It is now almost 40 years since Roger Tomlinson coined the term geographic information system (GIS), and led the development of the world’s first, the Canada Geographic Information System (CGIS), in the mid-1960s (for a history of GIS see Foresman 1998). Today’s technology would be almost unrecognizable to the pioneers of the 1960s, not only because of the almost unbelievable advances in information technology (IT) that have occurred since then, but also because of dramatic changes in the functionality, appearance, use, and societal context of GIS. This book addresses one of the most recent manifestations of those changes, the developing use of GIS by grassroots community organizations, and participation.
