In yesterday's post, I offered a rough sketch of an idea, which I called "Santa Fe County Food Resiliency Mapping Project." That roughly outlined sketch illustrates a fairly ambitious idea or proposal. It may be something worth digging up down the road, for sure, but today I'm thinking a little smaller--, a Santa Fe Urban Edible Garden Map. Here's the sketch for that idea.:
An internet based map / website is created in which anyone who so wishes can sign up at the site and then place a "dot" on the map of Santa Fe. The dot represents the site of an edible garden in Santa Fe. (The edible gardens can be of any size.)
When a site user clicks on any of these dots he or she will be taken to a site-user (gardener)'s own unique web page (on the site). On these pages, linked to by these "dots," will be a photo or two of a garden located at the map site ("dot") along with a brief description of the site/garden. Links to other personal garden-related web pages would be allowed.
Color-coded "dots" on the map could indicate variables such as whether the edible garden is one of Santa Fe's community gardens or an invididual/family garden. Etc. Also, fruit and nut trees/orchards ... and even chicken coops could be located on the map!
I like this idea because I think it would generate enthusiasm for urban edible gardening and food production. People would log on frequently to see new gardens (etc.) appear on the map, and to click to see the photos and descriptions.
Participation would, of course, be entirely voluntary.
What do you think?
12 hours ago
James,
ReplyDeleteThis functionality for mapping of gardens, markets, farms, etc is currently available with the Proximity Search at Locavore Network (www.locavorenetwork.com/proximity), enter zipcode 87501 and then how many miles around that you want to search.The map icons are clickable for more details.
We would be more than happy to partner with you by provideing a local "group" functionality or different classifications to add to the map.
I very much appreciate your bringing this to my attention, as well as your offer of partnership. However, I see that your Proximity Search function at Locavore Network makes use of Google Maps, and I and others often have serious difficulty using Google Maps, which seems to have various bugs.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if the bugs are browswer specific, or otherwise related to the user's operating system, etc. But I complained about my difficulties at Transition US (their "Mullers Map") and soon received confirmation that the problem is widespread, and Transition US is looking to change how they handle their Mullers Map because of it.
Perhaps a BUNCH of purpose-allied groups could collaborate on creating a superior mapping device for the sort of functionality we require? There seem to be a variety of already existing systems available, too, though I have not evaluated them much as of yet.
Have you not had difficulties with Google Maps?
Are there communities in your map data-base which are richly populated with features at Locavore Network? I'd like to see an example of a densely populated town or city map.
James
James,
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of bugs have you experienced and with which browser(s)?
Although I have not experienced nor heard of any problems with our Proximity search (using Google maps) that doesn't mean there aren't any. The page gets traffic and queries on an almost constant basis...perhaps the users have just not taken the time to bring it to my attention.
The site is built with Drupal, maybe the hooks that are used in the module are utilized differently than in a blogspot, wordpress or Joomla site.
Since the majority of the profiles on our site are in rural areas, I can't confirm if there are any densely populated urban areas listed. If you enter a Santa Fe zip code and use 50 miles as a search parameter, there are about 40 results and I have seen some queries that return a hundred results (although the developer has put a few restrictions in as far as viewable quantities). After the results are returned you can zoom into a city level view.
Are you looking for different functionality than this?
Thanks
Dan
Dan,
ReplyDeleteI generally use Windows Internet Explorer, but I also have Mozilla Firefox loaded on my PC. I have not yet tested to see if the "bug"/s differ in the Firefox.
I think I've had other difficulties, besides, but the most common problem I have with Google Maps is that it will load only part of the map, and that sometimes quite slowly -- but will simply stop loading while significant portions of the map remains undisplayed.
After writing the above paragraph I went to have another look at the Mullers Map at Transition US. The top map loaded fine, though a little slowly, and seems to be functioning well enough at the moment.
[ http://transitionus.org/mullers-map ] However, as I said, one of the guys involved in Transition US has indicated that others have had difficulties using the Google Map on their site. I'll ask him for details and report those here as soon as time allows.
Maybe Google Maps isn't a big problem? Maybe it can be used? I'm not yet sure.
But what I envisioned is a site in which the index page is a map of Santa Fe. Dots marking key map features (often edible gardens) appear on the map, and zooming in would be possible. I'm not yet sure how well Google Maps might work on this geographical scale. I'll explore. Any help from others is welcome.
James
P.S. -- Minutes later, I looked again at the two Mullers Maps displayed at the above Transition US link. The lower map had been only partially displayed initially, but it finally loaded in full over many minutes. My connection speed is just fast enough to watch Google videos, with some buffering -- though highly variable speeds. I'm logging on to my neighbor's wireles. He's right on the other side of a shared duplex apartment wall.
James,
ReplyDeletePlease take a look at the Proximity search at Locavore Network and let me know if you experience similar issues (http://www.locavorenetwork.com/proximity).
I just entered a search with a 75 mile radius around zip code 87505. It returned 51 markers within three seconds. I use Firefox as my primary browser, but IE 8 provides similar speed.
Dan