Play & recreation
Where youth spend leisure time, what draws them out, and what prevents participation.
YOUTH INSIGHT • SPATIAL STORYTELLING • ACTIONABLE DATA
We transform stories of everyday life into Actionable Insight.
The Action Mapping Project works with youth to transform lived experience into actionable spatial insight. We help schools, parks, cities, transit agencies, and regional partners understand the everyday lives of youth. And we work closely with those partners to integrate AMP Insight into their existing placemaking and decision-making systems.
15,000+Youth voices in AMP's recent regional work
100,000 + Spatial storiesDrawn by youth to reveal local experience
Longitudinal indicatorsTransforming lived experience into quantitative, measurable insight
Actionable InsightMaps, reports, systems, and planning tools
WHAT CONVENTIONAL DATA MISSES
Existing community data tell us where things are. We help you to understand the human experience of those things.
Conventional GIS data are useful for mapping the locations of parks, trails, bus stops, schools, or neighborhood boundaries. Those data generally do not adequately detail the lived experience of those places. Where, for example are youth feeling uneasy? Are there particular trails that youth feel most safe on bicycles? How do youth experience a set of 30 parks differently? What programming would be most likely to encourage kids to play more at their local park?
HOW AMP WORKS
Listen. Map. Measure. Act.
AMP begins with lived experience and ends with decisions partners can use. Click through the process to see how a story becomes spatial insight.
LISTEN
Youth share stories of everyday life.
AMP curriculum invites young people to reflect on the places they use, avoid, love, struggle with, and want to change.
CURRENT PROCESS
Draw on the Action Map. Because your voice and experience matter.
Our participants share lived experience by drawing on the Action Map. They're mapping things like the active transportation routes they prefer, places they feel unsafe, the areas where they feel most like they belong, locations of significant features in their neighborhoods, etc. And with every object they map, they're sharing stories of what happened there, why they feel unsafe, what they love about the route, etc.
We transform their stories into actionable insight in the form of AMP Indicators that we share with our partners so that they can incorporate youth voice into the placemaking, planning, and decision-making processes.
SEE THE TRANSFORMATION
From raw story to actionable insight.
This is AMP: thousands of unique stories of lived experience transformed to actionable insight.
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YOUTH STORY
AMP INSIGHT
WHAT PARTNERS LEARN
Core dimensions of youth experience.
Mobility & access
Routes used, routes avoided, barriers to movement, and opportunities to improve access.
Belonging & safety
Where youth feel at ease, where they feel unsafe, and how place conditions shape comfort and connection.
Actionable planning
How insight can support programming, park investment, mobility planning, placemaking, and evaluation.
SEE WHAT AMP PRODUCES
Impact Hubs, Insight Systems, Field Notes, Maps, Analytics.
FIELD NOTES
Neighborhood insight in a compact format
Maps, quotes, qualitative themes, word clouds, and place-specific opportunities.
Open PDF
BEAVERTON
Play → Belonging
4,471 youth and nearly 50,000 stories translated into a map book, field guide, indicators, and strategies.
Open report
MOBILITY
Where movement becomes difficult
Friction indicators identify the geography of barriers to walking, biking, scootering, and rolling.
TRANSIT
Route-level insight
AMP insight can be delivered alongside rider, GIS, and secondary data inside partner technology systems.
Open overview
REGIONAL
Shared regional context
Neighborhood and domain analytics help public-serving agencies identify resource gaps and compare areas.
Open overview
CURRICULUM
The work begins with youth
AMP curriculum creates a structured way for youth to reflect, map, discuss, and explain their everyday experience.
APPLICATIONS OF AMP INSIGHT
One method. Many decision environments.
AMP insight can be applied wherever organizations need a more human understanding of place.
Parks Insight
Play, belonging, programming, access, and park-specific opportunities.
Mobility Insight
Movement, friction, active transportation, access, corridors, routes, and stops.
Youth Insight
Persistent youth experience embedded in school, neighborhood, and public-planning conversations.
Regional Insight
Community experience layered into regional planning, services, resources, and neighborhood analytics.
TECHNOLOGY PARTNER
StoryTeller Spatial Intelligence
We use StoryTeller to support our spatial surveys, interactive mapping, persistent spatial data, longitudinal indicators, dashboards, and Insight Systems.
AMP
Community relationships, curriculum, youth engagement, research design, indicator development, analysis, interpretation, and recommendations.
StoryTeller SI
Custom spatial survey technology, spatial data infrastructure, interactive hubs, persistent analytics, and system delivery.
OUR ETHIC
People are not data points.
Community members are experts in their own lives. AMP creates ways for those experiences to remain visible after a workshop, survey, planning process, or public meeting ends.
spatialactionablelongitudinalvisible
LET'S BUILD SOMETHING USEFUL
What do you need to understand about your community?
Tell us the decision you are trying to make. We will help identify what lived experience could make visible.