Qualitative Geographic Information Systems Research Articles

From contested spaces to choice-centered places: using geographic interviews to understand young adults’ experiences in permanent supportive housing

ABSTRACT Young adults who have endured chronic housing instability have often been failed by settings which have inadequately supported them – such as home and school settings. As such, young people experiencing homelessness and housing instability are seeking supportive settings. Permanent supportive housing (PSH) is a burgeoning supportive intervention in the youth homelessness services landscape. Our study used the geographic interview methodology, a novel qualitative geographic information systems methodology, to understand how young adult residents (N = 15) in PSH experience the physical setting. Residents experienced the common spaces in PSH as contested spaces; meanwhile, they sought choice-centered spaces – where there are choices of what to do, who to spend time with, and how to spend time. PSH settings for young adults may embrace choice-centered principles and practices when building trauma-informed PSH for young adults. Future research should explore these findings across demographic and geographic differences.

Daily life activities of young adults with obesity living in highly accessible and compact urban environments in Seoul, South Korea: a spatiotemporal qualitative study protocol

IntroductionAmid the growing global concern about obesity, young adults in South Korea are particularly affected, with 30.8% of people aged 19–34 classified as obese. Given the urban-centric lifestyle of Korean...

Urban informality, culture, and participation of people with mobility impairments in Tegalrejo, Indonesia

Taking a Global South perspective, we investigate the influence of informality and socio-cultural norms on the mobility and participation of people with mobility impairments in public activities. Sit-down and go-along interviews, and GPS tracking/plotting were conducted to gather data from 14 participants living in urban neighbourhoods of Tegalrejo, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Thematic analysis and qualitative Geographic Information System (GIS) were used to analyse data. Findings show that mobility barriers and enablers based on the everyday experience of participants are made up of inter-related physical and socio-cultural dimensions. Urban informality generates barriers to mobility, but participants could tactically use aspects of such informality to facilitate their movement. Tegalrejo’s kampung collectivism generates opportunities for mobility and community participation. However, participants are often excluded in the guise of pemakluman. These findings add to existing literature on disability, place, and mobility in urban contexts by providing insights about the influence of neighbourhood conditions in Tegalrejo.

Neighbourhood environments for a healthy lifestyle among young single-person households experiencing housing poverty in Seoul, South Korea: a spatiotemporal qualitative study protocol

IntroductionThe number of single-person households is increasing globally—including in South Korea, where they account for over 30% of all households. Young single-person households in South Korea face health problems and...

Real-Time Mapping With Global Positioning Systems Devices in a Mixed Methods Toolkit for Studying Social and Environmental Change

To explore the process through which people develop knowledge about socioecological change, this article describes a mixed-methods toolkit containing a technique for making maps in real time while moving through landscapes. The quantitative component of the toolkit is grounded in ethnobiologists’ embeddedness in place-based communities and harnesses the power of global positioning systems (GPS). As GPS-wielding ethnobiologists engage in participatory mapping by moving through landscapes with their research collaborators, we can use handheld devices and simultaneously communicate with satellites in outer space to produce maps in real time. Within the existing, large inventory of ethnobiological methods, using handheld GPS devices can be combined with other types of data-collecting techniques to enhance studies of interactions in more-than-human landscapes. Moreover, mapmaking implements movement trace, a tactic for interpreting space-time cultures and documenting grounded experiences with socioecological change. By bringing together interests in the disciplines of ethnobiology and qualitative geographic information systems (GIS), this article describes methods that make it possible to explain the space-time culture that guides people to move through their homelands and to communicate about their experiences even as they work toward integrating and directing the changing circumstances of their lives.

A scoping review of qualitative geographic information systems in studies addressing health issues

Qualitative Geographic Information Systems (QGIS) represent an emerging geospatial and qualitative approach to comprehensively understand health issues. This scoping review gathers evidence from 38 articles to illuminate when and how QGIS is used to address health issues. QGIS can contribute to recent health-related studies focusing on determinants of health and health equity at the community rather than individual level, highlight relationships between place and health, and encourage participation from people and communities in health-decision making. If more studies attempt to specify detailed data analysis methods and develop ways to use rich contexts of qualitative data, QGIS can provide greater scope for those working to solve health problems.

A Novel Mixed Methods Approach for Integrating Not-for-Profit Service Data via Qualitative Geographic Information System to Explore Authentic Experiences of Ill-Health: A Case Study of Rural Mental Health

Meeting the mental health needs of rural populations is challenging internationally, with few methods and scarce data available to inform site-specific planning. We developed a mixed methods approach that integrates Not-for-profit (NFP) organization data in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to explore interrelated understandings of mental health experiences in rural places. Integrating qualitative experience data from online forums with quantitative data from service search and emergency pickup locations via GIS demonstrates how NFP health service data can be ethically sourced, reused, integrated, analyzed, and ground-truthed to explore how mental health is experienced in rural places. This article contributes to the mixed methods literature an ethical approach that utilizes NFP health service datasets to inform research in contexts of data scarcity.

Drivers of food acquisition practices in the food environment of peri-urban Hyderabad, India: A qualitative investigation.

This study investigates drivers of food acquisition practices in the food environment of peri-urban Hyderabad, India. We used a multi-method qualitative methodology that included in-depth interviews (n=18) and an innovative qualitative geographical information systems (Q-GIS) approach, featuring participatory photo mapping and follow-up graphic-elicitation interviews (n=22). Secondary data from eight focus group discussions (n=94) was used to corroborate findings related to fruits and vegetables. Thematic analysis identified three primary drivers of food acquisition practices among adults: 1) Food prices and affordability; 2) Vendor and product properties, including (a) quality and freshness, and (b) adulteration and contamination; and 3) Social capital. Drivers of food acquisition and consumption among children and adolescents were a key concern for our participants, and included food availability and accessibility, desirability, and convenience. Findings reveal a need for targeted interventions in external and personal food environments to improve diets, nutrition, and health in this setting.

Bus-Riding from Barrio to College: A Qualitative Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Analysis

ABSTRACT Educational access studies have found that residents’ choices and opportunities are often geographically bound and based on capital accumulation rather than educational attainment needs. Public transportation in the United States has a long history of being the primary source of mobility for urban residents, who are more likely than suburban residents to be low income and come from racial/ethnic historically marginalized backgrounds. Similar to public transportation policies, post-Civil Rights U.S. higher education policy has served as an important but unstable vehicle for communities of color to become economically mobile. The goal of this qualitative geographic information systems (GIS) study is to understand the racial ecosystem of cities and public services more fully as factors shaping place-bound students’ local access to nearby colleges and universities. Specifically, my goal is to understand the experience of using public buses to commute between a Latinx urban neighborhood—or barrio—in Rochester, New York, and college campuses in the surrounding city and suburban areas.

Prisoner and Creator of Space and Place: An Interpretive Descriptive QGIS Study to Understand Exercise Experiences of Community-Dwelling Older Adults in a Low-Income Neighborhood

Age-friendly community design is a crucial agenda globally. This study used a qualitative geographic information system (QGIS) approach and an interpretive descriptive orientation to analyze the spatially oriented exercise experiences of community-dwelling older adults living in a low-income neighborhood in Hong Kong. Fifteen community-dwelling older adults aged 62–88 years were involved in the study. Participants were found to make use of different places (i.e., footbridges and children’s playgrounds) proximal to their home locations and create space for their habitual physical exercise routines. These interpretative results add a new dimension of understanding to the planning and design of age-friendly communities.

Emotional cartography as a window into children's well-being: Visualizing the felt geographies of place

More often than not, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) excludes emotion and qualitative analysis from studies of people-place relationships in favor of quantitative approaches. We employ emotional cartography as a form of qualitative GIS (qualGIS) to elevate emotions from the periphery to the center of dialogue about children's well-being. We highlight the ontological parallels between qualGIS, emotional cartography and children in society, and advance emotion maps as a way to visualize different spatial and emotional realities. In reflecting upon the felt geography of our own childhood places, we affirm the importance of children's emotional attachments to places as well as the centrality of ‘messy’ human experiences in GIS. To conclude, we discuss the implications of emotional cartography for researchers, planners and GIS, paying special attention to children's well-being amidst the current COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, this includes a call to ‘witness’ and to foster spatial empathy among those advocating for children.

Complementing mobile measurements with Walking Interviews: a case study on personal exposure of commuters in Chennai, India

ABSTRACT When commuters move around the city they are exposed to different environmental stressors, of which air and noise pollution have an especially adverse physical and mental health impact. Most exposure research uses sensor data (stationary or wearable) or closed questionnaires to measure personal exposure. However, these methods do not give insight into on-site perceptions of exposed individuals and their related behaviour. To address this, we discuss (1) existing methods to research perceived and measured exposure in transit and (2) introduce a novel mixed-method approach, which we tested in a case study in Chennai, India. We used Walking Interviews and GPS-tracking to investigate perceptions and behaviour regarding air and noise pollution on the move and combined it with data of wearable sensors. The results show that the perception of air and noise pollution is highly context-dependent. This mixed-method approach is advantageous for an investigation of perceived and objective exposure and the related behavioural patterns while moving around the city. Such qualitative and quantitative exposure data of commuters can be spatially visualized and communicated to decision-makers with help of qualitative geographic information system (GIS) approaches. We argue that the potential of this mixed-methods approach to support healthier daily commutes in urban areas should be further elaborated in urban and transport-related studies.

Webs of Care: Qualitative GIS Research on Aging, Mobility, and Care Relations in Singapore

The connections between time and space have been studied considerably in quantitative and qualitative research on the geographies of care; however, researchers tend to prioritize one approach over the other. Our article integrates analyses of activity spaces and space–time paths with conceptualizations of care developed in qualitative studies to deepen understanding of the spatiotemporal care routines of older adults in Singapore. Using qualitative geographic information systems (QualiGIS), we develop a comparative frame to understand the differential sociopolitical logics that shape the care routines of older adults who are Singapore citizens and nonmigrants vis-à-vis temporary migrants from the People’s Republic of China. Building on recent writing about care assemblages, we conceptualize webs of care as the interlinked chains, in and through which individuals—in this case, older adults—exercise agency to give and receive care in the context of political, institutional, and social structures. Our article shows how the relational thinking of assemblage theory can inform geographic information systems analyses of activity space and space–time paths. We advance research on care assemblages by identifying in actual time–space how various resources within care assemblages (or the lack of) can diminish or enhance the capacity and resilience of older adults to give and receive care.

Touching, scrolling and swooping: Performing and representing migrant stories through geospatial technologies

Migration biographies have been used for decades to retell lived migration experiences, however, they only partially represent these experiences. Emergent geospatial technologies can add to migration biographies, creating novel performances and representations of migrants’ experiences. In this paper I reflect on my use of geospatial technologies within biographical interviews to build upon the traditional migration biography. International and domestic migrants to the Maroochy area in Queensland, Australia were interviewed about each of their moves over a lifetime, with their narratives of movement visually represented using Google Earth. I consider how the participants’ interacted with the Google Earth interface as a ‘digital body’, performing their lived experiences of migration. Multiple layers of meaning were produced through mapping migrants’ experiences, requiring a critical, reflexive approach. I then combined the transcribed narratives and mapped migration paths with Google Earth’s satellite imagery as a Qualitative Geographical Information Systems (QualGIS) analysis approach, to create mapped migration biographies. Here, I present excerpts of three migration biographies, and discuss the difficulties and opportunities for the use of QualGIS to represent the participants’ experiences. Digital mapping added mobile, tactile and visual aspects to narratives produced through traditional biographical methods, changing the performance and representation of the migrants’ experiences within the interview. This critical and reflexive evaluation of the method reveals how geospatial technologies can add to the researchers’ toolbox to explore migrants’ lived experiences.

Messy maps: Qualitative GIS representations of resilience

To include qualitative aspects of flood resilience, such as emotion, social connections and experience, into urban planning, we present a methodology incorporating innovative and experimental map visualisations of informal settlements. The concept of resilience in urban planning is often deployed in technocratic ways using quantitative tools such as geographic information systems (GIS). Yet in the urban Global South, where high proportions of the population live in informal settlements, the knowledge infrastructures used by public authorities leave little room for participation and consideration of local experience. We outline arts-based workshop activities and a qualitative GIS methodology to map resilience as defined by informal settlement residents in two case study cities, Nairobi (Kenya) and Cape Town (South Africa), with applicability across the urban Global South. For each city, four map layers were generated: (i) flood footprints showing resident’s spatial knowledge of floods; (ii) georeferenced, narrated 360° photo spheres capturing different perspectives about a space; (iii) spatial social network maps showing residents connections to formal and informal actors before/during floods; (iv) multimedia pop-ups communicating contextual details missing from traditional GIS maps. We show how these prototype maps can be integrated within planning knowledge infrastructures. For spatially imprecise qualitative aspects of resilience in informal settlements, placing markers on a map makes them visible in ways that planners can begin to engage with. Although challenges remain, we found openness in Nairobi and Cape Town by city-level actors to use qualitative forms of evidence, and that the contextual detail aided their retention and understanding of resilience.

Women’s safety perception assessment in an urban stream corridor: Developing a safety map based on qualitative GIS

Perceived safety influences women’s use of green environments (GE) for physical activity with considerable implications on health. In order to address gender inequality in GE use, the effects of physical and social environmental factors on women’s perception of safety must be assessed. To achieve this, a pilot study designed and implemented a safety map based on a qualitative Geographic Information System (qGIS) methodology, in an urban stream corridor of the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona. Fourteen in-depth interviews with women users of the stream corridor were conducted to identify influencing environmental factors (i.e., lighting, vegetation density, visibility, and presence of streets, residential areas, industrial areas, parking areas, green areas, abandoned areas and discotheques, for the physical; and presence of truck drivers and vandals, and user density, for the social). These factors were translated into four spatial indicators (visibility, vegetation density, lighting, and land use) to allow for generation of safety index values. The safety map combined the safety index values with individual perceptions. The integration of qualitative and quantitative methods served to compare and contrast micro-scale individual perceptions with general perceptions of safety at the GE macro-scale. The safety map pointed out the importance of providing “eyes on the GE” and provided a nuanced understanding of how perceptions are mediated by women’s background (patriarchal vision of public space, criminal stereotypes and vulnerability of women) and everyday practices (recurrent use of GE). The map identified the areas that merit decision-makers’ attention to develop strategies for reverting gender inequality in GE use.

Social Media Big Data Acquisition and Analysis for Qualitative GIScience: Challenges and Opportunities

Qualitative geographic information systems (GIS) have come a long way since the original call from critical GIS scholars in the 1990s. The invention of the geoweb as well as big data sources for qualitative information have enabled qualitative GIS to actually be implemented. Academic researchers are now grappling with how best to engage with and use qualitative spatial data. Our focus is on using qualitative data from social media sources. We review the process of collecting and analyzing patterns based on qualitative spatial data using methods from GIScience as well as new techniques from computational linguistics. We review these methods through the lens of critical qualitative GIScience. We reflect critically on the ethics associated with implementation of social qualitative data. Qualitative GIS has reached a critical juncture where the data, methods, and tools have enabled new questions to be asked that were previously not possible to pose. In this article we look to provide guidance and clarity for researchers engaging with geo-social and spatial qualitative data.

The Improvement of the Comfort of Public Spaces as a Local Initiative in Coping with Climate Change

Being the vital element of successful cities, public spaces play an important role in achieving sustainable development goals and in coping with climate change. The new urban agenda considers public spaces indispensable for sustaining the productivity of cities, social cohesion and inclusion, civic identity, and quality of life. Accordingly, there is no doubt about the importance of public spaces, while their quality is generated through the symbiosis of various elements. On the basis of normative theories of urban design, several public space design frameworks have been established in order to define what makes a good public place. Such a framework for public space quality evaluation is developed and tested at the Chair for Planning and Design in Landscape Architecture at the University of Belgrade—Faculty of Forestry. The framework covers six criteria which illuminate key aspects of public spaces: safety and security, accessibility, legibility, comfort, inspiration and sensitivity and liveability. In this research, special attention is paid to the criteria of comfort analysed on two scale levels in Belgrade, Serbia. In the past, Belgrade was affected by extreme weather events that caused serious and sometimes disastrous consequences. The most pronounced challenges among them are heat waves in summer that, due to the shortage of vegetation combined with the proliferation of tarmac and concrete surfaces and reduced air ventilation, particularly threaten the densely populated central municipalities of Stari Grad, Savski Venac and Vracar. The first scale level covers the analysis of the public space network and the degree of establishment of green infrastructure in Lower Dorcol quartier, which is located in the Municipality of Stari Grad, using quantitative and qualitative indicators and GIS (Geographic Information System) digital tools. The aim of this study is to observe the actual state of the public space network and to define a future scenario of its development in line with climate change challenges. Jevrejska Street, as an element of the above-mentioned public space network, is the subject of the next phase of the research. The study on this scale level will cover qualitative and quantitative analysis of public space elements such as paving, urban equipment, greenery, lighting, water facilities, etc. Next to that, by using the ENVI Met platform, the actual and proposed improvement of the street will be explored. The final part of this research will include a discussion about the research methodology used in order to improve the public space design process and to point out the need for the careful consideration of comfort as an important aspect of good public space.

Generating walkability from pedestrians’ perspectives using a qualitative GIS method

Geospatial and audit-based walkability measures have proliferated to evaluate the relationship between the built environment and travel behavior. While these measures robustly predict outcomes like mode choice and physical activity, they poorly account for personal and social factors which mediate our interaction with walkable spaces. User-oriented mobile methods can address these gaps, yet recent studies related to walking in the city seldom ground their data and analysis in space—precluding the extrapolation of users’ assessments to comparable locations and missing an opportunity to register the social attributes of physical features. In this methods paper, we advance an analytical framework which grounds pedestrians’ sentiments and senses from walking interviews in a qualitative geographic information system (QualGIS) to facilitate the management and analysis of assessment data at their original human scale. We detail its application in a socially and environmentally heterogeneous neighborhood to reveal how organizing social and built spatial relationships in a single geographic information system, and co-analyzing them according to street and pedestrian attributes, can yield insights richer than those from examining physical features alone.

Spatially Integrated Social Sciences with Qualitative GIS to Support Impact Assessment in Mining Communities

Spatially integrated social science is a broad term used to describe the integration of space and place in social science research using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It includes qualitative GIS approaches, such as geo-ethnology and geo-narratives, which combine qualitative social data with GIS and represent an emerging approach with significant potential for facilitating new insights into the dynamic interactions between mining companies and host communities. Mine operations are unique in their complexity, both in terms of the dynamic and diverse nature of issues and the requirement to integrate knowledge, theories, and approaches from a range of disciplines. In this paper we describe the potential for spatially integrated social science using qualitative GIS to understand the social impacts of mining. We review current literature and propose a framework that incorporates quantitative and qualitative knowledge across social and biophysical domains within a multi-user approach. We provide examples to illustrate how our approach could support past, present, and future assessment of socio-environmental systems in large-scale mining. We conclude by discussing the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to support decision makers and local stakeholders in considering complex social and environmental scenarios.