Off the Map

I rarely think of myself as living on an island. After all, although not entirely landlocked in my coastal city, I could walk on terra firma in most directions for many a mile on dry land. But when I look at Mapping LA, I'm conscious of how Santa Monica, the city in which I live, is a kind of island, because it is surrounded on all sides by the city of Los Angeles.

Thus, I am apparently excluded, since the Los Angeles Times is seeking user-generated content from the city's actual inhabitants, eventually -- one would assume -- to populate their map of LA neighborhoods with data.

We’ve built these shapes from census tracts and blocks so that we can use census data to profile them. And because we know that no single authority can dictate where communities are, or will be in years to come, we are asking you to tell us what you think. Scroll down to leave a comment or draw your community the way you see it. We’ll listen.

Yet digital mapping initiatives that claim to reflect any granularity about the complicated dynamics of the city have often created hostility in the past, as the newspaper should remember from having covered a scandal involving those who planned to map Muslim neighborhoods in a soon-aborted law enforcement scheme.

Comments indicate that Angelenos are generally grousing about where the Times's would-be cartographers drew the boundaries between their neighborhoods, and they are responding with the irritation of a backyard fence dispute. I've culled four representative comments from the many irked visitors to the site, which demonstrate the types of information representation strategies that have made them unhappy with the newspaper's aerial view.

The Southern boundary of Westwood is Olympic Boulevard. You have drawn the map to EXCLUDE both the Westwood Charter Elementary School and the Westwood Hills Congregational Church. The church has been at its location (with the same name) since 1928. Based on the boundaries you have drawn, nearly every child attending Westwood Charter Elementary School lives outside your "Westwood."

What am I missing? The Times' remapping of Eagle Rock makes no sense -- how can you profile a neighborhood that doesn't actually exist? Eagle Rock is already complicated as it has 3 zip codes and even jumps across York at one point -- let's keep things simple and stick with what we know. The ENRC map is well-established and is probably accepted by 99.9% of the residents here. I doubt Eagle Rockers will take kindly to this new-fangled map based on some blather about shapes, census tracts and blocks.

The area between Riverside Drive and the L.A. River is Elysian Valley- NOT Silver Lake. Your map is calling a good chunk of Echo Park Silver Lake. The border should be at Waterloo Street.

Like other commentators, I don't know where "Crenshaw" is. A "Crenshaw Neighborhood" doesn't exist, and if it does I don't think two people could tell you it's boundaries. The only area I've heard referred to as the "Crenshaw District" is Baldwin Village. So is it Crenshaw Manor and Baldwin Village?

It will be interesting to see how the newspaper handles such reactions to their crowd-sourcing effort if they continue to reflect majority opinion and if any of the borders will be redrawn in response.