our history

Ten years ago, CNK built the first neighborhood early warning system (NEWS) to interactively map residential disinvestment and deterioration with the use of administrative data bases, including tax delinquency, unpaid utility bills, and nuisance abatement. (See http;//nkla.ucla.edu ) This increased transparency, pinpointing likely code violations and helping to coordinate enforcement, led to nearly $250 million worth of housing repairs in the slums of Los Angeles. Next, because government lacked data that was needed to promote independent living, CNK helped organize groups of people with disabilities to contribute their own knowledge of local resources onto a shared electronic asset map for Los Angeles County. (See http://lila.ucla.edu) Again, data-sharing improved coordination, for example, enabling an effective campaign to preserve the region's rehabilitation center, slated for closure due to budget cuts. Thus, CNK is known for building GIS tools that combine codified and community-created data, helping expand knowledge of, by, and for communities. The CNK approach typically begins by working with communities that are marginalized, such as slum dwellers and people with disabilities, because they can most clearly view processes of exclusion, including those that limit access to information. CNK brings together different groups around a common knowledge agenda, helps them articulate their needs, identifies shared issues, and then translates the ideas into "research systems". These tools, not only support the efforts of those involved in system design, but are open, enabling CNK to generate expanding constituencies for its information services. Outreach, training and technical assistance emerge from information planning processes, enabling leaders who shaped the systems to become local experts who share their skills and knowledge. The widely recognized usability of Neighborhood Knowledge Systems emerges from their underlying sensibility, i.e. an open, democratic approach to information-sharing. The simplicity, adaptability and interactivity of our user interfaces have come from encouraging each group of stakeholders to re-conceptualize and shape these tools anew. Through participatory processes, and building on a widespread familiarity with maps, a surprisingly universal ICT vocabulary has emerged, enabling our team to generate products that can enable people to communicate across social, political, economic, and cultural barriers.

Cambria Community Vernon Central Community Concerned Citizens' Power Youth