【實用社交app】MapLocal|最夯免費app-gigacircle

MapLocal is designed as a tool to help communities gather information about their neighbourhoods. The idea is that people walk around their neighbourhood taking photographs and making voice recordings using our smartphone app.

The pictures and audio clips are then uploaded to a central map which can be accessed on the MapLocal website. As more people from the local area take part, so more and more information about the neighbourhood appears on that community’s map, building a detailed picture of the area.

MapLocal can be used for different purposes, for example, gathering information about a local area in preparation for the production of a local plan which communities in England and Wales have been empowered to make under the provisions of the Localism Act, 2011.

It could also be used for local campaigns to highlight issues in a neighbourhood that need addressing or as a means of recording the history of an area that is about to be radically changed as part of a regeneration scheme.

If you’d like to use MapLocal, please contact maplocalproject@gmail.com and we will set up a map for your community and provide a username and password. In some circumstances we may be able to loan smartphones to your community group to get you started making your map. If you just want to try the app's functionality log into the 'test' map (password is 'test').

MapLocal was developed as part of a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The grant money has run out so we will not be devloping this v1 app any further. If we get another grant, MapLocal v2 will subsequently be developed.

The team would like to thank the Balsall Heath and Jewellery Quarter Neighbourhood Forums who helped with the development of the app. The project is led by Phil Jones (University of Birmingham) with Colin Lorne and Antonia Layard (University of Birmingham), Chris Speed (University of Edinburgh) and Chris Blunt (Plymouth Software).