Building a Community Map!

The Community Map Table in progress, being built at Technocopia maker space in Worcester, MA. Angela Ruan, a FoSCI intern from Clark University, is standing on the ladder.

As part of our partnership with the Pleasant Street Neighborhood Network Center (PSNNC), the Future of Small Cities Institute is working with a team (including MassDevelopment, OPRCH, and others) to help transform the PSNNC space into an “Urban Room”—a flexible, modular, dynamic space that can meet the needs of the community and offer a variety of vital resources and programing.

A Community Design session at PSNNC, discussing what a redesign of the space might look like.

One of the first installations in this new space will be a portable Community Map Table. The Map Table is a powerful storytelling device that allows us to show multiple narratives about the neighborhood. We’ve created environmental justice maps, rent vs owner-occupied maps, tree maps, historical redlining maps, and MassDevelopment neighborhood investment maps.

FoSCI is working with Angela Ruan, the Lois and Robert Green Internship Fellow from Clark University, and folks at the Technocopia maker space to build the map table, which features the ability to project maps onto the display bed. Shop technician Riley Pettit is cutting out the 3D map of the neighborhood on Technocopia’s CNC router.

The 3d file which shows the neighborhood buildings. This will be used to cut a 3d model of Pleasant Street, which the maps will be projected onto.

A Community Map Table was a centerpiece at the FOCUS Lab and we’re hoping to create a toolkit so that other community spaces and urban rooms can build their own map table.

The Community Map Table at the FOCUS Lab in Troy, NY

We will unveil the Community Map Table and the new Urban Room redesign at PSNNC in the Fall of 2024!