Conceptual framework for using GIS in building community capital towards sustainability

Sustainability—balancing fundamental human needs with ecological resilience—has been embraced as an overarching policy goal. And communities have been called to participate in the process of attaining that ideal. Community-based organizations (CBOs) can benefit from using GIS in building community assets and developing sustainability initiatives. However, GIS, has not been used widely for these purposes in CBOs yet. In this chapter, I illustrate how geographic information (such as maps) can be useful in community development drawing from community GIS projects, and explain how theories of sustainability and spatial thinking can be utilized in community-based efforts towards sustainability. CBOs can monitor and assess community sustainability by (a) organizing relevant indicators into the capital framework (theories of sustainability), and (b) exploring spatial distribution, interactions, relationships, and changes in sustainability-related issues using GIS (spatial thinking). The framework presented here can be applied to promote effective use of geospatial tools for community sustainability