Public Lab Research note


Mapping Nottingham's urban greening & growing spaces (UK)

by molangmuir10 | May 13, 2019 22:05 13 May 22:05 | #19394 | #19394

About the project:**

I am a community mapping fellow working with asylum seekers and refugees from a conversation club in Nottingham to map the city centre from above. The mapping process allows them to build a clearer picture of their new city and new home. This project is in collaboration with urban growers based in Nottingham who will select sites that are useful for mapping existing community gardens, allotments and green spaces, as well as establishing ideal future sites for urban growing. The final maps will be presented at various community festivals and events over the summer.

What do I expect to achieve using MapKnitter?

To stitch together a series of aerial photographs and build a current and clear picture of green spaces, derelict spaces and unused land sites in Nottingham. I expect to encounter both difficulties and successes when using MapKnitter, and that I can report and feedback on these for the development of the software. I expect these resulting maps to have a high enough number of pixels that we can zoom in and print them A3/A2. I want to achieve a unique map which can be used as an urban greening plan - as well as open-source material for anyone interested!

How do I see this map relating to other people's maps around this area?****

I see these maps being able to feed into the bigger picture. It's so interesting to see what and why other people have chosen to map an area - and even more interesting when it is local to yours. I hope to connect with local maps and projects - anyone in Nottingham, reach out!


7 Comments

@Cindy_ExCites , @cwbTekiu Wanted to connect you to a Public Labber in the UK who will be doing some mapping projects in the near future!

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Sounds like a great project! Looking forward to seeing it come to life!

Thankyou :)


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Awesome! i'm really looking forward to this project ! love the collaboration with urban growers in the city -- a great combo! We had fun a few years ago here in NYC doing just a little bit of work like this https://publiclab.org/5bf and there's also some talk from partners in Shenzhen (@shantler) about documenting rooftop urban growing

Thanks Liz!!! Hopefully we will capture the urban rooftop growing too, it will also be very interesting to compare to Shenzhen in future. The five borough project looks amazing! The toolkit is really interesting to me - and useful - especially for the community gardens as it's so important to track their impact. I will mention your project when presenting at the urban growers/food festival in Notts in June! Great work, thanks for sharing!


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Hi molangmuir10,

I don't know if you still visit this page but I'm not sure how else to get in touch with you.

Your mapping project sounds so interesting! Are the results available for members of the public to view?

I'm someone who lives in Nottingham, in training to grow food and work the land in a regenerative way, and I'm in the process of trying to connect with local growers and other green folks in the city, with a view to becoming part of the movement whose mission it is to re-green the land, support food justice and improve the collective wellbeing of our communities.

It would be so helpful to get an overview of the local food-growing and green spaces landscape.

Is this a question? Click here to post it to the Questions page.

Great to see you writing in @Whirligig , your comment here on @molangmuir10 's post will trigger an email notification to them. Hope you all make the connection!


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