Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 2
C
ONCEPTUAL
F
RAMEWORK FOR
U
SING
GIS
IN
B
UILDING
C
OMMUNITY
C
APITAL
TOWARDS
S
USTAINABILITY
Sungsoon Hwang
Department of Geography, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, US
A
BSTRACT
Sustainability—balancing fundamental human needs with ecological
resilience—has been embraced as an overarching policy goal. And
communities have been called to participate in the process of attaining
that ideal. Community-based organizations (CBOs) can benefit from
using GIS in building community assets and developing sustainability
initiatives. However, GIS, has not been used widely for these purposes in
CBOs yet. In this chapter, I illustrate how geographic information (such
as maps) can be useful in community development drawing from
community GIS projects, and explain how theories of sustainability and
spatial thinking can be utilized in community-based efforts towards
sustainability. CBOs can monitor and assess community sustainability by
(a) organizing relevant indicators into the capital framework (theories of
sustainability), and (b) exploring spatial distribution, interactions,
relationships, and changes in sustainability-related issues using GIS
(spatial thinking). The framework presented here can be applied to
promote effective use of geospatial tools for community sustainability.
