Measured Words

Mapping the 6th Suffolk Representative District - Creating My Own

Having failed to find a suitable map of Massachusetts' 6th Suffolk Representative District through the usual suspects of the Elections Department, the Boston Public Library, Simmons College's Library, my good friend Google, and the State Library of Massachusetts, I was finally able to track down a decent map by working with a friend of mine in California who happens to be a Photoshop whiz.

By taking that map, I created a Google Map outlining the district currently represented by Rep. Willie Mae Allen.

Over the course of the coming semester, I hope to flesh out the map with markers showing key points in the district including community group gathering spots, libraries, churches, mosques, synagogues, attractions, community rooms, etc. I want to mark every place that is a spot where people gather. Where they talk about issues affecting them and their communities. Where "grassroots community organization" occurs naturally.

I want to mark the places where communication happens.

If you already know of places, I invite you to add them to the map as well.

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Mapping the 6th Suffolk Representative District - 3rd Attempt

After discussing the problem I was having mapping the Massachusetts' 6th Suffolk Representative District with some friends in an online community organized by Howard Rheingold, one of the folks in the community put together this map for me. She overlaid the generic map I found in my original Google attempts on a Google map in Photoshop, then changed the opacity so she could look through it and scale it to match the scale of the Google map.

She also amazingly enough, took that weird Browser sent to me by a BPL librarian and zoomed around enough to recreate another map of the district based on it.

So far in my quest, the best map of my own General Court district has been created for me by a landscape designer in Santa Clara, California.

Mapping the 6th Suffolk Representative District - 2nd Attempt

I really wanted a map of this District. After being disappointed with my first reference librarian at the Boston Public Library, I tried asking the question again, as suggested, to the State Library of Massachusetts. I didn't even know we had a State Library of Massachusetts!

Unfortunately, it wasn't that helpful:

Thank you for your question.  Most of the maps available online are not
as detailed as what you are looking for.  You have a couple options:

The first is to contact that districts congressional office and see if
they have any maps available.

The second option is to build the map yourself using the free OLIVER
data Viewer from MassGIS:

http://maps.massgis.state.ma.us/massgis_viewer/index.htm

There are directions on how to load and use the software available on
the page.

I could never figure out how to get the software to load, but meanwhile the first librarian at the Boston Public Library came back to me. I think the project was bothering him as much as it was bothering me. This is the answer I received from him:

Unfortunately, of all of your representative areas (Congressional, General Court, and City Council), the General Court has the worst mapping qualities.  However, there is a tool, and doing a search, I came up with a map with the listings of streets that form the boundary of the 6th Suffolk Representative (not Congressional) District.

 

You can launch the Legislative District Browser from http://www.mass.gov/mgis/mapping.htm#Legis.  I first did a search by city/town, which was not too good.  Then, I did a search for the rep (Allen) and got a pretty nice map. Again, it is not the best representative map one can find (especially comparing it to the Congressional maps), but hopefully it will serve your purpose.

He was right that the Browser was able to come up with a reasonable map that was still pretty difficult to read. It was possible after some finessing to zoom in to specific streets and see the edges of the district. The browser though is very small and difficult to maneuver.  I've provided a print screen above for anyone interested in seeing the Browser's output.

It was also incredibly validating that even this librarian agreed that the General Court has really bad maps available. At least I'm not alone! But it's also frustrating. How can community organizers gather a community around an issue or a cause if we don't even know where the community is located?

I think that's turning out to be the central question in search for understanding this district.

Mapping the 6th Suffolk Representative District - 1st Attempt

My study of the effectiveness of grassroots political organizing will center on my own “political neighborhood,” the Massachusetts 6th Suffolk district comprised of neighborhoods in the Boston neighborhoods of Mattapan, North Dorchester, Roslindale, Jamaica Plain and Hyde Park.  

While the geographical area is one district in one city and is served by one state representative, it crosses five Boston neighborhoods each with very distinct racial and socio-economic characteristics. The district also crosses four political “wards,” which are the local foundations on which “political infrastructures” are built. Among other duties, Wards are responsible for endorsing candidates, raising and disbursing funds for political purposes and conducting voter registration drives.  

Each of these neighborhood and political groupings presents unique challenges to candidates who are attempting to communicate to voters and to community groups attempting to organize residents.

As I began this project, I first set out to find out exactly where the edges of the District are.

I needed a map.

I had attempted to do this a couple of years ago, and just as I remembered last time... there is no map available via a lot of Googling that shows the street boundaries of the district. There is only a map showing the district in relation to other districts. It's also outdated. It lists our Rep. as Shirley Owens-Hicks. Our Rep is now Willie Mae Allen.

I emailed the government documents desk at the Boston Public Library to see what they could come up with. Reference Librarians traditionally have mad Google skillz.

This is the note I got back from the research librarian at the Boston Public Library's Government Documents Desk:  

We are unable to locate a map for this or any district which shows streets. None of the congressional district maps we have are that detailed, although we might be able to help you create one using the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s Boston Atlas online. You can also try the State Library of Massachusetts, which may have had some of these maps made for them. Their number is 617-727-2590; ask for reference. Please let us know if you have no luck with the State Library and we will then try to pursue other avenues for you.

Disappointing to say the least.