Mapping my Personal Neighborhood

The map below shows the development of my understanding of the neighborhood that I live and work in. Because I live in such close proximity to the Loisaida Center, I decided to put in question, “How do I understand my neighborhood?” This map shows places that were a part of “my neighborhood” before I started working with the Loisaida Center and after. Places that were relevant before the fellowship are places that I frequented in the past year and define how I interact with my neighborhood. Many of them are along my route to school, or places I go for convenience. These places are essential to how I define myself in a space and have become part of what I consider home. After I started working at Loisaida, there were places that became relevant to my work and began to redefine how I imagined the neighborhood I lived in. These are places that I most likely would not have visited if I wasn’t involved in the fellowship. There are also a couple places that were part of my former definition of my neighborhood but were also relevant to my work at Loisaida in a way that redefined how I saw the space. For Example, La Plaza Cultural was the community garden in which I dropped off my food scraps for composting. During my work at Loisaida, it has become a place where the organization collaborates with the community to host events in a public space. 

“Before” Spaces are marked blue and “After” Places are yellow. Overlapping places are marked green