My class just read GIS versus the community: Siting power in southern West Virginia which discusses what has been a popular view among GIS users that GIS software provided objective analysis. Towers, the author, discusses a case in West Virginia where the USFS sites a new high-tension power line on private land after doing analysis that found the private land to be less valuable, and the response of the community, who congregated to fight the results and argue about the subjectivity of the analysis.
Questioning the authority of maps is not new, but the community’s use of GIS to carry out its own analysis is the start of Public Participation GIS (PPGIS). This isn’t the first time a community has been involved in the weighing and planning of some project, but a beginning of the use of GIS as a consensus builder among stakeholders. Who would have thought ArcMap could be so touchy-feely?