Assignment 1: Interests and Spatial Questions
Caitlin Bettisworth
Topic Description:
During this semester’s GIS course I would like to explore the topic of cultural vibrancy
by looking at individual artistic events, town boundary areas, race, housing residency
characteristics, relative incomes, walk scores, transportation, independent businesses,
land use, population employment types, population employment rates, and cellular
location data. I would like to map individual artistic events in the Boston area to possibly
highlight distinctive locations per artistic event type or even just general artistic events.
This would show hot spots of where most events occur. I am hoping by analyzing artistic
events, mapping can pin point specific areas with specific indicators. Then I would like to
create potential artistic event hot spots using the ideas of creative communities and the
topics of cultural vibrancy. From there I would like to correlate the two maps to see if the
theoretical matches what is currently happening in the Greater Boston. This would also
produce analysis on over and underserved artistic areas of Boston.
Spatial/Geographic Questions:
Are there clusters or hot spots of artistic events that have happened in the Greater
Boston over the past four years?
Where are potential artistic areas in the Greater Boston area?
Is there any correlation between potential artistic areas and the hot spots of artistic
events?
Can creative communities be located by mapping their indicators?
Can cultural vibrancy be tracked by mapping its indicators?
These questions are the base of research and are interesting because they look at using
mapping to track ideas like culture and cultural vibrancy, whereas those ideas generally
cannot be analyzed in a quantitative way or tracked throughout time. However, the use of
GIS allows for the specific analysis of variable ideas such as culture. The questions above
allow for this analysis.
References:
Disclaimer: Based on little creative/artistic/cultural mapping, the mapping
articles are written by, collaborated with, or based on the work of Chris Brennan-Horley
and Chris Gibson. I think this shows the need for more cultural mapping and analysis so
that cultural mapping and mapping of other indicators become a norm in the social
sciences.
Brennan-Horley, C., & Gibson, C. (2009). Where is creativity in the city?
integrating qualitative and GIS methods. Environment and Planning A, 41(11), 25952614.
This article looked at using mental mapping as a way to connect how people feel about
places and places they remember. It is an interesting way of attempting to bring the
emotional side of creativity to the very precise side of GIS and analysis. This approach
does; however, take out the ‘meaningful spatial distortion’ of traditional mental mapping.
The articles discusses how the use of a basemap and some streets positively impacted
how well the interviewee’s mental maps were able to be analyzed by GIS. It was also
found; however, that this process of using a basemap tends to take out the spatial
distortion that occurs with traditional mental mapping showing the emotional and
importance of certain places or areas.
Gibson, C., Brennan-Horley, C., & Warren, A. (2010). Geographic information
technologies for cultural research: Cultural mapping and the prospects of colliding
epistemologies. Cultural Trends, 19(4), 325-348.
This article attempts to overall explain GIS and how it and other technologies can be used
in the social sciences. They also explore the use of traditional interview techniques that
can be enhanced by GIS and other technologies. They assert that researchers should use a
more holistic approach using technologies like GIS, non-human actors and political
motivations. This idea is interesting in that many projects use GIS in a similar manner
and do not spend the time correlating all of the non-human and political or any other
aspect that may be influencing people that is much harder to map. This article helped
open my eyes as to mapping as a small tool in a large tool kit of analysis. Whereas some
times it seems like GIS can give insightful answers to many questions it is nice to be
reminded that GIS should be pared with many other types of analysis to get a full picture.
Gibson, C., Luckman, S., & Willoughby-Smith, J. (2010). Creativity without
borders? rethinking remoteness and proximity. Australian Geographer, 41(1), 25-38.
This article shows further evidence that creativity and artistry can be analyzed via GIS
mapping. They show throughout the article that people use geography and place as ways
to define themselves, the relationships, and their creativity. They assert that Darwin,
Australia is the perfect example of people who define their creativity based on place in
relation to others.
Mellander, C., R. Florida, and J. Rentfrow. 2012. "The Creative Class, PostIndustrialism and the Happiness of Nations." Cambridge Journal of Regions,
Economy and Society 5 (1): 31-43.
This article defines creative industries; these industries will be ones that will be part of
showing cultural vibrancy. If an area has more of the creative industries one might
assume it has high cultural vibrancy; although, it would also have to display other key
indicators. The creative industries are: computer science and mathematics; architecture;
engineering; life, physical and social science; education, training and library science; as
well as arts and design work, work in and entertainment, sports and media; and also
professional and knowledge work occupations including management occupations,
business and financial operations, legal positions, health care practitioners, technical
occupations and high-end sales and sales management.
NFASP, National Federation of Artists Studio Providers, London 2008a A Register
of Artists’ Studio Groups and Organisations in the UK.
This article shows the importance of zoning and land use on mapping artistic
communities. They assert that London is as creative as it is because of the amount of
affordable studio space. This is another aspect that will be looked and should be
analyzed; if artists cannot live in certain areas they will move to places they can live
changing the cultural identity of each area. The project does not propose to discuss
cultural identity; however, creative place has seemed to be a huge factor in the previous
Darwin cases by Gibson and Brennan-Horley.
Feldman M P, 2000, ``Location and innovation: the new economic geography of
innovation, spillovers, and agglomeration'', in The Oxford Handbook of Economic
Geography Eds G Clark, M Gertler, M Feldman (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
pp 373-394.
This article helps in showing the need for geographic analysis among creative
communities. Feldman explains spillovers and the need to have educated people near
each other to progress ideas via spillovers. Other researchers have justified which
industries are creative industries and why as well as how to identify creative communities
by using his ideas on spillovers. Despite it’s connections to creative communities, the
article shows another non-tangible idea that can use geographic mapping to show its
impact.
Data Sources:
Massachusetts Census information (free)
Spotrank (not free)
Walk scores (can get this free)