See What We See: Community Co Produced Spatial Meaning in Lindsay Heights, Milwaukee Dulmini Nadeesha Jayawardana This talk explores how residents of Lindsay Heights generated spatial knowledge through photovoice, revealing layers of meaning not typically visible in conventional mapping. Through community led photography and storytelling, participants articulated a spatial logic grounded in memory, environmental care, and collective resilience. These insights formed a layered, conceptual map that visualizes lived experience as spatial data. The talk demonstrates how qualitative, community generated meaning can be structured, interpreted, and integrated into cartographic practice, expanding what mapping can hold. It offers a model for co produced spatial representation that deepens understanding of place in Milwaukee and beyond.
Resurrecting Historical Geodata: A Vision-Language Model Approach to Integrating Property Assessment Records and Census Geographies Elizaveta (Liz) Lepikhova (She/They) Historical census records are essential for studying neighborhood change, yet key housing-market indicators are largely unavailable before 1930. This presentation introduces a GeoAI workflow for transforming historical property assessment records into structured geospatial data using vision-language models (VLMs) and automated record linkage in R. Using Milwaukee tax assessment rolls, we demonstrate how prompt engineering, iterative refinement, human validation, and scripted matching improve the reliability of extracting, linking, and mapping historical property data. We then integrate these data with an existing archive of racially restrictive covenants to produce neighborhood-level cartographic visualizations for historical and social justice research.
Using Maps To Expand Your Horizons And Identify Injustices H. Jiahong Pan (They/them) Maps influence my work. Growing up in San Francisco, maps — particularly the ones at San Francisco Muni bus shelters — helped me discover that a world existed beyond my community and that there were stories that existed in those maps. Maps also helped me explain stories to people when I freelanced as a journalist, including access to food in the Minneapolis neighborhood I live in.
Participatory Mapping Beyond Representation Joy Ihuka Participatory mapping serves to incorporate local knowledge into environmental planning and climate adaptation. It involves translating lived experiences and environmental observations into formal cartographic and GIS systems, impacting institutional decision-making. This talk reviews literature on participatory GIS, critical cartography, and community geography, focusing on how technical standards and planning requirements affect the recognition of local knowledge. It examines how participatory mapping both supports and constrains community engagement, addressing issues of representation and institutional incorporation. Examples from climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction illustrate tensions between local spatial knowledge and standardized mapping systems, highlighting the negotiation of environmental knowledge in planning contexts.
Thursday October 22, 2026 10:40am - 12:00pm CDT Room 3
