Article

Mapping Arcata Neighborhoods and Perceptions

People inhabit and tend to associate vernacular names with ill-defined neighborhood boundaries, resulting in socially bounded geographic spaces with unique characteristics and identities. These spaces are more the products of 'mental' or 'cognitive' maps created by the everyday citizen rather than true administrative boundaries. This research attempts to locate the boundaries of neighborhoods in Arcata, California, in order to understand how neighborhood spaces across the community are perceived due to various social, cultural, and geographic factors. Such factors include temporal dichotomies, demographics, and economic characteristics highlighted by low-income housing and commercial chain stores. This study uses innovative participatory mapping techniques that enable Arcata citizens to define the geography of neighborhoods in the community and provide insight into the perceptions associated with them. Several map products, derived from the collection of citizen renderings of the community, show an overlapping topography of bounded spaces, vernacular names, and perceptive characteristics that highlight the unique spatial characteristics of community spaces and challenge our ideas about the ways in which residents imagine their city.

Items in ScholarWorks are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.