FOSS4G 2024 Academic Track

This article presents the case of the mapping of the informal settlement Erizo Juan Santamaría. The neighborhood went from being an empty space on digital maps to be part of the official cartography of Costa Rica. The mapping was carried out using technologies based on free/open software and participatory cartography methodologies; the work was done jointly between the people who live in the community and Laboratorio Experimental (LabExp) a research and extension project of the public university Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. The active participation of the community in the process was key for the Municipal Council of Alajuela, where the neighborhood is located, to make official the traces and names of the streets and alleys of Erizo Juan Santamaría for municipal purposes. Furthermore, at the request of the municipal council, the National Nomenclature Commission approved the names at the national level.

The informality of the Erizo Juan Santamaría neighborhood lies in the fact that the people who live in the space do not own the land. The territory where the neighborhood is located belongs to two public institutions, one part to the Municipality of Alajuela and the other to the National Institute of Housing and Urbanism (INVU). In the 1970s, the first families began to occupy the territory where the settlement is currently located. Since then, the inhabitants of Erizo Juan Santamaría have solved their basic common infrastructure needs, as well as managed access to public services. The two public institutions, owners of the land, as well as the neighboring neighborhoods have assessments and interests in the informal settlement, which are manifested in a tense relationship that includes marginalization, manipulation, stigmatization, and invisibility.

In 2017, LabExp and representatives of the neighborhood agreed to work together on a 4 years university extension project aiming to make the informal settlement visible to decision-making institutions and neighboring neighborhoods through maps. Until then, the neighborhood was not represented on commercial digital maps or on the free OpenStreetMap map. LabExp proposed a work plan based on participatory processes, the use of free software and open geospatial data.

It was determined to prioritize two elements to be mapped, considering the relevance for the community in its relationship with the different decision-making actors. The first was the houses, since INVU was interested in developing a project to improve the neighborhood's housing infrastructure, the institution would carry out a census. Through a number in each house, the map could be linked to the census data. The second were the streets and alleys, with the intention that neighbors improve the way in which they gave their home addresses when requesting services. At all times, OpenStreetMap was considered as the repository where the collected data would be stored. The mapping process was carried out with free and open tools from the OSM ecosystem: OSMTracker to capture GPS data in the field, Fieldpapers to collect data in workshops and conversations with neighbors, JOSM to edit the OSM map and QGIS both to create maps to capture data and to create maps to disseminate the mapping process. The mapping activities and dynamics included: free cartography workshops with students at the local school, field trips and unstructured playful dynamics with children in the neighborhood.

In addition to the mapping, two activities were key to foster a feeling of ownership of the process by the residents of the neighborhood and to disseminate the partial and final results. The first was the production of short videos in order for the community's inhabitants to narrate their reality about infrastructure, show the neighborhood, and describe the relationship with the decision-making institutions, in such a way that they linked these experiences with the process of mapping. The second activity was a voting process to choose names for streets and alleys. Each person in the neighborhood had the opportunity to make name proposals for the mapped transit spaces. Subsequently, the residents of the neighborhood were called to elections. One Sunday morning, each person had the opportunity to express their will, voting for the names of their streets and alleys together.

The mapping process was completed by 2021, Erizo Juan Santamaría appeared on the digital maps. In OSM, the houses were included with their respective numbering according to the needs of the INVU, the streets and alleys with the names selected by the inhabitants, elements of public infrastructure, trees and the proper name of the neighborhood. The community was also represented on other commercial maps. Thanks to the dissemination of the short videos and press releases in the University's and national media, the mapping process of Erizo Juan Santamaría was known to the members of Municipal Council of Alajuela. The Council dedicated an entire session to heard about the project and agreed to make official the names of the streets and alleys decided in the voting process by the neighbors. In addition, the Council managed to make official the names before the National Nomenclature Commission of the National Geographic Institute.
The case of Erizo Juan Santamaría is a unique example in the country where, through participatory cartography, the production of free geospatial data is contributed to official cartography. The visibility of the neighborhood on digital maps makes it easier for the inhabitants to access services that were previously denied or restricted due to the insecurity that people offering the service felt about visiting the neighborhood, partly due to stigmatization and partly because the location led to an empty space on the digital map. Given the increasing use of digital maps to access services and make decisions, it is important to discuss the right of communities to appear on digital maps.