A team of students and faculty members at UC Berkeley’s Cartography and GIS Education Lab is creating an atlas of maps that highlights a diverse array of themes on International Boulevard in Oakland.
The atlas, called the Intranational International Boulevard, maps a range of topics respective to specific areas including the prevalence of asthma, density of litter and garbage, and locations of public art and sweet shops. The atlas of maps, started in 2014, stretches from suburban Hayward and through East Oakland to the border of San Leandro.
Darin Jensen, continuing lecturer and cartographer in UC Berkeley’s geography department, said the goal of the project is to create a holistic picture and to be able to discern the nuances of communities, as well as map social and demographic data.
“I think another reason it’s important to map this particular place is because it’s part of Oakland, the larger Bay Area, and when it is in the press, it’s usually in terms of what’s negative about it,” Jensen said. “We aren’t candy coating anything but focusing on the positive aspects.”
For Jensen, who has lived in Oakland for 30 years, the atlas is important because it maps an area where there has not yet been an influx of development. Diversity is “very much part of the fabric,” he said.
Although the maps may be taken out of the context of the atlas and still carry a narrative, the project is intended as a collection that tells a story, with all maps informing one another, Jensen said.
The team is in an intensive editing phase, which involves reviewing the maps graphically and editorially. To ensure authenticity of the mapping, the cartographers go into areas to experience them firsthand.
A crowdfunding campaign was set up to fund the publishing, which Jensen said has helped the project by putting it into the public sphere.
Jensen said that he teaches cartography as a graphic communication device and that having a material object, such as the atlas, is very important to him.
“I want to hold something in my hands,” Jensen said. “We want to share (the atlas) with people who are on the wrong side of the digital divide.”
Cooper Krings, a production team member and a recent UC Berkeley graduate, said that International Boulevard was interesting to map — regardless of it being part of the more dangerous area in Oakland — because it is culturally rich and diverse, with the most change block per block.
Krings’ favorite map, compiled by fellow team member Sasha Helton, superimposes the locations of prostitution against sites of beauty supply stores, such as salons and beauty parlors.
The atlas is the first piece of documentation and a snapshot in time of International Boulevard, so cartographers can see what the community will look like hundreds of years from now, Krings said.
“Hopefully, this will save some of the history from gentrification of areas over time and maintain the ethnic and cultural diversity that International Boulevard is so renowned for having,” Krings said.
Contact Alex Mabanta and Robert Tooke at newsdesk@dailycal.org.