About the Mapmakers
Making LoMap
Year 2000 was an Election Year in the USA, and it was that summer when LoMap got underway. In part, LoMap was inspired by the question,
How Would Downtown's Youth Vote If Asked to Name the Most Significant Places for a New Green Map?
We knew NYC's kids were savvy, and would give us the lowdown on downtown. We knew if we could just give them a brief orientation to "seeing the city through green eye-glasses" they would describe and draw wonderful places we could chart on the map.
Now, the Green Map System had created city-wide Green Maps and helped many youth groups make their own neighborhood Green Maps before, but LoMap was going to be a new kind of Green Map. It's different because LoMap involved many youth from 7 to 19 years old, but adults handled all the editing and designing necessary to complete and publish this map. We knew this community-based approach would be a lot of work, and so we decided to create three outcomes:
1) this web-based LoMap, 2) 25,000 copies of the folding paper LoMap and 3) a model, so the LoMap process could be used in other communities (read more about this in The Big Picture).
Beth Ferguson began working for Green Map System as the Project Coordinator for LoMap (her first real job!) in August 2000. She designed a slide show to introduce some of the naturally and culturally significant sites in Lower Manhattan we already knew about, and also to give an overview on Green Maps. Between September and January, she met with almost 20 schools and after-school clubs. 
Some kids got to take field trips, and some had Beth visit a second time so the group could share their findings together. We collected nominations from the public at the Union Square Greenmarket and Henry Street Settlement, too, and it seemed like everyone enjoyed being able to have their vote count for LoMap.
The kids did all the research on the sites, finding facts and phone numbers, writing descriptive text and making drawings on 250 terrific nominations! We had a lot of help from high school student interns, "ground-truthing" the nominated sites (by visiting the places to verify the info given on them), putting the nominations into a database, editing and "fact-checking" the text, telephone numbers, websites and addresses. We all worked hard to chart the sites and make the map look inviting and exciting 
during the first months of 2001. Then the printers and the web-designers took over, with both versions making their debut on April 26, 2001! Our Launch celebration took place at one of the famous sites on LoMap, the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian and the event included the debut of YouthVISION's video documentary on this project! We hope you find LoMap easy to explore and handy to use.
Click here to see list of participating schools and clubs!
More About LoMap's Designers
LoMap's Website is designed by Gadgetfarm.com steven@gadgetfarm.com.
Photographs by Beth Ferguson, and interns Susanne Mueller, Freddy Bell and Rory Turner
This text is written by Wendy Brawer
Special thanks to graphic designer Diana Signe Kline, outreach specialist Bob Zuber, and educators Sarahjane Sacchetti and Poonie Holst.
From Left to Right: Green Map System is directed by Wendy Brawer, who started the whole Green Map movement by making the first Green Apple Map back in 1992. The LoMap Youth Outreach Coordinator is Beth Ferguson, who also worked on the Brooklyn Waterfront Green Map (Summer 2000, with Recycle A Bicycle in Brooklyn NY), and the Holyoke Green Map (with Nuestra Raises, while a student at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, 1999-2000). Bob Zuber has been Green Map's outreach specialist since 1998, and has worked with Green Mappers in many places, including Robeson County NC, Santa Monica CA and East Harlem NYC. His workshops and presentations are tops! Susanne Mueller is a geography student in Munich Germany. She volunteered with Green Map during LoMap's first 3 months.
Thanks to LoMap's Supporters!
LoMap's 2004 edition is free, thanks to the generous support
of Greenacre Foundation. The original 2001 edition was supported by the
New York City Environmental Fund, Greenacre Foundation, New York Community
Trust, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation and Chase Manhattan Foundation.
Green Map System is a non-profit organization that can use your support,
too. 
Donations
and volunteers and good ideas are welcome.
We would like to thank every class's teacher and every club's leader, Henry Street Settlement, Union Square Greenmarket, Steven Doll and Jonah Sachs of Freerange Graphics, Sandrine Thompson of New York Recycled Paper, Inc., Juan Martinez for the map's cover kids, Fonthead.com for the Good Dog freeware font, The Museum of the Chinese in the Americas and Lendy's for translation, Kellon and Kenny of YouthVISIONS Productions and Jen Whitburn of Educational Video Center, Presentation Graphics, Tamara Weiss of Youth Venture, Ray Sage, Rachel Solomon, Jordan Levine, Christine Nielsen, John Breitbart and Roy Arezzo at City As School, Green Map System's Board of Directors and Educators Advisory Committee, the amazing and foresighted people who run all the sites on LoMap and keep NYC a cool place, and all the participants and the generous funders who encouraged us and made it happen!
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The Drawings you see on this website are really special!
They started out as neat little line-drawings that were made right on the LoMap nomination forms, then we scanned them into the computer. We made a LoMap palette of digital colors to choose from, and Beth colored each drawing in!
Each artist is identified by their first name and the code letter for their club or school:
Honey Jar by Lucas ·C
Battery Park by Anthony ·L
Kitty Cone-Licker by Malcolm ·C
Rollergirl by Kristi-anne ·H
6B Community Garden by Madeleine ·N
Clearwater Sloop by Edward ·C
Cloudburst by Jonathan ·E
Daisies by Kwandianee ·H
Bike by Derrick ·K
Turtle by Silvia ·R
Balanceball by Allen ·G
Toxic Truck by Cam ·C
Juice Sippers by Jackie ·C
Market Plate by Cassandra ·C
Special thanks to all the artists, and yes, these drawings also appear on the printed version of LoMap!