Explore the maps. Create your own stories.

I've been using maps since 1994 to show where Chicago area kids need extra help based on the level of poverty and inequality in the areas where they live. This blog was created in 2008 to show maps my organization was creating. Since 2011 the blog has shared maps created using our interactive map-based Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator. 

The Program Locator has only been available as an archive since around 2017, so the blog has been used to show data platforms hosted by others.  Below is a concept map showing some of the platforms found in this section of the Tutor/Mentor library.

On this concept map I've circled one node, titled "Education data".  Click on the small box at the bottom of the node and you see three links.  I opened the one titled "Education Opportunity Map".

This is the "Education Opportunity Project at Stanford University".  This page shows three projects. I chose the "Segregation Tracking Project" and opened the map shown below.

In the lower right is a legend. The green shading shows the level of White-Black Segregation between schools in each state, with the dark green being the most segregated.   The orange shading shows the percent of White Students in individual schools, with the darker Orange being the highest.

I zoomed in to the Chicago region, to the map-view shown below.  This map shows the level of segregation in individual schools.  Just click on any of the dots and a pop-up will show the name of the school and level of segregation.

I zoomed in as far as the site would allow.  The map below shows the South Side of Chicago.

The dark green background shows that this is a highly segregated area and the white dots showing individual schools, confirms that.

I've written about segregation several times in past years.  Open this link to find articles on this site, and open this link to find articles on the Tutor/Mentor blog. 

Now create your own map stories. 

Explore the data platforms shown on the concept map at the top of this article. Zoom into your own city, state and/or neighborhood.  Learn about needs and opportunities. 

Then brows my blog and use my articles as templates, to see how you might embed maps in articles and/or videos intended to draw more people to information about race, segregation and inequality, and to draw more people to organizations working with youth and families living in areas of persistent poverty.

Students in middle school, high school and college can learn to do this. At some point in the future every city should have at least one blog like this one, sharing datamaps and stories created by others, and drawing attention to places where people need extra help.

I've created many visual essays that show how maps and map-stories, created by many people, can have a huge impact on changing public policy and influencing the flow of needed resources into high poverty, highly segregated neighborhoods.  Here' one example. 

Find more like that in this collection. 

Thanks for reading. I hope you'll share this, and your own work.  Connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, BlueSky and Mastodon (see links here). 

I depend on help from a small group of donors to fund the work I'm doing.  Please visit this page and add your own support. 

Persistent Poverty in America

My Twitter feed brought a new report to my attention this week. It's titled "Persistently poor, left-behind and chronically disconnected" and was written by Kenan Fikri who I've been following for a while.  (I'll use Persistent Poverty to refer to this report in the rest of this article.)

The map below was what caught my attention.  It shows areas of concentrated poverty in six Ohio cities.

For the past 30 years I've used maps to focus attention on areas of concentrated poverty in Chicago. In this set of MappingforJustice blog articles, I show other cities with the same challenges.  In the 1990s a book titled American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass,  written by Douglas S. Massey,  addressed this same issue.

Below are a few passages from the Persistent Poverty article that I highlighted. (click to enlarge). Go to the report to read this in context.

The abstract shows a focus on social networks and social capital and says "these problems tend not to resolve themselves naturally".    The second shows that hidden in affluent Cook County are several clusters of persistent poverty census tracts.  Two with over 200,000 residents."

This is not a new problem. This 1994 Chicago Tribune front page pointed to some of the same high poverty areas as are shown in the Persistent Poverty report. 

I formed the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago in 1993 (and Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC in 2011)  to try to help volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs grow in these areas as a strategy for expanding the networks of adults from beyond poverty areas who were helping kids through school.  I point volunteers and donors to these programs, through lists that I host on this page. 

In the Persistent Poverty report, one strategy was to expand networks of support and bridging social capital. 

This paragraph highlights the difference between "bonding" social capital which consists of strong ties between family, neighborhoods and/or church groups.  These are present in many high poverty communities.  What's not present are large doses of "bridging" social capital, which connect youth and families to people and opportunities and solutions beyond the place where they live.  

I've been writing about social capital on the Tutor/Mentor blog for many years. Add these articles to your research. 

The graphic below was created in the 1990s to show the design of the tutor/mentor program I led. It's a strategy designed to expand "bridging" social capital for K-12 youth and families in every high poverty area of Chicago and other cities with areas of concentrated poverty. 

The hub on this graphic represents a youth, a family, a school or a neighborhood. It shows a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program as a place that draws workplace volunteers from many different backgrounds to serve as one-on-one and group tutors/mentors to youth living in high poverty places of Chicago.  The timeline in the middle of the hub emphasizes the 20-plus years it takes to help each youth through school and into jobs where they can earn enough to raise their own kids free from poverty's challenges.  

The strategy I've emphasized has been to enlist leaders from every industry to use their own media, visibility and resources to draw volunteers and donors to tutor/mentor programs in all parts of a city, not just to one, or two, high profile programs. 

These two PDFs show this goal - Total Quality Mentoring  click here

Role of Leaders - click here

I've focused on cities because the geographic size makes it difficult for workplace volunteers to meet with kids during the school day, or right after school, because of the distance between work and program locations.  The after work and weekend hours are times when that volunteers is more able to stop at a neighborhood program and make an on-going commitment.

However, there are not enough long-term programs and there is inconsistent funding to build and sustain such programs.  Here's one of many articles where I focus on funding.  No solution will come without addressing the flow of dollars to these places!

However, as the map from the Persistent Poverty report shows, the problem of long-term poverty is not limited to cities and urban areas.

These two paragraphs emphasize the different history of places across the US and the lack of simple solutions.

Below is another graphic from my collection.  

It emphasizes the role each person can take to be part of a solution. If you've read this far, that means YOU!

Read the report. Here's the link again.

Update: I asked if there is an interactive map showing the Persistent Poverty data. There is. Follow the link in this post from Twitter (x):

There is! Much of this analysis was based off of @InnovateEconomy's big Advancing Economic Development in Persistent Poverty Communities project from last summer. The tract groups view on this map brings the full geography of poverty into focus: https://t.co/1DGIT80B9h pic.twitter.com/RLnR5eL0CR

— Kenan Fikri (@kenanfikri) February 16, 2024

Using the interactive map you can zoom into the Chicago area, or any other place with high concentrations of poverty.  Look at it. Create your own map stories.

Then, share it with people in your network, so they read it and begin to think about roles they might take in helping more people become involved in efforts that make mentor-rich programs available in all of the high poverty areas shown on these maps.

3-7-2024 update - Here's another article using the EIG dashboards to understand t his data:  https://cityobservatory.org/a-yawning-chasm-patterns-of-neighborhood-distress-in-us-metros/

Then visit this section of the Tutor/Mentor library and read additional reports about poverty, race and inequality in America, that I've been collecting for more than 20 years. 

In last Sunday's Super Bowl a group spent millions of dollars to purchase ads talking about Jesus.   I wish someone were spending the same money talking about the research I've been pointing to and mobilizing people to be volunteers, leaders and donors supporting youth tutor, mentor and learning programs in all high poverty areas of big cities across the country. 

And building a similar research library showing the different challenges of rural areas, reservations, and other places where solutions may be different than for big cities. Then, drawing readers and planners to that resource so they develop solutions.

And that they do it consistently for the next two decades.

What do you think?  Connect with me on social media. (see links here)

Help me pay the bills. Make a contribution to Fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. click here

Chicago a divided city - WBEZ maps

Today the US Census announced that Illinois will lose one Congressional seat as a result of declining population in Illinois and growth in a few other states.  As I  thought about this I saw an article on the WBEZ website, showing maps created by the Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

 Whereas in 1970 there were large middle class neighborhoods in the North, SW and South sides of Chicago, not the city seems starkly divided between wealth and very low income.  

While the low income area grew dramatically this does not mean the population of poor people grew. African American population within Chicago has been declining for decades. This 2019 UIC Great Cities Institute report states that "Since a peak measured in 1980, Chicago’s Black population has declined steadily from 1,187,905 in 1980 to 797,253 in 2017, a decrease of 390,652 or 32.9%."  

This 2018 article provides more information about the migration of Blacks out of Chicago, to the suburbs, other cities in Illinois, and out of state, perhaps to some of those states gaining Congressional seats. It includes a quote saying, "Experts from the Urban Institute predict that by 2030, Chicago’s African-American population will shrink to 665,000 from a post-war high of roughly 1.2 million."  

That leaves behind those who are very poor and those who are very affluent.  

Youth as Leaders - Demonstrated by IntegrateNYC

View at this link

The map at the right is from a presentation about segregation in New York City and how Covid19 has had a greater affect on people of color living in highly segregated areas.

It was created as part of the IntegrateNYC project, which is lead by teens from various NYC schools. 

I encourage  you to view it, respond to their calls to action, and consider ways to empower teens in Chicago and other cities to do similar work.

Understanding history of redlining - Louisville, Oakland, CA, Chicago, more

See map here

The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May unleashed pent up anger in cities across the world, which continued through the Juneteenth celebrations and protest marches of June 19, 2020.

Hopefully this leads people of all backgrounds to dig deeper into the history of slavery and continued oppression of Black and Brown people that continues today.

One part of this history is 'redlining' where maps were drawn using red lines to show neighborhoods where banks and insurance companies would not invest. Those were poor neighborhoods with concentrations of Black and Brown people.

The map I'm showing here is from an article on the Bloomberg City Lab website, titled "Louisville Confronts Its Redlining Past and Present".   Visit this page to see the full presentation.

Oakland, San Francisco - redlining

These graphics are from ESRI story map presentations about 'redlining'.   While the map above focuses on Louisville, Kentucky, the maps in this story focus on Oakland and San Francisco, CA.

The ESRI story maps make great presentation platforms for this information. Scroll down the map and new images and text appear. It makes it easier to understand the stories being told.

Below is a map showing the Chicago region. It's from a Mapping Inequality project of the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond.

Redlining in the Chicago region - see map

The Digital Scholarship Lab has maps for almost every city in America, thus, this is something that can be part of student and adult learning throughout the country.  Understanding how we got to the situation we're facing is a first step toward figuring out how to un-do the evils of past history and create a more just and equitable future.

Visit the American Panorama section on the DSL site and find story maps focusing on other issues in American history.

I found these maps on my @tutormentorteam Twitter feed then did a Google search for "Esri story maps - redlining"  and "redlining maps".  There are many other resources to learn from.

Return to this article often and read updates where I've added links to new, related, articles.


11/30/16 update: Here's a New York Times story about immigration, that uses maps and animation to tell the story in a visual way.

12/20/16 update: Here's another ESRI storymap, this time telling the story of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

1/11/17 update: Story map showing 10 most segregated cities in the US.

 
6/28/17 update:  See how Crain's Chicago Business uses this Wealth Divides map in it's own analysis. click here

2/28/18 update:  How Cities are Divided By Income, Mapped - CITYLAB story. click here
View the ESRI Mapping Incomes story-map - click here

4/8/2018 update: Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America - this collection of Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLA) maps from the 1920s and 1930s serve as "as critical evidence in countless urban studies in the fields of history, sociology, economics, and law. Indeed, more than a half-century of research has shown housing to be for the twentieth century what slavery was to the antebellum period, namely the broad foundation of both American prosperity and racial inequality."

4/17/2018 update:  Public Housing Plays Huge Role in Racial Segregation and Inequality-- but not in the way most people think.  Article in Business Insider - click here

4/20/2018 update: US News & World Report article - Segregation's Legacy - click here

4/24/2018 update: Segregation incarnated in brick and mortar. See maps in this April 2018 article on The Hechinger Report. 

5/3/2018 update: "Segregation Map: America is More Diverse than Ever, but still Segregated" - Washington Post article - click here

5/10/2018 update: "To Succeed Older Cities Must Overcome Their Stark Color Lines." Brookings edu article - click here

5/16/2018  update:  Metropolitan Planning Council site offers plan for addressing costs of segregation in the Chicago region. "Title: Our Equitable Future: A Roadmap for the Chicago Region". click here

5/29/2018 update:  Connecticut has more concentrated poverty (and wealth) than most metros. see 2015 article. These are findings from a DataHaven study

6/1/2018  update: The End of the American Dream? Inequality and Segregation in US Cities. Alessandra Fogli, senior economist and assistant director in the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis leads a discussion about segregation and inequality across U.S. cities and their consequences on educational outcomes of future generations. see video

12/11/2018 update:  2018 County Health Map - Key Findings - click here  This report is a resource that can be used by leaders from across the USA.

2/20/2019 update: American segregation, mapped at day and night. This site includes animated maps that show segregation patterns while at work, and while at home. Unique way to view this. click here

2/25/2020 update:  Where Democrats and Republicans live in your city.  This article includes maps that show political separation in cities across the USA, as well as racial segregation.  click here

9/21/2020 update:  Redlining and neighborhood health - click here

9/23/2020 update:  from Brookings.edu: Six maps that reveal America's expanding racial diversity. - click here

2/19/2021 update - The Case for Reparations - Story by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Review history of slavery, Jim Crow, separate but not equal, housing discrimination, etc. in America. 

2/24/2021  update - How Black cartographers put racism on the map of America  This article shows how maps have been used in the past to fight racism and inequality.

3/5/2021 update - Race & Policing in America - storymap - click here

3/5/2021  update -
- Exploring impacts of structural racism in Chicago - click here

- Lessons from the Harvard/Brown Opportunity Atlas - click here
- Fatal Force - report on police shootings in USA - Washington Post - click here

3-6-2021 update - Mapping Project Explores Links Between Historic Redlining And Future Climate Vulnerability - click here

3-17-2021 update - NY Times article shows patterns of segregation dividing Democrats and Republicans - using maps of many cities - click here

4-2-2021 update - Redlining and Neighborhood Health - National Community Reinvestment Coalition article. click here 

9-21-2021 update - New research puts a different light on how we've traditionally understood "Redlining. Read Redlining Didn’t Happen Quite the Way We Thought It Did" - click here

11-10-21 update - "Before redlining and beyond: How data driven neighborhood classification masks spatial racism". click here

3-9-2022 update - "Redlining means 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air, 50 years after it ended". Washington Post article. click here

4-29-2022 update - "Mapping Chicago's Racial Segregation" part 1 of 6 series in South Side Weekly - click here

5-14-2022 update - "How a Minneapolis public  history project is building political will to redress racial housing disparities" -  Brookings.edu article highlights role of the University of Minnesota Libraries in this research.  click here

5-17-2022 - School Segregation dashboard by The Century Foundation shows how segregated the schools within every metro area in the US are, including breakdowns by different types of segregation. click here

6-1-2022 - Segregation and School Funding - How Housing Discrimination Reproduces  Unequal Opportunity. New research from Albert Shanker Institute  click here

2-15-2023 - 2020 WBEZ article "Where Banks Don't Lend (in Chicago)  click  here

2-24-2023 - Follow these Tweets from David Schonholzer to see how segregation has changed (or not) in urban areas over the past 30 years. click here

This article does a great job of showing the data in the segregation dashboard. 

6-21-2023 - "School segregation thrives in America’s most liberal cities" - American Inequality article with maps. click here

12-12-2023 - Upgraded version of "Mapping Inequality," the award-winning, foremost digital resource on New Deal redlining, posted here

5-31-2024 - NCRC (National Community Reinvestment Corporation ) article titled "Decades of Disinvestment: Historic Redlining and Mortgage Lending Since 1981" - https://ncrc.org/decades-of-disinvestment/  This report introduces a new HMDA Longitudinal Dataset (HLD).  

Link between poverty, segregation and education performance

In my Twitter feed today was a post that pointed me to this article, titled: An analysis of achievement gaps in every school in America shows that poverty is the biggest hurdle.  The article draws upon data that is available in this Stanford Opportunity Explorer map.

Below I'm showing three map views that I created by zooming in on the map.

The blue shades show "students' scores, in grade levels, relative to the national average (grades 3-8, 2009-2016)". This is explained in the table in the lower right corner of the page.  Click on the "more info" link and a panel opens on the left side of the page with a set of questions and answers.

National View of Opportunity Explorer

Then I zoomed in to look at the Chicago area where I've focused on helping volunteer-based, non-school tutor/mentor programs grow since forming the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993.  At this level of detail  you can see individual schools, which are color coded to show how they perform vs the national average.

View of Chicago region - Central/South

Then I zoomed in more to focus on the central part of the city.  For reference, look at this map which we created more than 10 years ago, showing the Illinois 7th Congressional District. You can see how this district stretches from Chicago's lakefront to the far West suburbs and that there are areas of high poverty in the middle and South part of the district (note: this is 2000 census data). 

7th Illinois Congressional District

Now look at the third map that I created using the Opportunity Explorer.  I'm focusing on the same area as the 7th Congressional District. You can see the difference between more affluent areas (green) and greater poverty areas (blue).

This map covers much of the 7th Congressional District

Now look at the map below, showing the 7th Congressional District, which was created using the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, which a team from India built for the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 2008 using money we'd received from an anonymous donor. (This team first introduced themselves to me in 2007 by rebuilding our Organizational History and Tracking System (OHATS) page - on a pro-bono basis!)

7th District view using Program Locator - click here

The Opportunity Explore is a great resource.  However, I wish it had overlays showing Congressional or State legislative districts, so voters could build an understanding of the segregation, poverty and school performance within their district and hold elected leaders accountable for generating the resources and mobilizing the leadership needed to improve the lives of those living in poverty.  

Unfortunately the Tutor/Mentor Connection was not able to attract new funding after 2008 due to the financial crisis, which also affected the volunteers from India who were helping us. In 2011 this led to the strategy being discontinued at the non profit I founded in 1993, which led me to form the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (also 2011) to try to keep this resource updated and available.  

It is available. It's not updated. However if you explore it's features, it's loaded.  For instance, in the upper right I've pointed to an "enlargement" button which expands the map to your full screen. That enables you to look closer at the information on the map, including the green stars, representing non-school tutor and/or mentor programs in the map area.  

Data platforms - click here

The Tutor/Mentor Program Locator is not the only resource people can use. It is one of the few that overlays non-school tutor/mentor programs and is intended to support leaders working to fill neighborhoods with a wide range of k-12 youth programs.

I point to a wide range of data platforms in this concept map. I'll add the Stanford Opportunity Explorer today.  These can be used to understand issues and create map-stories that share your understanding with other people, mobilizing the talent, dollars and votes needed to change conditions shown on the maps.  

View more stories on this blog showing uses of maps, and view stories on the Tutor/Mentor blog, also using maps. Imagine such stories appearing on thousands of web sites and blogs, created by students, volunteers, policy makers, elected leaders, etc.

I'm looking for partners at universities, businesses think tanks and/or other non-profits who will spend time learning what I've been trying to do and then invest and adopt, updating the Program Locator, and rebuilding strategies that I'm no longer able to lead as well as needed, due to lack of support.  

If I can get the attention and investment from just one of the growing number of billionaires in the world, this entire strategy could be relaunched, using their name and influence. Share this article, and perhaps you can help me reach these people. 

This link points to social media platforms where we can connect.

America: More Diverse. Still Segregated

Map from Washington
Post, 5/2/18

This map shows segregation in the Chicago region and is part of an extensive article titled: Segregation Map: America is more diverse than ever, but still segregated",  in the May 2, 2018 Washington Post. click here

This is not a new issue. I've been adding stories about racism and segregation to this article and this section of my web library for many years.

The Washington Post article draws it's data from a new book titled Cycle of Segregation, written by Kyle Crowder and Maria Krysan . Here's an interview on WGN Radio with one of the authors.

The challenge continues to plague Chicago and other parts of the country. It's a complex problem and as Maria Krysan said in the Washington Post article:

We don't have the integrated social networks. We don't have integrated experiences through the city. It's baked-in segregation,” Krysan said. “Every time [a person] makes a move [they’re] not making a move that breaks out of that cycle and making a move that regenerates it.”

 I've supported well-organized, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs for more than 30 years because these programs are integrated social networks connecting youth and families from inner city neighborhoods with a mix of volunteers from many different parts of Chicago, many different business backgrounds, and many faith, age and racial backgrounds.

While I've led the Tutor/Mentor Connection since creating it in 1993, few leaders have adopted the strategies I've shared and/or made consistent, long-term commitments to helping this type of program start and grow in all high poverty areas of the city and suburbs. Furthermore, of the nearly 200 youth serving organizations I point to on this list, very few show a strategy and theory of change that describes their program as a social network connecting youth in poverty to people, experiences and opportunities beyond.

Next week The Chicago Community Trust will host it's annual On The Table event, where people from throughout the region gather in small groups to discuss issues important to them, and to Chicago. 

My hope is that many of these groups will use maps like I share and point to on this site, and discuss ways they and people they know can build a better understanding of the places and problems of racial segregation in the Chicago region, then map out strategies and action steps that people can take daily to try to close the gaps.

Chicago United for Equity - CPS equity maps

I attended an event last night titled "65/54 Brown v. Chicago: Race and Access in Education" which was held at the Hull House Museum near UIC in Chicago. The map below was shared by one of the speakers, Niketa Brar, a co-founder and executive director of Chicago United for Equity (CUE). 

Link to interactive map - click here

The event description says "Sixty-four years after Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declared that separate was unequal, Chicago’s public schools remain segregated, and access to education continues to be out of reach." Panel members were passionate and full of data to support this claim and urged that anyone who cares, should take an active role.

The map on the CUE web site helps support this. It is one of the few maps I've found that show CPS school boundaries. You can zoom in to enlarge the maps. You can also run your mouse over the map and find data for each school, showing segregation rates, student gains and/or loss over past few years, and school utilization by community members.

Other speakers were Amanda Lewis, Director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and Professor of African American Studies and Sociology at UIC and  David Stovall, a Professor of Education Policy Studies and African American Studies at UIC. I met Dave last year and continue to encourage him to put his research on a blog or web site.  The moderator was Cassandra McKay-Jackson, an associate professor, and the new director of the Master of Social Work program at Erikson Institute. 

Last night's session was recorded and once the video is available I will add it as a link to this article. Listening to the speakers is much more effective than me trying to paraphrase what they were saying.

As you look at the CUE map, look at map stories on this blog and on the Tutor/Mentor blog.  I feel that students, parents, volunteers and others could be using map platforms like the CUE site to tell stories, specific to areas as small as a city block or a CPS school neighborhood. Every time something happens that shows the inequity in the city, a story needs to be created. Every time something good happens, stories can be created.

This needs to be happening daily if we're going to get more people involved and build the political power needed to address the deeply implanted root causes of these problems. 

Do you value what I write about and the information I share. Visit this page and use the PayPal to send me a small contribution to help me continue this work. 

School Segregation in the US. Long history. Intentional.

In several articles on this blog I include maps that show segregation in the US school system.  In the video below, Soledad O’Brien discusses with Nikole Hannah-Jones, an investigative reporter for New York Times Magazine, and a MacArthur Genius Award Winner, why she says the segregation in American schools is intentional and why it’s hurting the country’s future.
 


 Read articles on Tutor/Mentor blog and this blog that focus on ways to get more people involved in learning about issues like this, and in using their time, talent, dollars, influence and votes to create needed systems of support for kids living in high poverty and segregated America.

Racial Segregation in Metro Areas - Brookings report

Map from Brookings.edu report

This is one of four sets of maps included in this article describing continuing racial segregation in 24 large metro areas of the United States.  Take a look.

Read other articles that focus on race and segregation that I've posted on this blog.

Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the American City

This map is from a web site that tells the story of racial segregation in St. Louis as a result of deliberate policies enacted from the 1900 through the 1970s.  Click on the interactive maps to understand the impact of different policies and to see changes by decade.

In this blog I've included maps of Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago and other cities to show that racism led to concentrated poverty and inequality that is present in every city. Maps can be used to not only show where the problem is, and why it occurred, but also to support leadership efforts that help put programs in place that help overcome these challenges.

Income Inequality in Cities - Using ESRI StoryMap

This image is from an ESRI Storymap titled "Wealth Divides" that you can find at this link.

This demonstrates a growing ability to use story maps to build a greater understanding of how some places are blessed with great wealth while others are less fortunate due to great poverty.

I'll reach out to ESRI, but the next layer of information on maps like this should be borrowed from my own  history of building map overlays that show locations of non-school tutor and/or mentoring programs in different neighborhoods, as part of a strategy intended to draw resources to existing programs while helping new programs start where few or none exist.

Here's a blog article that illustrates how I've been trying to use maps. Imagine what might result if teams of students, volunteers and map-makers were duplicating the Tutor/Mentor Connection's 4-part strategy, and were producing map stories using current StoryMap tools, to draw attention to inequality, violence and other indicators of need, and were drawing resources to organizations working to reduce those inequalities.

That could be happening in every part of the world if a few leaders would step forward to make it happen.

11/30/16 update: Here's a New York Times story about immigration, that uses maps and animation to tell the story in a visual way.

12/20/16 update: Here's another ESRI storymap, this time telling the story of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).

1/11/17 update: Story map showing 10 most segregated cities in the US

6/28/17 update:  See how Crain's Chicago Business uses this Wealth Divides map in it's own analysis. click here

2/28/18 update:  How Cities are Divided By Income, Mapped - CITYLAB story. click here
View the ESRI Mapping Incomes story-map - click here

4/8/2018 update: Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America - this collection of Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLA) maps from the 1920s and 1930s serve as "as critical evidence in countless urban studies in the fields of history, sociology, economics, and law. Indeed, more than a half-century of research has shown housing to be for the twentieth century what slavery was to the antebellum period, namely the broad foundation of both American prosperity and racial inequality."

4/17/2018 update:  Public Housing Plays Huge Role in Racial Segregation and Inequality-- but not in the way most people think.  Article in Business Insider - click here

4/20/2018 update: US News & World Report article - Segregation's Legacy - click here

4/24/2018 update: Segregation incarnated in brick and mortar. See maps in this April 2018 article on The Hechinger Report. 

5/3/2018 update: "Segregation Map: America is More Diverse than Ever, but still Segregated" - Washington Post article - click here

5/10/2018 update: "To Succeed Older Cities Must Overcome Their Stark Color Lines." Brookings edu article - click here

5/16/2018  update:  Metropolitan Planning Council site offers plan for addressing costs of segregation in the Chicago region. "Title: Our Equitable Future: A Roadmap for the Chicago Region". click here

5/29/2018 update:  Connecticut has more concentrated poverty (and wealth) than most metros. see 2015 article. These are findings from a DataHaven study

6/1/2018  update: The End of the American Dream? Inequality and Segregation in US Cities. Alessandra Fogli, senior economist and assistant director in the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis leads a discussion about segregation and inequality across U.S. cities and their consequences on educational outcomes of future generations. see video

12/11/2018 update:  2018 County Health Map - Key Findings - click here  This report is a resource that can be used by leaders from across the USA.

2/20/2019 update: American segregation, mapped at day and night. This site includes animated maps that show segregation patterns while at work, and while at home. Unique way to view this. click here

2/25/2020 update:  Where Democrats and Republicans live in your city.  This article includes maps that show political separation in cities across the USA, as well as racial segregation.  click here

9/21/2020 update:  Redlining and neighborhood health - click here

9/23/2020 update:  from Brookings.edu: Six maps that reveal America's expanding racial diversity. - click here

11/23/2021  update: The Ever-Growing Gap: Failing to Address the Status Quo Will Drive the Racial Wealth Divide for Centuries to Come - Institute for  Policy Studies report - click here   

Building Youth Support System - Role of Libraries, Hospitals

If you browse articles posted on this blog since 2008, and on the Tutor/Mentor Institute blog since 2005,  you'll see maps used to show areas of Chicago and other cities where youth and families need a wide range of extra support to help young people move through school and into adult lives free of poverty.

In many of these articles I focus on the proactive role that business, philanthropy, hospitals and other anchor organizations can take. In this article I'm going to illustrate this strategy, focusing on libraries and hospitals.

I'm using the New York City Public Library system as my example.

The map at the right shows locations of New York City Public Libraries. Click here to visit the site and zoom in on the map.  As with most cities, libraries are spread throughout the city.

This summer I connected with a New York City organization called IntegrateNYC4me, which engages young people in communication information about school segregation in New York City Public Schools. Here's the Research Page of their web site.  Below is a copy of their map, showing segregated schools in NYC.

This map showing segregated schools in NYC is no longer on the original web site

I zoomed in on both maps, focusing on an area where there are a large number of segregated schools. Below are two maps showing the area between 125th St and 175th Street.  The map on the left s hows libraries in the area and the map on the right shows highly segregated public schools in the same area.

Segregated schools map no longer available

Students at each school in this map area could be building map views like this. They could do neighborhood research to learn about non school tutor/mentor programs located within a 1 mile (or half mile) radius of each library, then adding that information to the map, as I do with the Chicago Tutor/Mentor Program Locator Interactive map.  Such maps could also show other assets in the area, such as businesses, banks, faith groups, hospitals, colleges, etc., as well as political leaders who represent the area. This Asset Map section of the Program Locator enables users to build map views showing indicators of need, locations of existing tutor/mentor programs, and assets within the same map-area. (note - the Program Locator has not been funded since 2010, thus serves as a model for this example).

Each library could be partnering with youth groups, and volunteers from area businesses and/or colleges, to create maps and share this information, and to host meetings, to discuss the availability of non-school learning supports, or other resources, that would help kids in neighboring schools have better learning opportunities.   Such meetings can focus on information in the library, that shows the impact of poverty and segregation on the neighborhood and the wider NYC region, as well as information in web libraries like the one created by the T/MC since the early 1990s.  

ICONS placed on the library map and on the schools map could show which libraries have such a program in place. I put circles on the map above, to illustrate this.

Over a two to three period each library should have a program in place to fill the library neighborhood with rich learning resources. Foundations and government offices should have maps on their own web sites, showing where they are funding and supporting such efforts!  Maps in local media should be showing the growth of these efforts in high poverty areas, just as frequently as they show maps with the number of homicides in a city.

Students working with this project could also learn to do evaluation and recognition mapping. 
The map at the right shows people who attended a Tutor/Mentor Conference in Chicago, with different icons showing the affiliation of the participant. The goal is that such events bring all of the stake-holders from the map area into on-going efforts that lead to more and better youth serving organizations in the area around every public library that operates in a poverty areas, or one with highly segregated and poorly resourced schools.

Putting participation information on the map is one task. Creating blog articles, media stories, podcasts and videos to give positive recognition to those who are involved in this effort is a second set of necessary actions.

Students, at the high school or college level, even Jr. High School level, could even be writing up process and "how we did it" reports, as part of on-going learning, and could be sharing strategies from one library-neighborhood with others, in NYC and in other cities, via cMOOCs organized around the Connected Learning (#clmooc) format. 

Here are a few more maps that illustrate this thinking: First is a map showing Brooklyn, NY public libraries and segregated schools. The map of all Brooklyn, NYC libraries can be found here.

This map shows locations of Chicago Public Libraries, with insets showing libraries on the South Side of Chicago.   The same process I describe for NYC could be taking place in Chicago and every other city with areas of highly concentrated, segregated poverty.  

The map below shows the location of Sinai Hospital, on Chicago's West side, within the 9th Illinois State Representative District. It's from a series of stories written in 2009 to show the role this hospital, or others in the map-area, could take to help mentor-rich programs grow in the areas surrounding it.

Another article showing Sinai Hospital, and a strategy that can fill the surrounding neighborhood with mentor-rich programs, can be found here.  An article showing how youth could use maps in stories following media coverage of violence in a neighborhood, can be found here.

Anyone can duplicate the stories I write. Most can do it better! Do it!

Teams of youth and volunteers, working with modern GIS technologies, can create similar map collections, showing indicators of need for extra help, and showing organizations already operating in the map-area, offering various forms of  help, and showing assets who could be providing more consistent help, since they also are part of the map-area.  This presentation shows how to use platforms like the Tutor/Mentor Program Locator, to create  your own map stories.

Maps created by the Tutor/Mentor Connection from 1994-2011, do not focus on libraries, police stations, fire stations or other anchor organizations, but these are all institutions spread throughout a city, which could be leading community mapping and mobilization efforts intending to make their district the safest and best place to live, work and raise families.

If you'd like to explore these ideas further, let's connect. If you're already doing this, share your blog or web site address in the comment section below or on Twitter or Facebook.

If you'd like to sponsor the Program Locator and help the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC rebuild it's mapping capacity, visit this page.

March 2017 update - this web site includes maps showing segregated schools in NYC

Feb. 2019 update - this site in NY Times enables you to look at segregation for NYC and other cities

Feb. 2019 update - this Center for NYC Affairs site has maps showing segregation in NYC and can be used to do the analysis shown above. click here