Neighborhood evaluation using GIS: An exploratory study

This article presents a new approach to the investigation of resident views of neighborhood using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS, an interactive mapping and analysis tool, allows multiple layers of information about a given place to be represented simultaneously, thus exposing the interactions among layers, and allows the conception of neighborhood to be represented in greater complexity. The results of a study of the neighborhood evaluations of 18 respondents in Urbana, Illinois, in which GIS was used to facilitate neighborhood evaluation, are described and analyzed. The article first presents an overview of the literature on neighborhood evaluation, followed by a description of the methodology, including a brief overview of GIS capabilities and how GIS was used to elicit responses in a survey of neighborhood residents. A final section summarizes the results of the survey and identifies some of the main findings of the evaluative method.