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The Study:
What is Environment?
How can local efforts be incorporated effectively into economic and environmental revitalization plans for the region? What is the relationship between different residents' uses of and concerns for the environment and biodiversity efforts? What are the barriers to resident participation in conservation efforts?
To answer these questions, researchers examined the environmental meanings and values upheld by residents of the Lake Calumet region, as well as other forms of local activism. This included identifying a wide variety of social assets in the region and studying how various places, organizations and people are connected. 
A team of nine graduate and undergraduate researchers, along with two research assistants and senior staff, conducted ethnographic research in Hammond, Indiana, and the Chicago community areas of South Deering, Pullman, East Side and Riverdale during the summers of 2001 and 2002.
Methods: Identifying Social Assets
The research team used ethnographic methods to identify local social assets, also known as community strengths, and to identify connections between assets and potential connections within the region and to outside stakeholders. Qualitative approaches included participant observation, semi-structured and structured interviews, asset mapping, focus groups, and photo elicitation projects. In addition to meetings of formal organizations, researchers attended social events such as block clubs, community picnics, demonstrations, family gatherings and celebrations. In addition, we spent significant periods of time in natural areas, public spaces, religious organizations, and meeting with small business owners and their patrons. Variables such as age, ethnicity and length of residence were noted because they influence how residents perceive and interact with their built and natural environments and were therefore key to our study.
A Map of Understanding
We also used Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to create a geographic representation of the physical location of the social assets in the community areas. Social assets can be layered on top of various forms of institutional and spatial data to deepen and further explain the social phenomena as they play out across the landscape. We've juxtaposed social assets with geographical, historical, demographic, health, crime, as well as land-use data and aerial photographs. The layering and database capabilities of GIS facilitate this multidimensional analysis and can show how meanings within communities may have been influenced or shaped by physical, historical and demographic forces over time.
Linking Assets and People
This holistic approach helped us to identify the communities' existing means and methods of organization and activism. Having identified these assets, we then examined the points where seemingly unrelated organizations, groups and resident populations have overlapping interest.
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