The Mattapan Anti-Displacement Mapping Project  is a multi-year, community-based participatory action research project at the intersection of data, civic engagement, and storytelling. We work with community members who co-vision and co-design methodologies; we collect housing, land use, transportation, historical and cultural data. This data is supplemented and elevated by oral histories. The research is helping residents mobilize and engage their elected officials and other leaders in pursuing more effective policies and practices to promote equitable neighborhood development without displacement.

The loss of community, local culture and resident-valued physical aspects and amenities are rarely considered. As a result, anti-displacement policy efforts - tied to the broader housing crisis - have had little to no effect. Displacement and its contributing factors are multi-layered, yet data is often scattered and fractured.

We're already seeing the positive impacts of this project: 1) Residents are empowered with information and thus can better advocate and negotiate community benefits; 2) Residents are building community and strengthening their social fabric with one another; 3) Critical storytelling and knowledge gathering is being documented and preserved via the oral histories.

With seed funding from the Sasaki Foundation in 2020,  we have been working in partnership with community members and researchers to document and track neighborhood change over the past three decades, in order to pinpoint what are all of the elements and indicators that can signal to residents and policy practitioners alike that a community's residents are at risk for being displaced.

Inputs:

• Land Use Data

• Resident Oral Histories (Audio and Video)

• Environmental Stats

• Social and Economic Demographics

Technical 

•Open source

•User- friendly Interface (UI/UX)

•Multi-entries

•ADA Accommodated,

•Accessible for increased public digital access (libraries)

Scalable and replicable in other communities.

Additional Attributes:

• Geocoded urban layers and polygons; reflects geographic boundary shifts

• Highlights culturally valuable sites; places of meaning; history of developments and design of those developments

• Sites of Opportunity: Vacant parcels (city owned and privately owned)

• Sites of social meaning

In this one, small historically under-supported neighborhood in Boston, we are challenging the perspective of what gentrification is, as we challenge this phenomenon effecting cities across the country. The model is being refined so that it is plug and play in any community in the US.

We will be launching our project website soon. Check out this project video presentation below for more details and reach out if you would like to support.

Click here to view an article feature on the project.

Watch the presentation video below.