2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

254 Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data
mapping surface as opposed to the discontinuous surface that the choropleth
mapping approach creates) of populations in relationship to parks
and natural areas, to determine the percentage of the population within
a quarter-mile of these assets. Labbe considered this to be an important
advancement over the conventional per capita measures of park access
that tend to mask the actual differences in park access at the neighborhood
level. The approach also created a cartographic output by which
park-deficient neighborhoods could be easily identified.
The conversion of the data to a raster format allowed CLF to present
the data in a form that resonated with the Portland regional community.
Portland’s residents identify strongly with the neighborhood geographies
within the city’s boundaries, and suburban neighborhood associations
and community planning organizations are also an important part of
the region’s civic infrastructure. Although the conversion of the data to a
raster format was primarily accomplished for the purposes of geospatial
access analysis, it also allowed the analysts to summarize the various
data by the region’s neighborhood and community planning organization
boundaries, areas that are much more familiar to the general public and
policymakers than, for example, census tracts. A by-product of the GIS
analysis was a neighborhood summary table that provided demographic
and access statistics for each of the region’s neighborhoods. CLF added a
normalized 1 to 4 ranking system of the neighborhoods to the summary
table to allow for an easy comparison of one neighborhood to another
for each of the variables.
This combination of tabular neighborhood statistics and park-shed
maps provided the parks and greenspaces workgroup with the evidence
it needed to confirm that the distribution of parks and natural areas
was not uniform and to identify which areas were most deficient. Having
been intimately involved in developing the metrics around park
and greenspace access, and given his expertise with conservation policy,
Labbe was the obvious choice to author the chapter on access to parks
and natural areas in the Regional Equity Atlas.
The 2006 Natural Areas Bond Measure
The Regional Equity Atlas analysis of access to parks and natural areas
was one of the earlier parts of the Atlas to be completed and was available
before the publication of the Atlas in 2007. As the greenspaces analysis