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Mapping Your Community:
An Introduction to GIS and Community Analysis

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This workshop is customized for each city in which it is taught.

Audience: Beginners, anyone interested in mapping their community

Participants will learn to use ArcGIS 9.3.1 to do the following:

Creating Thematic Maps

Participants will learn how to easily create
thematic map of their own data display
spatial trends in information.

Address mapping (geocoding)

Participants will learn to map addresses of their
clients, their projects or incidents.

Download and map Census & American Community
Survey data

Participants will learn to extract and map current Census data such as poverty, race, language, population, transportation, education and workforce characteristics.

Mapping techniques transferable to all other communities. Exercises are designed for beginners. Intermediate Excel skills required.

Materials

+ Comprehensive workbook (75 pages), which includes the presentation, exercises and reference worksheets, 

+ ArcGIS (ArcView 9.3.1) software 60-day trial CD set

Workshop Agenda

Lesson 1
Learn the basic functions of ArcGIS
Setting up ArcMap
Adding data and geography layers
Working with Layouts

Lesson 2
Introduction to American Factfinder
Downloading Census and American Community Survey data to map
Downloading free geography files including tracts, zip codes, blocks and several others
Preparing Census tract data in Excel to import into ArcGIS

Lesson 3
Joining data and geography files
Creating thematic (color shaded) maps to display data
Working with legends and interval breaks

Lesson 4
How to do common spatial queries

Lesson 5
Where to download free business addresses
Geocoding (address mapping)

Lesson 6
Elements of good maps including colors, fonts and map must haves
Critique of several maps