UW Livable City Year: Sultan Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Plan
Responsive Public Feedback
Despite the team’s best efforts to prepare and plan for a public meeting, COVID-19 halted those efforts abruptly in March 2020. As a result, we had to shift towards a digital approach to public engagement. Rather than the desire path mapping we had originally envisioned, I made an interactive webmap using Mapbox, Leaflet, and JavaScript to collect Sultan residents’ favorite walks and trails in the city. The purpose was to understand which routes might already see higher foot traffic, which routes could benefit from improved visibility, and whether any of the trail on private property would appear in collection.
Using the map above, users can draw paths onto the map of Sultan, WA using the middle left button. The buttons below allow a user to either edit or delete their most recently drawn path. The top button on the right side offers a switch to a different basemap showing the terrain but no satellite imagery. The other two rightmost buttons offer the ability to delete all drawn trails or to submit the drawings to a private Mapbox dataset, which I shared with the team to discuss the results of the trail drawing. Code for the whole endeavor – making use of Mapbox and Leaflet though JavaScript, HTML, and CSS – is located at my personal github page, here.
Getting to the Parks
Before the pandemic, the team’s outreach strategy was supported by maps that I developed such as the map on the left – designed for residents to see some popular trails and add their own – and the diagram below to ask their opinions on pedestrian access to Osprey Park.
