Green Events! Green Organizations! Green Collaborations! Baltimore Green Map is collaborating with Baltimore Green Works to map Baltimore Green Week 2012. (a plethora of "green") As many mapmakers know, it's a great way to capture the geographic dimensions of multiple activities around common themes.

Baltimore Green Map has had maps online via Open Green Map for several years now. Over 60 site nominations have come from map users suggesting other places that should be on the map. And we have attracted some useful and lovely comments about sites mapped. We hope many more people will add relevant comments! Here's a sampling - nostalgic, informative, practical - from the last 45 days:

About "Mother's Garden" in one of our local parks: "My mother, who just passed away at the age of 92, recorded in her memory book of her visits to Mother's Garden. She said there were "roses galore" and it was a favorite place to visit, especially on Sunday afternoons. Sounds like she would have been visiting there when it was still "new"."read more »

Baltimore Green Map was invited to present Green Mapping as an example of "How Communities are Using Mapping Tools" at Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's October, 2011 Unleashing the Power of Local Data conference.

Participants had their laptops open for the interactive element, with time to explore Open Green Map.

We combined information from our own archives, OGM screen grabs and the Green Map-OGM Resources/promote section to put together a presentation that illustrated a diversity of map scales and strategies to collect information.

We also wanted to demonstrate full utilization of the OGM features More info, Comments, Multimedia, Impacts before turning participants loose to browse maps on their own. Those user input features are where "the power" and potential of Green Mapping resides. read more »

Our last map focused on resources in one city watershed and had an inset map of Druid Hill Park, the large central park within that Baltimore watershed. It is a 745-acre park filled with curvilinear drives and distinctly different topography, scenic areas, and activity sites. People tend to know one area but have trouble wrapping their minds around everything the park contains and how to navigate through it. The inset proved so popular that we decided to print a stand-alone map in time for Druid Hill Park's 150th birthday celebration in mid-October. The updated map contains over 65 site entries and uses 17 Green Map icons. And on that map we were able to include a timeline of the park's history and to provide more information about specific resources within the park. We are asking for donations at the map's distribution points both to insure those that pick up the "free" map really want it and to help seed the funding for the next park project, a passport to accompany the map.read more »

Global Mapmakers, why do YOU Green Map?

It's been almost ten years since I began collaborating with the Green Map System. Lately several people have asked me why I have been so passionate and persistent about this project, so I've decided to share my reasons here:

1) Promote Access to Resources

I had taken my background in architecture, urban planning and education into a new iteration through an Open Society Institute Community Fellowship to map youth resources in Baltimore. I quickly realized that people were unaware of resources mere blocks from where they lived and had a generally negative impression about city youth. So began my search for effective ways to communicate knowledge about existing resources and about the positive actions young people were taking to improve their neighborhoods. For the past decade I've explored different ways to mobilize the Green Map icons to expand knowledge and to Map the Positives! read more »

Baltimore has a consortium of campuses involved in various collaborative efforts under the Baltimore Collegetown Network. Most local campuses have Sustainability Commissions these days, so we have launched the Baltimore Collegetown Green Map Challenge with a fabulous pilot project at Towson University. Print maps were the focus. The students are eloquent in speaking of the benefits they realized from doing this project in their Graphic Design Studio. Their professor, Jessica Ring, was a wonderful collaborator.read more »

As an experiment, we created the Baltimore Green Week 2009 map on the OGM. It used icons to describe the topic content of events rather than to describe places, then illustrated the geographic distribution of those events. The organization Baltimore Green Works used it on their website along with a traditional Calendar of Events. Seemed successful and now is a record to refer to when planning next year's events. And we'll be able to offer it with tour routes for 2010.
http://www.opengreenmap.org/en/greenmap/baltimore-green-week-2009

(or winter if you are southern hemisphere....)
Is anyone planning any youth mapping projects this summer and interested in doing an info exchange with some Baltimore 8-14 year-olds?
I think it would be cool to exchange experiences and images with young folks from an entirely different environment as we do a neighborhood mapping project here.
Thanks.
Janet
Baltimore, Maryland, USA

The Jones Falls Trail Green Map will make its debut at the Jones Falls Watershed Association's Rally for the River! festival on September 21st, 2008. Our map uses 30 Green Map icons to highlight "Discover & Enjoy!" mappable resources on one side and lists the "Learn and Take Action!" resources on its reverse. It includes a green-mapped inset of Druid Hill Park, our 756-acre central park.

The festival typically attracts 5000 people. It closes part of the interstate highway to allow a few hours of intense pedestrian and wheeled activity, food, music, and boat journeys and frog races down the stream below the highway.read more »

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Baltimore Green Map introductory website at www.baltogreenmap.org. We are using 48 of the V3 icons and presenting all an opportunity to Nominate a Site. An interview with Wendy Brawer and me (Baltimore Project Director) will be aired on our local public radio station in time to be part of the Baltimore Festival of Maps. We'll post that as soon as available. Thanks to Wendy for years of encouragement and to our hero Thomas for responding so quickly to suggestions as we deployed the beta Online Green Map as part of our site.
Janet