GIS for the people, people!

A tip o’ the hat to Jen Flory, Skadden fellow at the Western Center on Law and Poverty, for the heads up about Group Maps City Access to Healthy Foods, an NPR story on how GIS mapping has been used to dramatic effect by advocates in Philadelphia to show that “people in poor neighborhoods need more places to shop for healthy food.” One eye opener for us was the history lesson revealed in the story: “Mapping” is anything but a new idea for advocates. “In the late 1890s, the civil-rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois created a map of houses in a narrow strip of central Philadelphia. The map showed houses where African-Americans lived, highlighted and color-coded to indicate their class.”