A Case Study of Story Mapping, Neighborhood Change, and Community Assets of Ballpark, Salt Lake City

Gentrification and displacement of low-income and minority families is a frequently discussed phenomenon when it comes to community planning. To best address and redistribute resources for these neighborhoods, needs assessments are often conducted to identify the problem areas, such as crime, poverty, and abandoned infrastructure. Although needs assessments are a great starting point, they often neglect the hand of valuable community assets that should be preserved when engaging with gentrifying neighborhoods. To engage in these neighborhoods, researchers, governments, non-profits, and redevelopment corporations are more often turning to an asset-based community development approach (ABCD) pioneered by Kretzmann and McKnight (1993). This ABCD approach utilizes an asset mapping technique to identify and better understand the present strengths of a community. This was an approach taken by researchers to assist in the Salt Lake City’s (SLC) initiatives to document the city’s transformation and potentially preserve assets for their plan, called “Thriving in Place: A SLC Anti-displacement Strategy”. Asset mapping includes surveying and plotting resources both physical and non-physical, such as sustainable food sources, churches, schools, relationships, social networks, and individuals. The product of the asset map was an ArcGIS StoryMap—which is a GIS-based map that can be used for storytelling.