The neighborhood section is a large undertaking, as this extract from a City of Vancouver neighborhood association sub-page illustrates: "Fisher's Creek Neighborhood Association (FCNA) was recognized as the City of Vancouver’s 60th neighborhood association in 2002."
We’ve said that we want to focus on Vancouver but give coverage to the other cities/town of Clark County. With that in mind, perhaps it would be better to model our map more closely to that of the Parks and Recreation Map.
This kind of a partition divides Vancouver into three sections, far more detail than any other city will receive. Of course, it means that each section covers roughly twenty neighborhoods. This would force each section to seem a highly diverse area--just think, section 1 holds Brush Prairie and Battle Ground.
Perhaps the questionnaire itself should help us sculpt the regions we eventually define, because we all seem to agree that it is not appropriate to give Vancouver the same overview status as more rural cities of the County. Otherwise our map will end up a gilded version of the navigation map for the Clark WA site.
To give them all equal spotlight like this seems silly when even the largest nearby cities (Battle Ground and Camas) are barely a third the geographical size of Vancouver. Perhaps we should base the regions of Vancouver upon population?
You might wonder if I'm thinking about this too much, but I want to know how general we want respondents to be before crafting the actual questions. Because asking for what kinds of professions lives where, as we talked about in the meeting with local representatives...well that's just too specific! If you want to know what kinds of jobs most people have, that should not tell you where they live--though of course know what pay-scale lives where gives a social standing indicator for a neighborhood. Is that really what we want to do? Show where the good neighborhoods are? And if isn't a good neighborhood, then we'll sell it with unique architecture, like us poor saps in Fruit Valley that are living in housing from the WWII era (that may sound cool, but there is no insulation or plasterboard in our house)?
So here's the questions I was thinking about that got me thinking about the above:
1. How long has the typical resident been living in your neighborhood?
2. Do the people living in your neighborhood own or rent their residences?
2a. If owners, what are the current prices of the most and the least expensive homes?
2b. If renters, what are the least and most expensive monthly rates?
3. Do a large number of children live in your neighborhood? Do you consider it a family-friendly place to live?
4. How far do most residents commute to work?
5. Name at least one recreational attraction in your neighborhood. (such as: historic sites, community centers, notable businesses that serve the community, wildlife reserves)
6. Please include any images of your neighborhood that we could use to represent your area. Credit will be given to all photographers.
I thought that we had already determined the 8 neighborhoods that we planned to focus on. Eija wrote them under the neighborhood section on the site map. The sections we have defined match the parks and rec map fairly closely. I don't mind which one we choose, but we need to make this decision asap. I prefer the labels that the parks and rec map uses to our own and it may help us stay consistent if we choose to do a map for the parks and rec section.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the questionnaire, I think you may be thinking about it too much. Remember that our audience is new businesses and professionals, probably individuals that would be prepared to buy a house. I don't think we should include any information about rental properties or pricing. Also, I don't think we should cover workplaces or commutes. Ultimately, people are going to choose a location that fits their lifestyle since most places in Clark County are in close proximity.
I suggest that you work directly with the Neighborhood Associations Council of Clark County (NACCC), rather than contacting individual neighborhood associations. I'd keep the questionnaire open ended, ask for a brief description of the area (i.e. housing, residents, etc.), median home price, and unique community features (i.e. places, events or festivals, etc.) They will know best what aspects of the area they want to highlight and should be happy to give you photographs. This needs to be done asap so that if we need any photos we can contact Ed. I'll talk with you in class today about this and deadlines for their responses.