Introducing the POP Neighborhood Map blog!

Welcome to the first post of buildingcommunityWORKSHOP’s POP Neighborhood Map project blog!

The neighborhoods of Dallas

The POP Neighborhood Map Blog is a new digital platform that will chronicle the evolution of the POP Neighborhood Map and expounds why neighborhoods matter.  The launch of this blog coincides with the  launch of two new interactive digital tools - Know Your Neighborhood and Draw Your Neighborhood - the most recent effort of our ongoing POP Neighborhood Map project.  These tools are designed to inform and support neighborhood-based advocacy through the collecting and sharing of neighborhood-specific data - political, geographical, historical, statistical, and organizational information - with Dallas neighborhoods and their residents. The collection and sharing this information in a central location online enables us to expand [bc]’s ability to help build informed and active neighborhoods, which are the foundation of a strong and equitable city. On this blog [bc] will be sharing what we learn as we introduce these two tools across the city of Dallas and expand our existing database of neighborhood information.

As part of [bc]’s grassroots city planning initiative People Organizing Place [POP], over the last three years the POP Neighborhood Map project has positioned residents as community experts to assist in identifying boundaries for all definable neighborhoods within the city, creating a framework for a network of neighborhoods with a more accurate perception of culture, identity, and unified values within neighborhoods. Strong neighborhood identities foster community and organize residents to advocate for their neighborhood's future.

To date, through research and community outreach, the project has identified 378 neighborhoods, making it the city’s most comprehensive neighborhood map and filling a void among the city’s existing local resources. The POP Neighborhood Map adds two new tools for strengthening neighborhood identity and geographic definition:

Know Your Neighborhood is a directory of Dallas neighborhood information; visitors can find out about the history, existing neighborhood organizations, statistics about its residents and buildings, and city council information for all neighborhoods mapped by [bc]. Future posts on this blog will discuss the data and analysis that is presented through the directory.

How to "Draw Your Neighborhood"

Draw Your Neighborhood is a digital tool for mapping neighborhoods; users can draw, name and describe their neighborhoods, greatly expanding our ability to crowdsource detailed neighborhood boundaries. Users can also draw super neighborhoods, a new focus of The POP Neighborhood Map project. Super neighborhoods are contiguous groupings of neighborhoods or communities that function as an organizing element to bridge between neighborhoods and larger municipally designated geographies such as service areas or city council districts. We'll give periodic updates on this blog, sharing trends, points of interest, and analysis of the information that folks share with us.   

In partnership with Downtown Dallas, Inc. and in conjunction with the launching of the Downtown Dallas 360 Plan, we’ll be starting our Know Your Neighborhood and Draw Your Neighborhood community outreach with a focus on the downtown Dallas area. We will then shift our focus to other large areas of the city, working with community groups and leaders to reach as many people as possible. We’ll continue to engage new regions of the city, working our way across its full geography, until we’ve covered its extents and every neighborhood in the city! Updates on our progress and the exciting discoveries we make along the way will be posted here regularly, so stay tuned, and be sure to draw your neighborhood on the map!