Utilizing participatory mapping and PPGIS to examine the activities of local communities

Abstract Ensuring the city resiliency, inclusiveness, sustainability, and enhancing the quality of urban living, can be promoted through engaging communities and encouraging civic-led initiatives. As cities need to foster environments that encourage collective community voices in order to be adaptable and resilient, as a result of rapid Urbanization process, the growing communities suffers from a declining sense of community. This Research is concerned with studying the effect of participatory mapping and empowerment role of citizenship in enhancing the planning process. Therefore, it is an attempt to assess the social and spatial experiences of local community, aiming at investigating the relationship between local community activities, their perception of built environment and their sense of community, through using Participatory GIS. As it is an effective tool that provides spatial complexity, spatial context, interactivity and interconnection in the articulation of context and capable of deepening our understanding of quantitative measures. To achieve that, a methodology is adopted employing participatory mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to examine the activities of locals in the neighbourhood with lowest score of sense of community index resulting from a quantitative survey formed of sense of community index (SCI), applied on two neighbourhoods in Alexandria city, Egypt.