Over the past two years, members of 3Cs have worked with the Sustaining OurSelves Coalition through mapping workshops to help SOS use maps to fight rising gentrification in the Northside neighborhood of Chapel Hill. We’re so proud that SOS was awarded a 2012 Indy Citizen Award this week!

“SOS, with the help of the Counter-Cartographies Collective, learned new software and mapped the change in single-family owned to investor-owned properties, the number of at-risk properties, those owned by elderly families and others that were already on the market.

The data showed that among 26 building permit applications approved in the past year, an investor submitted all but one. Single-family homes were 45 percent investor owned, a three-fold increase in the last decade. Forty more were “at-risk,” meaning for sale, in transition or owned by residents older than 75.

The maps showed the rapid shift residents were describing, but they also illustrated that there was still a family neighborhood left to save. The maps drew a collective gasp when they were presented at Town Hall.“

More at: http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/sustaining-ourselves/Content?oid=2743771