Neighbourhood plan

The Greater Remington Improvement Association ran a nine-page bilingual survey with three map questions before planners updated the neighbourhood’s community plan. Full story with pictures: Remington neighborhood plan on mapsurvey.org.

The question

Remington is a neighbourhood of row houses in Baltimore, between a university campus and a river valley. Its community plan dated from 2017 and was due for an update for the next decade. The association wanted residents’ current view of the place before planning started: which places they valued and wanted protected, which needed attention, where getting around was difficult or unsafe, and what they imagined the neighbourhood would be like in ten years.

How the survey was built

Nine pages, in English and Spanish. The pages ran from demographics, through descriptive questions about daily life, housing, businesses, culture, open space and transport, to an open question asking residents to describe a typical day in Remington ten years from now, and then the mapping.

Three point questions, each allowing up to three pins:

1. Places you value or want to protect.
2. Places that need attention or improvement.
3. Places where getting around is difficult or unsafe.

Each pin opened a sub-question asking for a short explanation. Two reference layers were drawn beneath the map: the association’s boundary as a red outline, and the existing green spaces. A pair of side-by-side questions asked how residents currently get around and how they would prefer to.

Recruitment used flyers with a QR code posted around the neighbourhood, social media, email, and paper copies handed out in person.

What came back

In the first three weeks, 350 people opened the link and 146 completed the survey, placing 717 pins. Seven in ten answered on a phone; a full survey took about 18 minutes.

• Valued places: 274 pins from 86 residents. A park and community garden drew 46 pins; a village green, 31; a playground, 26; a trail and park, 23.
• Getting around: 214 pins from 85 residents, concentrated at intersections. One junction took 20 pins from 17 people. A closed road bridge was the second most cited location, and the survey’s dominant theme: 39 direct pins, 40 explanatory comments, and 32 unprompted mentions in the open-ended answers. Residents south of the rail cut described being separated from the neighbourhood’s amenities.
• Mode shift: 49 respondents currently travel mainly by car and seven would prefer to; 18 walk and 38 would prefer to; six use transit and 21 would prefer to.
• Ten years ahead: 115 residents wrote a description. A grocery store was the most-named absence, in 33 of these visions and in 44 answers to a separate question about what is missing.

The results are to be published by the association as part of the plan update, and collection was extended into October 2026.

What it teaches

• Collect what works, not only what is broken. Asking for valued places first produced a map of what to protect, not only a list of complaints (Designing a map survey, rule 4).
• Ask why with every pin. One short sub-question on each of 717 pins turned a dot map into evidence planners could quote. The sub-question’s name is the column name on export (Writing questions people can answer on a map).
• Draw what the neighbourhood already knows. The boundary and green-space layers oriented respondents and reduced confusion (Add a reference layer).
• Count completions, not opens. 350 opens, 146 completions: the drop is the cost of a long survey, and the number to report is the second one.
• Triangulate. The bridge appeared in pins, in popup comments and in unprompted free text; a finding that survives three formats is a finding.
• Put the QR code where people already are, and keep a paper channel for those the link will not reach.