivating activenegotiations and generating actual or implied disruptiveactions. Another staff member characterized the organ-ization’s negotiations with developers over including af-fordable units in new housing projects as a process ofcompromise and conciliation, then went on to explainthe utility of delaying tactics in pressuring developers tomeet their expectations:

The whole team of developers just cares about the bottomline. You know, what they’re going walk away with. And alot of them have high expectations. They want to walkaway with at least 100 million in their pocket, and so wejust start saying, ‘‘Well, you know, this is not going to fly. I’msorry. Maybe you can go back and bring it back maybe in sixmonths, eight months, or whatever,’’ and real quickly,they’re thinking about the money they’re going to lose[because of the delay].

—(Alonso, personal interview, 2004)

NNNN’s strategy illustrates an understanding of theinterests and priorities of actors involved in urban gov-ernance and of the ability to exploit tensions withinthem. In the first example, they pressure cooperation bypublicly challenging elected officials’ legitimacy as rep-resentatives of community concerns. In the second, theycapitalize on developers’ profit goals, forcing capitulationby threatening costly delays in granting community ap-proval for development projects.4

Table 1. NNNN and WHPFCDC roles and activities

Role Activities/Strategies

Shadow state partner � Direct service provision to residents.� Capital development efforts in

collaboration with state institutions.Objection/Disruption � Mobilize residents to challenge

state action, policy, or inaction.� Direct action.� Demand different action, priority,

policy change.Developer � Housing/economic development

efforts that bypass state.� Direct negotiation with for-profit

developers and financial institutions.Community builder � Block clubs and other activities

enriching ties between residents.� Conflict resolution among residents

and neighborhood institutions.� Community education and skill

building with residents.Networking advocate � Build networks with a wide range of

public, private, and nongovernmentalactors and institutions.

� Use networks to garner material andpolitical resources for the neighborhood.

� Use networks to advocate forneighborhood priorities.

Notes: NNNN 5 Near Northwest Neighborhood Network; WHPFCDC 5

West Humboldt Park Family and Community Development Council.

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In pursuing multiple objectives within urban govern-ance and revitalization processes, the community or-ganizations engage with both the neighborhood’s builtenvironment and its social relations. In its role asdeveloper, WHPFCDC is creating a community land trustthrough which it will build and market affordablehousing, trying to retain control over housing develop-ment and affordability through the administrative pow-ers of the land trust. Simultaneously the organizationacts as a community builder through programs thatpromote relationship building, popular education, andcritical consciousness-raising among residents. One ofthe organizers offered this example of a community artsproject she organized with youth, artists, and localbusinesses whose owners tended to characterize teens asa neighborhood problem:

I see the artists as sort of the tool for doing popular educa-tion. I think organizing is not just about the bricks andmortar and getting the actual [material] things, but it’sabout opening people’s minds and getting them to thinkcritically about their lives and their experiences. That’s reallywhat drives people to take on these larger campaigns. Youhave to start with a critical thinking piece and that’s whatI’m trying to do with the youth for this project. . . . A lot ofthese things are really understanding things that communitygroups weren’t trying to understand in the past, like how theCity’s actually spending its money, and how your tax dollarsare being used.

—(Andrea, personal interview, 2004)

This emphasis on popular education, mobilization,and social cohesion does not preclude activities thatfocus on capital investment and return. Clearly, the landtrust focuses on such capital investment in the neigh-borhood’s built structures, but with emphasis on re-taining community control over properties and revenues:

It’s for economic development . . . pushing more toward[housing development] as opposed to these huge box retailstores. I think the land trust . . . it’s really the only modelI’ve seen that a community actually controls the parcels ofland. [The community] can decide. When everything is aprivate deal, you don’t really have much input into that.There’s not much you can do unless [the developer] isgetting subsidies from the City and then you can push theCity to do something.

—(Andrea, personal interview, 2004)

The WHPFCDC also frames the community landtrust as a critical component of its social and spatialstrategies in the neighborhood, describing the trust as away to strengthen social cohesion by reducing the highrate of household moves in the neighborhood and re-

ducing residents’ vulnerability to displacement by po-tential future gentrification. In the land-trust initiative,WHPFCDC’s roles as community builder and developercome together as a multifaceted spatial strategy in anattempt to foster community participation and controlover neighborhood change. Staff members’ explanationsof these intersecting efforts illustrate a detailed under-standing of institutional and spatial politics that shapecommunity action, housing access, and housing devel-opment in West Humboldt Park.

Finally, both organizations combine their networkingactivities with other roles as a means of building ties andaccessing resources that they hope will give them greaterinfluence. For example, WHPFCDC supports its land-trust project by building ties with actors and institutionsfar beyond their usual neighborhood- and Chicago-focused networks. Through these new relationships theyhave obtained administrative advice from communityland trusts across the United States, recruited a legal aidclinic to prepare the land trust’s charter and bylaws, andsought guidance from participants at community plan-ning and economic development conferences. NNNNbuilds similar advocacy networks alongside other roles asa means of assembling necessary expertise, financial re-sources, and political support for projects. DescribingNNNN’s housing development activities, an organizerexplained:

Bickerdike, for example, we could partner up with themand they can be the contractors for a [housing develop-ment] project, because they have Humboldt Construction,which is a for-profit entity. Also sometimes they have beenused in that sense for assisting, putting together financingfor a project, getting support when needed to make projectsmove forward. . . . When you got that kind of unity withdifferent groups, working on the same project, it gives youmore leverage with whoever—with funders, with the City,with the Alderman.

—(Juan, personal interview, 2004)

This dual approach of network building as a means ofensuring the likelihood of success of other neighborhoodrevitalization roles and activities requires careful nego-tiation of institutional and spatial politics to createshared activities with institutions that may also be directcompetitors. For instance, Bickerdike is a nonprofithousing developer that submits proposals for some of thesame grants and housing projects as NNNN. Sustainingworking partnerships among such community agencies isfraught with difficulties, but rests in part on creatingshared narratives about the neighborhood. In the nextsection, I explore in more detail the significance of thesespatial narratives.

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GIS-Based Spatial Knowledge: FlexibleNarratives of Space, Place, and Change

The production of spatial knowledge is a criticalelement in community organizations’ efforts to pursuemultiple objectives for neighborhood change. As illus-trated above, groups such as NNNN and WHPFCDCshift their strategies for different audiences and agendas,and this approach involves conceptualizing and inter-vening in the neighborhood in very different ways. Inthis section, I shall illustrate that in this process, com-munity organizations produce a variety of accounts andinterpretations of neighborhood conditions, needs, goals,and activities. These spatial narratives are flexibleframeworks that produce and reproduce the neighbor-hoods in different ways for different audiences, projects,or arguments. A growing number of community organi-zations develop spatial narratives through visual imagessuch as photographs, maps, and charts. Staff members atNNNN and WHPFCDC commonly use all of theseforms of visualization, but I focus here on their use ofGIS to produce spatial narratives. Visualization is a wayof expressing knowledge about place and spatial relationsand also a way of creating spatial meaning through ex-ploration and interpretation (Schuurman 2004; Kniggeand Cope forthcoming). It is therefore a powerful meansfor community organizations to produce and communi-cate spatial knowledge supporting their activities. Intheir GIS-based maps, NNNN and WHPFCDC producemultiple narratives about neighborhoods, conditions,and capacities (summarized in Table 2), and use them toinform and strengthen a diverse range of projects, ar-guments, and decisions. In some senses, these narrativesmake visible the spatial stories (De Certeau 1984) ofneighborhood that are being produced through the ur-ban revitalization practices and negotiations of these two

organizations. Much like De Certeau’s conceptualizationof the coproductive interplay between spatial story andspatial practice, these GIS-based spatial narratives andthe community organizations’ spatial practices are mu-tually constitutive.

Both groups commonly produce needs narratives, withspecific meanings designed to illustrate problems mani-fest in neighborhoods and structures or, occasionally,problematic activities of some residents. In contrast, assetnarratives are designed to illustrate resources for positiveneighborhood change, or existing opportunities for im-provement. A map showing distribution of vacant lots inHumboldt Park might be presented through a needsnarrative as sites of criminal activity. It could also bepresented through an assets narrative as showing op-portunities for building affordable housing. Injustice nar-ratives are often comparative, seeking to demonstrateuneven development of many kinds and to frame thesedifferences in neighborhood conditions as part of broaderinequities experienced by a neighborhood and its resi-dents. Accomplishment narratives are developed by bothorganizations to demonstrate their successful develop-ment and implementation of revitalization programming,and to show improved neighborhood conditions linkedto these activities. These narratives are most commonlydirected toward local government institutions andfunding agencies to garner further support, but they mayalso be directed at neighborhood residents in an effort tobuild a reputation as a strong and effective advocate forthe community. Finally, both groups produce reinterpre-tation narratives, in which they present official data oraccounts of neighborhood needs and conditions, butinterpret them to reach different conclusions. For in-stance, Chicago policymakers who establish costthresholds for housing deemed affordable by low- tomoderate-income families use median income data from

Table 2. Spatial narratives, purposes, and interpretive examples

Spatial narrative Purpose Interpretive examples

Needs Show current or potential problems with neighborhoodspaces, structures, or people.

Vacant lots as sites of problematic activities (drugdealing, violence, loitering).

Assets Illustrate existing resources or opportunities for positivechanges in neighborhood space, structures, people.

Vacant lots as sites for new houses or businesses.

Injustice Show inequalities between neighborhood and otherplaces/scales.

Vacant lots in multiple neighborhoods, to showunequal conditions.

Accomplishment Illustrate community organization successes inneighborhood (programs, physical/material forms ofdevelopment).

Vacant lots acquired for inclusion in communityorganizations’ affordable housing land trust.

Reinterpretation Present official data through new interpretive frames, toadvance neighborhood priorities or agenda.

Lots designated as vacant in city database, butcategorized by community group to differentiatecommunity gardens from unused land.

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the U.S. Census to set this threshold. Organizers atNNNN have used these same data to argue that existingthresholds are beyond the reach of many Humboldt Parkhouseholds, doing so by shifting the spatial scale andresolution of their analysis.

Production of these spatial narratives involves morethan simply creating a map of neighborhood conditionsor organization activities. An essential aspect of thesenarratives is the interpretive frameworks through whichthe organizations present them and intend for them tobe understood. This interpretive framing is what enablesproduction of a diversity of spatial narratives, sometimesthrough re-presentation of the same maps, images, ordata. That is, as illustrated in Table 2 in the example ofvacant properties, a single map can be framed to developseveral spatial narratives. This interpretive framing maybe accomplished through titles and other text on a map,oral discussion or presentation of a map to different ac-tors and audiences, discussion of the image in an ac-companying document such as a grant proposal, orthrough many other types of interventions. NNNN andWHPFCDC transform their interpretive frames to pro-duce and reproduce diverse spatial narratives. Their ef-forts to create flexible forms of spatial knowledge thatcan be adapted to address a range of arguments, situa-tions, and audiences play a fundamental part in enablingthem to enact multiple roles in urban politics. In thesubsections that follow, I provide examples of two mapsproduced by NNNN and WHPFCDC organizers andused in this manner.

West Humboldt Park: Framing Spatial Narratives ofAsset, Accomplishment, and Need

The map shown in Figure 2 has been used by or-ganizers at WHPFCDC as part of several different spatialnarratives. It was initially created to be part ofWHPFCDC’s display at a retailers’ convention. Organ-izers hoped to attract retailers to the neighborhood’smain commercial corridor, which contains many aban-doned store fronts and vacant lots. SupportingWHPFCDC’s role as a developer, this image develops anassets narrative, portraying the neighborhood as a placeexperiencing active investment in its institutional andretail landscapes and as a place full of large lots availableto new businesses. Originally created for a single situa-tion, this image and its narrative of neighborhood assetshas been used in WHPFCDC’s negotiations with otherretailers, property developers, and financial institutions,in efforts both to spark and to direct new activity in itscommercial core. A staff member offered this account ofthe organization’s activities around one of the areaspresented as a potential development site: ‘‘All the lotsare for sale, so the Council has been marketing the site. . . as an opportunity to assemble quite a large parcel ofland. . . . we’re targeting commercial, but maybe mixeduse as well. The council is looking at a more aggressivedevelopment role’’ (Randy, personal interview, 2004).He went on to discuss the importance of asset narrativesas a means to counter media framings of West HumboldtPark as a place of danger, disinvestment, and decline.

Figure 2. West Humboldt Park Familyand Community Development Coun-cil’s (WHPFCDC) developments andopportunities map.

Urban Spatial Politics, Community Organizations, and GIS-Based Spatial Narratives 333

In other situations, this map has been framed as anaccomplishment narrative, to try to gain support andinfluence with the local state, as WHPFCDC seeks apartnership role. Staff members at WHPFCDC describedpresenting it in negotiations with officials from the Cityof Chicago’s planning and housing departments, seekingtheir financial and administrative assistance in devel-oping a much-needed grocery store. They presentedthe map as an illustration of WHPFCDC’s success inbringing to the neighborhood such needed establish-ments as a pharmacy and gas station. Staff memberscontend that cultivating a reputation as a good collab-orative partner is essential to building community in-fluence over land use and commercial activity on WestChicago Avenue. As one staff member said, ‘‘The Al-derman now sends [retailers and developers] here first.He says, ‘If the Council approves, then you come back tome here, then go back to the City. If the Council thinksit’s okay . . . you can go ahead’’’ (Ana, personal interview,2004).

In other situations, this map has been presented as aneeds narrative, with organizers emphasizing to residentsand local government officials the challenges that theyface in efforts to bring needed services to the neighbor-hood:

[The map] shows them exactly why it is so hard to docommercial development on West Chicago Avenue.Twenty to thirty thousand square feet is the size of a typicalbig pharmacy. That means we have to assemble additionalparcels . . . and that raises the costs. It’s time, money, andpolitics when you talk about assembling multiple parcels,vacating alleys, and things like that.

—(Randy, personal interview, 2004)

These examples illustrate how a single image can beproduced as multiple texts, presenting and re-presentingWest Humboldt Park by applying different interpretiveframes in its presentation and dissemination. Interpretedin one way, this image constructs West Humboldt Park asa place of limitations on reestablishing services and in-stitutions needed by residents. Interpreted in anothermanner, the map constructs West Humboldt Park as aplace of assets and opportunities. These constructions ofneighborhood are oppositional in their messages but notnecessarily contradictory in their goals. Although theyforward different spatial meanings, both texts are di-rected at WHPFCDC’s goal of developing resources andpower to effect change in the neighborhood’s landscapes.The organization attempts to do so by cultivating a va-riety of different roles in the processes of urban changeand adapting its narratives to fit these roles.

The production and dissemination of this map war-rants at least one caution with respect to its role andimpact on the neighborhood. The interpretive framesapplied to this map at the time of writing have supportedonly one perspective on what might constitute economicdevelopment in the neighborhood: attracting new busi-nesses to the area. The map does not communicate thepresence of active debate in West Humboldt Park aboutthe need to also assist existing small businesses on WestChicago Avenue, even while attracting new servicessuch as a grocery store or pharmacy. WHPFCDC par-ticipants continue to debate this issue vigorously, butthere is certainly room to argue that this map, because ofits wide use and powerful discursive presence, mayeventually constrain diverse understandings of appro-priate economic development in this place. At thismoment there remain multiple understandings amongWest Humboldt Park residents and WHPFCDC staffabout the kinds of spatial strategies that constitute ap-propriate economic development, in spite of the fact thatthis particular narrative adopts a commodified under-standing of and approach to the neighborhood.

NNNN: Framing Spatial Narratives ofReinterpretation and Opportunities

NNNN has also used its GIS resources to createflexible spatial narratives that speak to different objec-tives. This effort is best exemplified in two maps (Figures3 and 4) generated by an NNNN organizer.5 The areashown in these maps, Grand Avenue, is a major trans-portation corridor southwest of Humboldt Park. It is akey focus of NNNN’s efforts to retain industrial andmanufacturing employers and combat the conversion ofvacant industrial structures into high-priced condomin-iums. New developments, industrial retention efforts,and land use or zoning changes on Grand Avenue arenegotiated in the Grand Avenue Task Force, a non-binding planning group that includes business owners,residents, NNNN and other community organizations,and local government officials. In April 2004, twoowners of vacant industrial properties appealed to theTask Force, seeking support for zoning changes necessaryto enable sale of their properties to commercial retailers.NNNN organizers prepared a presentation and the mapsin Figures 3 and 4 to advance a different agenda:

These two owners came with a plan for a mini-mall onGrand—a Foot Locker and a Subway and things like that.So we’re going to make a presentation on preservation ofthe existing land use, to try to stop the mini-mall plan.

—(Ana, from author’s field notes, 2004)

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We’re trying to stop the condos marching in here, alongwith the retail businesses. . . . If you look outside ourneighborhood down by Grand and the river, you can seewhat could happen here. This western portion of our part

of Grand has slightly different issues. Here we are focus-ing on retention. We want to retain the industry andmanufacturing that is already there.

—(Alonso, from author’s field notes, 2004)

Figure 3. Near Northwest Neighbor-hood Network’s (NNNN) GrandAvenue land-use map.

Figure 4. Near Northwest Neigh-borhood Network’s (NNNN) em-powerment/enterprise zones map.

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Several spatial narratives were advanced in thispresentation, with the two maps used in tandem tosupport different arguments about appropriate land useand forms of neighborhood change in Humboldt Park.Each was intended to support a different priority and rolethat NNNN enacts through its activities in the GrandAvenue area.

Figure 3 was developed as a reinterpretation narrativeto counter arguments by the two property owners andsome Task Force participants that Grand Avenue is amixed-use area of retail, manufacturing, and industrialactivity. On the left side of Figure 3 the industrialcharacter of Grand Avenue is emphasized by displayingthe nearby city-designated industrial corridors. The or-ganizers sought to underscore the legitimacy of theirclaim by showing the proximity of Grand Avenue to‘‘Humboldt Park,’’ the area that NNNN is understood torepresent. To this end, the image on the left includes theofficial boundaries of the Humboldt Park CommunityArea and the image on the right includes an air photoshowing the park for which the neighborhood is named,highlighting Grand Avenue immediately to the south.This effort to reinterpret characterizations of mixed landuse by presenting the area as industrial supports NNNN’sobjection/disruption role, in which it argues against fur-ther retail and residential development and the policychanges that would allow it. The maps in Figure 3 presenta different spatial narrative of the Grand Avenue area tosupport their objections and underscore the legitimacy ofNNNN’s perspective by emphasizing its institutional andgeographic connections to Humboldt Park.

In the same presentation to the Task Force, the map inFigure 4 framed the area around Grand Avenue throughan opportunities narrative, to support a different role andset of activities. The organizers once again includedGrand Avenue and an air photo of the surrounding area,but overlaid the image with the boundaries of areas eli-gible for business development funding and incentivesfrom the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban De-velopment’s Empowerment/Enterprise Zones program.Humboldt Park, they argued, has many opportunities forcommercial development, with plenty of programmaticresources supporting these activities in other places nearthe Grand Avenue corridor. Acting in the role of net-working advocate, NNNN sought to make the propertyowners aware of other sites and institutional resources forthe kind of the retail development they sought. As one ofthe organizers said after the presentation, ‘‘[We showedthem] you can’t do it here, but here’s a map where youcan do it. You can’t do it at this certain spot, but you canmove over here and do it at this other spot’’ (Maria,personal interview, 2004).

The spatial narratives forwarded in Figures 3 and 4work to advance NNNN’s goals of retaining industrialemployers and influencing the processes and outcomes ofplanning and revitalization efforts in Humboldt Park, butthey do so through very different roles. Using a reinter-pretation narrative, they directly object to an unwantedland-use change by presenting their own characteriza-tion of neighborhood land uses. With an opportunitiesnarrative, they play a networking role, linking developersto information about alternative locations where theproposed project might be feasible.

For both NNNN and WHPFCDC, the use of GIS toproduce and reproduce spatial narratives that advancedifferent agendas for the neighborhood is an intentionalpolitical practice. It reveals a sophisticated understand-ing of the knowledge politics in which they are embed-ded and the complicated power of visual images andspatial technologies to produce narratives that are likelyto be received as authoritative characterizations of theneighborhood. Specifically, they attempt to capitalize onboth the discursive power of GIS-based visual imagesand the implied expertise suggested by their use of thistechnology. Participants in both organizations contendthat the actors and institutions with whom they nego-tiate are likely to understand these maps as presenting anunassailable truth about a place. After the Grand Ave-nue presentation, Teresa reported back:

When you bring them a piece of paper that says, ‘‘Well, thisis what is happening,’’ they’re like, ‘‘Okay. Now we know.’’So we can talk about it, but some people don’t see it. . . . Sothat’s what [Alonso] did for the Grand Avenue Task Force.[He] did a presentation with maps and everything, so it’snot just verbal. . . . When [he] did the presentation,they’re like ‘‘But are you sure this is it?’’ And he’s like ‘‘Yes,it’s there. It’s on the map.’’

—(Teresa, personal interview, 2004)

Teresa and other organizers feel that visual represen-tations of the neighborhood are a powerful means ofmaking their claims. Additionally, they believe that us-ing computer technologies to produce these images is apotent strategy to bolster the legitimacy of their claimsand to cast themselves as knowledgeable skilled actors inneighborhood decision making. This attempt to harnessthe power of visual images as authoritative portrayals ofthe neighborhood is based on an understanding of thesespatial narratives as fluid and negotiable. Demonstratedthrough their use of GIS to produce multiple and oftenoppositional spatial texts, staff members at NNNN andWHPFCDC understand these narratives not as realityper se, but as strategic presentations advancing a par-ticular perspective. Nonetheless, they also understand

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that if flexible narratives are advanced through GIS-based maps, they are more likely to be received asauthoritative representations and can also carry tre-mendous emotive power in highly charged debates aboutsocial and spatial change in their community.6

NNNN and WHPFCDC demonstrate an under-standing of the discursive and technological authority ofmaps and GIS and of how this authority can be used totheir advantage. They capitalize on the flexibility ofGIS-based spatial texts to produce a variety of inter-pretive framings of their communities. These findings areimportant for critical and participatory GIS research on anumber of levels. Debates about community organiza-tions’ use of GIS have tended to focus on how GIS fa-cilitates their efforts to present agenda or knowledgealternative to that of the state. Additionally, these dis-cussions have focused on whether GIS use limits com-munity groups to producing spatial imaginaries thatreinforce those of the state. This project suggests thatneither framing alone can fully represent the compli-cated ways in which community-level organizationsmay engage with GIS. Some of the spatial texts producedby these groups foster different accounts of the neigh-borhood than those produced by the state, and are usedto support activities that fall outside of dominant para-digms of urban planning and revitalization. But otherspatial narratives do reflect these paradigms or enacturban political roles that look quite similar to those ofstate or private business actors. What is tremendouslyimportant is the strategic deployment of these spatialnarratives and roles together. Community organizations’use of GIS for such flexible and strategic visualizationsuggests a need to continue efforts to understand betterthe fluid and flexible epistemologies and ontologies of GIS.

In sum, community organizations’ use of GIS to pro-duce visual representations of neighborhood must beseen as the complex outcome of a sophisticated socio-spatial approach to neighborhood change and deep ex-perience producing a variety of spatial narratives. Thesenarratives are part of the community organizations’ effortto influence urban planning, problem solving, andneighborhood change through multiple roles and strat-egies. Part of this approach is their use of GIS to ma-nipulate a complicated technology/society intersectionin ways that afford them greater influence, resources,and legitimacy in processes that influence urban spatialchange. So too is their enactment of multiple roles in thenegotiation of institutional, spatial, and knowledge pol-itics in these processes. NNNN, WHPFCDC, and similarcommunity organizations are operating in a decision-making context in which they remain less powerfulagents compared to the government and private devel-

opment actors with whom they negotiate. From thisposition, however, their pursuit of urban spatial changeand their development of spatial narratives advancingtheir priorities and forms of engagement is neither solelycooptation and incorporation nor solely a form of re-sistance. Instead, they pursue a multifaceted approach inwhich contrasting approaches to neighborhood changeare not necessarily understood by community organiza-tions as contradictory or mutually exclusive. A great dealof existing research on neighborhood revitalization andcommunity development has framed social and materialstrategies for improving local level quality of life as contra-dictory (Stoecker 1997), but this case suggests that somecommunity organizations are engaging in politics of ur-ban spatial change that intentionally engage both.

Constructing Spatial Narratives,Reconstructing Urban Politics

Community organizations enact roles that sometimescooperate and sometimes disrupt, or portray theirneighborhood as a space of opportunity and then as aspace of need or deficit. It may be tempting to suggestthat they are working at cross purposes, perhaps notrealizing potential contradictions. Ethnographic study ofthese roles and spatial narratives suggest, however, thatthey are neither contradictory nor mutually exclusivebut, rather, are part of community organizations’ stra-tegic response to the changing circumstances in whichthey operate. Urban planning, problem solving, andservice delivery are carried out by an ever-growing rangeof actors. Relationships are increasingly complex aspublic and private institutions are simultaneously thetarget of community organization grievances and in-creasingly an important source of financial and admin-istrative support. Other community organizations aredirect competitors in this entrepreneurial arena, but mayalso be important allies in challenging powerful state orbusiness interests or accomplishing large projects. Nav-igating this institutional and political complexity requiresoperating in relationship to an extremely diverse range ofactors, positioned at multiple levels, who may havecompeting or conflicting understanding of the neigh-borhood and its needs.

The strategic use of GIS to author flexible spatialnarratives that further multiple objectives in urbanplanning and revitalization is best read not as an ex-pansion or contraction of community organizations’agency and authority, but as a reconstitution of theirengagement in spatial, institutional, and knowledgepolitics. They use such strategies to engage in a multi-

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layered politics that produce and transform urban spacesin a way that cannot be fully characterized as eithercooperation or resistance. Their approach is designed totry to maximize opportunities to insert their spatialknowledge into key decision-making practices, sustainworking relationships with powerful agents in urbanspatial politics, and adapt to the rapidly shifting contextof resources and priorities in which community organi-zations are embedded. Of course, groups such as NNNNand WHPFCDC could pursue multiple roles and pro-duce effective and adaptable spatial narratives withoutthe use of digital information technologies like GIS. But,the flexible (and fast) visualization capacities of thesetechnologies make them particularly attractive tools, asis the discursive and representational authority they af-ford their users. Digital technologies like GIS enable auser to try out different visualizations relatively easilyand quickly, an invaluable capability for overtaxedcommunity development institutions and staff members.Also important is the greater weight sometimes givento GIS-based representations of neighborhood or thegreater expertise sometimes assumed of the individualsand organizations producing these representations.

This strategy is not without limitations and pitfalls.Organizations that pursue this approach are not posi-tioning themselves as the agents of radical social andspatial change, nor do they necessarily tap a full range ofpossible spatial imaginaries or politics. Some roles workin close alignment with more powerful state and businessactors, and deploy spatial narratives that reinforce theseparadigms of so-called community development thatprivilege homeownership, new construction, profit mo-tives, and disciplining of unruly places and people. Long-term sustainability of the complicated strategies pre-sented here may be difficult amid ongoing retrenchmentof funds. As has been well-documented in critical GISresearch, an uncritical or absolute reliance on GIS forspatial decision making has the potential to exclude di-verse priorities and social groups.

Nonetheless, evidence of the flexibility and multi-faceted nature of community organizations’ spatialpractices and knowledge production efforts is central tounderstanding their role in urban planning and problemsolving. Although community organizations are lesspowerful agents in terms of their access to capital andformal political power, they have a deep and detailedknowledge of the institutional, spatial, and knowledgepolitics of urban planning and problem solving, and thecapacity to manipulate these in strategic ways. Thecomplicated urban political roles and spatial narrativestrategies that community organizations are producingprovide an example of new forms of spatial and political

practice cultivated in response to shifting urban gov-ernance practices and new bureaucratic and institutionalforms. In keeping with Castells’s (1983) and Harvey’s(1999) emphasis on the shifting tactics and relationshipsof urban social movements, this case highlights theproductive mutability of community organizations’ rolesand practices in response to the changing political andspatial contexts in which they operate.

Acknowledgments

This research is supported by NSF Grant #BCS-0443152. I thank the participating community staff andresidents in Humboldt Park and West Humboldt Park fortheir contributions and collaboration. I am particularlygrateful for detailed and thoughtful input from HelgaLeitner, Eric Sheppard, the editor, and three anonymousreviewers.

Notes

1. Throughout, I use the term ‘‘community organizations’’ torefer to nongovernmental agencies whose activities are geo-graphically specific within a locality—directed at fosteringchange within a defined area in a city—with no implicationthat the social community represented is singular, unchang-ing, or uncontested. In the diverse literature on communitydevelopment, neighborhood organizing, and social move-ments, geographers suggest that designations like ‘‘neigh-borhood’’ or ‘‘community’’ have vastly divergent meanings todifferent social groups; multiple definitions as spatial areas,administrative units, and spaces of lived experience; andvarying meanings for the voluntary organizations and civilsociety institutions that identify as neighborhood or com-munity institutions (Harvey 1999; North 2000; Martin2003a; Whitehead 2003). Here, I use ‘‘community organi-zations’’ in part because not all voluntary and civil organi-zations that work within a small part of an urban area identifywith a neighborhood. Community organization is also auseful designation because of the practical difficulty of dif-ferentiating between community-based organizations andcommunity development corporations. Some scholars char-acterize community-based organizations as having lowerlevels of funding, fewer paid staff, and a programmatic focuson fostering social cohesion; and community developmentcorporations as having higher funding, paid staff, and aprogrammatic focus on capital development, often realizedthrough investment in the built urban landscape (Stoecker1997). However, increasingly, most local level nongovern-ment organizations engage in a variety of practices, making itdifficult to situate them as one or the other (Bright 2003;Stoecker 2003; Smock 2004).

2. This is not to suggest that financial, time, and expertisebarriers to GIS use by these organizations are no longer rel-evant. Many of the constraints on GIS use by communityorganizations and other nontraditional GIS users docu-mented in Leitner et al. (2000) and Sieber (2000) continue.Access to hardware, software, data, and training resources

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needed for GIS are characterized by a high degree of unevendevelopment from local to global scales.

3. The close relationship between the two entities is signified bythe tendency of residents, staff, and local government offi-cials to refer to them together as ‘‘NNNN/HPEP.’’ I will usethe identifier NNNN throughout this paper because I focuson organizational roles and activities, and these are carriedout by NNNN in pursuit of the broad goals framed by HPEP.

4. Wilson, Wouters, and Grammenos (2004) provide supportingevidence that such threatened and enacted disruption bycommunity actors is a significant disincentive to developers.

5. For legibility of print size, the legend in Figure 3 has beenenlarged from the original version.

6. As Kwan (2002) and Kwan and Aitken (2004) note, it isimportant to consider the ways in which GIS can representand communicate affect, emotion, and perceptions producedand experienced in particular spaces. I cannot fully addresssuch a discussion here, but I am grateful for the suggestionfrom one of the reviewers that although research on socialand political constructions of GIS has largely focused on itsrepresentative power and practices, GIS as an emotive/af-fective practice might be productively conceptualizedthrough nonrepresentational theory.

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Correspondence: Department of Geography and Regional Development, University of Arizona, 409 Harvill Bldg Box 2, Tucson, AZ 85721,e-mail: selwood@email.arizona.edu.

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