South Suburban Mayors & Managers Association Web Mapping Application Design

About this Project

Using a Sustainable Communities Challenge Grant from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association (SSMMA) funded a multi-jurisdictional strategy known as the Chicago Southland Green TIME (Transit, Intermodal, Manufacturing, Environment) Zone that emphasized development around transit, intermodal freight industries, green manufacturing, and environmental stewardship. The SSMMA strengthened its GIS capabilities in support of these initiatives. Toward this end, Urban GIS and its partner firm, Symbiont, developed an online mapping application for sharing spatial data among all SSMMA member communities. Urban GIS also designed databases so that all of the association’s future datasets will meet regional standards.

This application provides a wide range of GIS data and spatial analysis functionality to communities that would otherwise have limited access to these technologies. Without making an expensive investment in systems and staff, SSMMA member communities gained access to sophisticated GIS tools.This project also acted as a starting point for all future GIS development at the SSMMA, for the organization and its members.

Available to both the SSMMA members and the public, this intuitive application provided an array of datasets with which users can interact. SSMMA members can use the site like the public but are also able to edit select geodatabases and build more complex maps using additional datasets. Because this application was designed to be saleable, it can grow and change as the body of users becomes more sophisticated.