Youth Are Making Green Maps, too!

Green Map System's Youth Green Mapmaking Resources are being used in classrooms and clubs around the world. New York City's youth were among to the first in the world to publish their own Green Maps, starting with Pedaling Brooklyn's Gardens, published in early 1999 by Recycle A Bicycle!

Through its repair/bike safety programs in Brooklyn and upper Manhattan (Inwood), R-A-B has continued making Green Maps, always including environmental justice issues and having fun getting involved in making the community a better place.

To date, Recycle-A-Bicycle has published:

•Sprout to Action (local food, Inwood), 2004
• Space to Breathe (on air pollution and asthma, Inwood), 2003
•Go Green NYC (car-free mobility options, Brooklyn), 2002
•Stop Fronting (public access to the East River waterfront, Brooklyn), 2001
•Are We Trashing the Apple? (charting the city's Garbage Crisis and poorly planned transfer stations), 2000
•Pedaling Brooklyn's Gardens (Greenpoint-Williamsburg's community gardens), 1999

R-A-B and Green Map System have also held workshops together and shared ideas with other youth groups and teachers around the city. R-A-B's wonderful maps have inspired youth Green Map projects around the world. Find out more about R-A-B's goals and tools to help other cities start youth bike repair projects at RecycleABicycle.org. Thanks to Sarahjane Sacchetti, our intern from NYU who became R-A-B's project coordinator, there's a whole page about the Go Green NYC project online!

NYC youth have charted these neighborhoods and themes: East Harlem with the All Saints Roman Catholic Church - this map shows current conditions and maps "re-development opportunity sites" on formerly blighted spots (2000). Large poster size copies were exchanged with students in Ghana, West Africa!

8 different themes on the Lower East Side are shown by Satellite Academy's urban ecology class maps (2000). Copies on color paper were distributed in the community, and one larger map combined all sites and photos together! Click for details!

On the Border: Newtown Creek, a small but important waterway that divides the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens was charted by the East River Apprenticeshop Maritime Explorers (Summer 2003). Click to download the colorful, thoughtfully arranged sides of this Green Map as a PDF.
Smaller projects have taken place at theses schools and clubs
School for the Physical City, where the interior of the school was charted, especially its garden spots, recycling, energy and water conservation possibilities.
Girl Scouts of Greater New York, who earned their Urban Ecology badge by creating a Green Map during a 12 week after-school program (1999-02)!
Central Park Conservancy’s After-School Youth Leadership Program completed a draft version for public review for Earth Day, and a video Green Map in 2004.
Brooklyn: Historic Fort Greene Park was the centerpoint of Brooklyn Tech's urban planning class map project that used GIS technology.
On the South Slope with PS 10 and in Brooklyn Navy Yard with JHS 265, Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment's projects have involved a diversity of youth in after-school programs, as well as Bushwick high schoolers.
Students at downtown's Hannah Senesh School have worked on Green Maps too.
EBC High School for Public Service in Bushwick, where students working with the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education's "Inventing the Future: Leadership and Participation in the 21st Century" (IF) program included Green Mapmaking for civic engagement.

We welcome the involvement of more neighborhoods and groups in NYC. Many other cities' youth map projects can be seen on our global website, too!

Thanks much to our friends at the Sustainability Education Center, Recycle-A-Bicycle, Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, the Environmental Education Advisory Council, Dunn Foundation, New York City Environmental Fund at Hudson River Foundation, Greenacre Foundation, and all the organizations named above!