San Francisco created an easy-to-read map that shows the public school locations and open spaces in the city to assist the San Francisco Unified School District, San Francisco Recreation and Park Department staff, and others to clearly see the proximity of schools and possible open spaces for outdoor learning. The map shown below includes public school sites (childcare and elementary, middle, and high schools) and federal, state, and local public open spaces. 

The map also assists public officials by making it clear which areas of the city lack access to appropriate open space within walking distance of a public school. (The ideal walking distance is less than a 5 minute walk.) 

The San Francisco Unified School District and San Francisco Recreation and Parks each had a readily available, good quality PDF map of their respective resources, which included schools, parks, and open space.

Key Attributes of the Source Maps

Two key attributes of the PDF maps allowed them to be very useful:

• the maps had vector-based images rather than rasterized images (i.e., not photographs or scanned images) 

• the map content’s layer structure in the PDF file with roads, text, buildings, and other sites kept the information separate from each other

Steps to Create
the Final Combined Map

The two PDF maps used as source information were imported into Adobe Illustrator so they could be combined and then refined as needed to clearly show the school and open space locations. Layers containing duplicate information or information that was not pertinent were deleted from the combined maps in Adobe Illustrator. Since the source maps were based on vector linework, the combined map could be easily edited in Illustrator. This meant that the styling, color, line weights, and graphics could be edited to clearly communicate the locations of the schools relative to the available parks and open space.

Tips

In order to create something similar, we suggest that you first see what resources are already available online from your local public agencies. You may come across everything you need to make your own map. If not, reach out to the school district and park/open space agency and ask if they have internal map resources they are willing to share. Many cities will likely have some sort of GIS (geographic information system) mapping department that you can work with to create your own maps. It is likely the source maps we used were originally made by the San Francisco Unified School District and San Francisco Recreation and Park Department using information from the city government’s GIS department.