The Challenges of Integrating Texting and Mapping for Community Development in
Canada
Ana Brandusescu, Renee Sieber, and Sylvie Jochems McGill University
805 Sherbrooke Street West,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 0B9 ana.brandusescu@mail.mcgill.ca Abstract
Online mapping platforms allow non-experts to visualize, organize and create a dialogue of events. Ushahidi is the best-known example of a mapping platform used for critical events and natural disasters. The Ushahidi developers have integrated mobile technologies into their mapping by allowing for texting (SMS) to collect citizen reports. We used Crowdmap, Ushahidi’s cloud-based mapping platform to investigate whether citizens could “text community development”: to contribute SMSs in a meaningful way about community assets (e.g., eateries, parks, and schools). Youth was targeted because it was hoped that comfort with mobile devices may increase engagement of underrepresented age cohorts in an inner-city neighbourhood. We customized the platform to develop an application for a community development initiative in the neighbourhood of Lachine, within Montreal, Canada.
This paper discusses technical components and challenges of a coupled Crowdmap-SMS deployment in Canada. We found challenges related to the nature of Canadian mobile network providers and mobile modem locks, interoperability of mapping and telecom software, parsing of locations, issues of content moderation and anonymity, and long-standing sustainability of diffusing ICTs to community based organizations. By focusing on community development, we sought to question the utility of these crisis-driven platforms towards persistent community based conditions. To counter certain challenges, we employed creative methods like storyboarding for communicating with both non-technical and multilingual audiences. The resulting application provides compelling visualization of maps and user statistics, although cartographic comprehension varied by user. For an automated system, the application required substantial manual interventions for day-to-day operations. In some cases, community members found the automatic mapping component more onerous than the texting.
ICTs and open source software combine to create innovative possibilities for community development practices and self-organization, and to spark neighbourhood dialogues about local issues. We conclude by discussing broader implications and prospects of mobile-enabled mapping for community development.
