ABSTRACT
Vélez guides readers through how critical race spatial analysis (CRSA) can extend GIS from its traditional use in geography and urban planning into new avenues and possibilities. Vélez's chapter shares the methodological journey to CRSA, which was shaped by a case study of migrant mothers who led a GIS project to reveal uneven geographies of opportunity in and across the schools attended by their children. By rooting the analytical capabilities of GIS in their own lived experience, the mothers drove an iterative inquiry that built a counter-cartographic narrative – which spoke back to post-racial narratives taking hold of educational reform in their local context. Based on this work and conversations at the Advanced Methods Institute, Vélez offers new developments in CRSA that wrestle more explicitly with the computational methods upon which much of GIS mapping relies.
