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Collaborative Cities: Mapping Solutions to Wicked Problems
Dynamic problems require dynamic collaboration and technology.
Our communities today face difficult issues—such as climate change, access to health care, and homelessness—which are tangled, complicated, and constantly evolving. Coined “wicked problems” more than 40 years ago by the University of California’s professors Horst Rittel and C. West Churchman, these issues exceed the capacity of any one sector, instead demanding the kind of creative thinking, democratized engagement, and integrated action that come from government, nonprofits, businesses, and citizens working in concert.
These different stakeholders, however, don’t always agree on the best approach, strategy, or goals. But their commonality in driving social outcomes relies on where problems are happening, where people need assistance and help defining the issues. Maps combine complex and relational information that can be visualized and analyzed to deal with these issues. When used with technological developments in data analytics, visualization, connectivity, and the Internet of Things (IoT), mapping can promote effective cross-sector collaboration.
Written for citizens and city leaders, Collaborative Mapping Solutions to Wicked Problems guides readers into using location intelligence to derive public value from action. Co-authors Stephen Goldsmith (former mayor of Indianapolis and deputy mayor of New York) and Kate Markin Coleman (former executive vice president for branding and strategy at the YMCA) use their combined years of experience to analyze the best civic examples of geospatial technology working across cross-sector networks. Divided into eight chapters, Collaborative Cities addresses the formation, operation, and adaptation of cross-sector collaborations, including five chapters dedicated to specific wicked problems such as public safety, homelessness, and sustainability.
Starting with Collaborative Cities, government officials, nonprofit leaders, and citizens alike who are acting for social value can learn how to use a geospatial approach to improve insight, trust, and the efficacy of their combined efforts to solve wicked problems.
Our communities today face difficult issues—such as climate change, access to health care, and homelessness—which are tangled, complicated, and constantly evolving. Coined “wicked problems” more than 40 years ago by the University of California’s professors Horst Rittel and C. West Churchman, these issues exceed the capacity of any one sector, instead demanding the kind of creative thinking, democratized engagement, and integrated action that come from government, nonprofits, businesses, and citizens working in concert.
These different stakeholders, however, don’t always agree on the best approach, strategy, or goals. But their commonality in driving social outcomes relies on where problems are happening, where people need assistance and help defining the issues. Maps combine complex and relational information that can be visualized and analyzed to deal with these issues. When used with technological developments in data analytics, visualization, connectivity, and the Internet of Things (IoT), mapping can promote effective cross-sector collaboration.
Written for citizens and city leaders, Collaborative Mapping Solutions to Wicked Problems guides readers into using location intelligence to derive public value from action. Co-authors Stephen Goldsmith (former mayor of Indianapolis and deputy mayor of New York) and Kate Markin Coleman (former executive vice president for branding and strategy at the YMCA) use their combined years of experience to analyze the best civic examples of geospatial technology working across cross-sector networks. Divided into eight chapters, Collaborative Cities addresses the formation, operation, and adaptation of cross-sector collaborations, including five chapters dedicated to specific wicked problems such as public safety, homelessness, and sustainability.
Starting with Collaborative Cities, government officials, nonprofit leaders, and citizens alike who are acting for social value can learn how to use a geospatial approach to improve insight, trust, and the efficacy of their combined efforts to solve wicked problems.
184 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 19, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 17, 2022
Great overview of GIS at work in cities throughout the United States. My students and I appreciated all the different topics and maps, all in one place. Easy to read and digest with sample questions and supplemental examples online. I highly recommend for people interested in wicked topics, as well as for instructors of geospatial courses at the high school or university level.
March 24, 2025
I picked this up at the Esri federal conference a few weeks ago. The subtitle, "Mapping Solutions to Wicked Problems," stuck out to me because in grad school I had an Econ course all about wicked problems. Naturally, being a social worker who has spent his career thus far working on homelessness, I was pleased that homelessness has a chapter here.
The book is a nice (and short) collection of case studies on use of mapping and GIS in particular to communicate, respond to, and storytell about, problems of incredible complexity. I skimmed the non-homelessness chapters and I think they look fine. The homelessness chapter is pretty good. There are some great examples of dashboards and maps (though some of the maps, particular a few that I think were Indianapolis based, are excruciatingly hard to read), and the case studies are interesting, if a bit light. I found myself very interested in the one featuring Santa Clara County's Silicon Valley Triage Tool, and ended up going to do some more reading on that elsewhere.
Anyway, this is a fine little book that I think would be great for a class where mapping/GIS is being discussed. It does not have any useful technical information and will not teach you anything about making maps, as far as I can tell, but it might help you justify a case for them.
As a practitioner, I have been in the position of communicating issues of social import and I can say that maps can be exquisite tools. Pure numbers are weirdly useless, people just get lost in them. Pure stories can be dismissed by people for any number of reasons. Weaving these two things together is critical, and maps are often a great way to do that.
The book is a nice (and short) collection of case studies on use of mapping and GIS in particular to communicate, respond to, and storytell about, problems of incredible complexity. I skimmed the non-homelessness chapters and I think they look fine. The homelessness chapter is pretty good. There are some great examples of dashboards and maps (though some of the maps, particular a few that I think were Indianapolis based, are excruciatingly hard to read), and the case studies are interesting, if a bit light. I found myself very interested in the one featuring Santa Clara County's Silicon Valley Triage Tool, and ended up going to do some more reading on that elsewhere.
Anyway, this is a fine little book that I think would be great for a class where mapping/GIS is being discussed. It does not have any useful technical information and will not teach you anything about making maps, as far as I can tell, but it might help you justify a case for them.
As a practitioner, I have been in the position of communicating issues of social import and I can say that maps can be exquisite tools. Pure numbers are weirdly useless, people just get lost in them. Pure stories can be dismissed by people for any number of reasons. Weaving these two things together is critical, and maps are often a great way to do that.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews