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City presents participatory GIS neighborhood survey; 225 responses highlight gaps in historic boundaries
Summary
Morgantown's geospatial services manager presented results from a public neighborhood survey with 225 responses showing divergence between historic mapped boundaries and residents' sense of place; staff plans to run the survey annually and to develop a more flexible, crowd-sourced neighborhood map.
Marvin Davis, the city's Geospatial Services Manager, presented the results of a neighborhood survey at the Jan. 7 Morgantown City Council meeting, reporting that 225 responses returned during a recent public engagement effort showed that many residents identify neighborhood boundaries differently from the city's historic maps.
"Since I started in 2019, the question of what and where are our neighborhoods has been brought up to me repeatedly," Davis told council. He said the survey was an offshoot of the city's recent GIS Day and that he plans to run the survey annually, likely in the fall when students return, to track changes over time.
Davis said responses clustered in several areas and that the top response was South Park with 71 responses. He also said the survey exposed a significant data-quality issue: some respondents entered street names without the city, which led to geocoding placing points outside the United States; staff corrected those entries by appending "Morgantown, West Virginia." On neighborhood association membership, 53.8% of respondents (121 of 225) answered "no" or "I don't know," suggesting opportunities for outreach.
Davis showed a gridded map to protect respondent privacy while indicating concentration by neighborhood and noted that the city's historic black-line neighborhood boundaries often stop at streets such as Maple Avenue while many residents located themselves well beyond those lines. He described the city's intent to retain the historic, charter-based neighborhood boundaries but to create an additional, more fluid map version informed by ongoing survey results.
Councilmembers asked follow-ups about neighborhood-association membership breakdowns and responses from specific neighborhoods. Davis said he can provide more granular analysis (for example, by First Ward or Greenmont) and noted the city can still use printed maps for association outreach; he also offered to work with neighborhood associations to produce maps and provide plotting and printing support.
Ending
Staff said the survey results and an interactive dashboard (QR code on the meeting slide) are available for council and the public. Davis asked councilmembers to signal if they want neighborhood-level membership analyses and said the city will aim to increase participation in future surveys.
