Green Maps for a more sustainable future!

With your help, Green Map is:

• Sharing our new Recovery Icons, locally and globally
• Hosting online demos of our new mapping platform in progress
• Celebrating 25 years with an exhibit & events at MoRUS Museum in NYC
• Engaging with new local groups and projects
• Being featured in ‘eSpatially’
• Standing up for positive change in every way!

Recovery: While the Pandemic has brought new uncertainties for everyone, we have worked to help illuminate the path forward. The Recovery Icons are being introduced to highlight public health, recuperation and regeneration - see them on our Instagram or our website, along with examples that could inspire you to create a new community resource, artwork, social media or map!

Technology: Yes, this set is available on OGM2, our new mapping platform in progress, and can be used alongside other icon sets there, including the UN 2030 Goals, as seen at Browse. Along with our partners at the GIS Collective, we’ve started hosting demos to supplement the video and text tutorials posted on new.opengreenmap.org - see Twitter.com/greenmap for updates or email us to join.  Capable of mapping points, lines and areas and displaying unique icon sets and basemaps, demonstrations of this open source platform have become iterative parts of the development process. 

Exhibit: “How Green Is My City” is opening soon! The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Spaces in Manhattan’s East Village is hosting a historical overview of our maps and other projects for the rest of 2020! Programming involves a mix of online events, outdoor tours and open hours - all to be confirmed around Labor Day and posted at GreenMap.org/2020exhibit and MoRUSnyc.org. We’ll send you details then too, so you can join in. 

Collaboration: Green Map will continue this fall as a community member of the NEW INC. incubator! Locally, we’re taking part in the new Loisaida Open Streets Community Coalition, creating new ways to use our public space during the health crisis (and we hope, it will extend beyond the current patchwork as the city addresses the Climate Emergency it declared last year). Check out the beautiful education resources made by Newtown Creek Alliance using our icons! 

“The Green Map icons made our final product beautiful, truly unique, far more intuitive, and that much easier to use!” said Ms. Bloodgood in eSpatially’s article. 

Our director has also been on Instagram Live and has permission to use the image below - listen in anytime. 

Green Map is a resource for every community. Use it to help your place and its people thrive! Thank you for your support of this vital work, and have a safe, sustainable summer!

Links:

• eSpatially covers our evolving tech & community focus
• Check out the Recovery Icons on our Instagram, green.map
• Live! Wendy with Mr. Mustafa on @cubeedutour

In this time of this pandemic, we know it’s important to do more than wish that all are safe and well. With everything so uncertain, here at Green Map, we are re-framing what we have learned by sharing symbols that help people visualize and create a healthier future. Borrowing from our lexicon, we are testing out a concise set of Recovery Icons designed to help communities ‘re-localize’ and inclusively regain their footing. See and comment on the draft set of symbols that promotes regeneration of the local culture at http://GreenMap.org/RecoveryIcons. 

These open source Recovery Icons can be used on maps, apps and social media as well as on signage, guides, murals and as place markers. We plan to make the Recovery Icons available on OGM2, our mapping platform in development at new.opengreenmap.org, where people can quickly make informative, responsive maps of their own community’s recovery resources (our thanks to the team at GIS Collective!). We’ll share examples to inspire people, partner to extend the practice and track the ways these icons spur communications on sustainable living and calls to action, ideally with your support.

We’re also hearing from Green Mapmakers who are already using the maps and data they have collected to help their communities address immediate needs in the COVID crisis. In Washington State, Ms. Hunt’s FEED Jefferson County Green Map does the essential work of helping local farmers get their crops to people in need and to new customers. In Cuba, the network is making use of maps they created to highlight vulnerabilities as virus-related shortages are beginning to impact communities. We’re continuing to work with university students (check out the great outcomes at UVictoria this semester). We are trying to help in other ways, locally, whether it’s delivering mask-making materials we had collected from Materials for the Arts (a terrific NYC re-use warehouse), or continuing our street tree campaign - work that is more important than ever as researchers are showing how dirty air causes more COVID deaths, and the trees are a lasting defense. 

Saving the best news for last - congratulations to assistant professor Murayama at the Department of Environmental Science of Azabu University in Japan. His students are winners in final round of the "University SDGs Action! Awards 2020" for their work to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals  - check out their winning presentation in our blog!

We appreciate all the support and encouragement you have given to Green Map’s projects around the world. We couldn’t do it without you! Feel free to pitch in anytime, of course. And, just to mention, all next week, April 20-24th, our NYC Green Map + Climate Action project has a 50% match here at GlobalGiving, aligned with Earth Day.  

In closing, be well, stay safe and stay active!

Links:

• Recovery Icons - see & comment on the draft set here
• Winning SDGs Project in Japan, by Azabu University students!
• Take Climate Action - Matched April 20-24 - support our NYC work