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Boston Green

A map promoting green spaces in the Metro Boston Area.

Features

  • Discover green spaces in a neighborhood
  • Find green spaces for an activity
  • See how to get to green spaces by foot, bike or transit

Issue Tracking

We use Trello as an issue tracker. Go there to choose tasks and see everyones' progress https://trello.com/b/VbjYYbtx/boston-green

Redesign Mock-up

A mockup for our redesign contributed by Continuum (www.continuuminnovation.com): https://s3.amazonaws.com/wmgardner.co/pdfs/BostonGreenSpaceDesign.pdf

Installation

The Boston Green is a Django project with spatial functionality, also called GeoDjango. Data storage and enabler for most spatial functionality is the PostgreSQL extension PostGIS. Minimum requirements for running this project are therefore Python and PostgreSQL/PostGIS.

Vagrant setup

The easiest way to run Boston Green locally is with Vagrant and VirtualBox.
VirtualBox (Mac) Vagrant (Mac)

Once you have that installed, running Boston Green is as easy as:

vagrant up
vagrant ssh -c bostongreenmap/vagrant_server.sh

If you're having issues, make sure you're using recent versions of Vagrant (we've tested with 1.5 and 1.6) and VirtualBox (~4.3).

Be sure to compile the Javascript and SCSS:

vagrant ssh
cd bostongreenmap
grunt handlebars:compile
grunt compass:dev
grunt watch

Go to http://localhost:8000/backbone

PostgreSQL/PostGIS setup

The following steps outline basic steps to install and configure the databasse requirements on Mac OS or Ubuntu Linux. For installation under Windows, please see the installer packages for PostgreSQL/, it includes PostGIS. Configuration should be similar, however, it will most likely by via GUI tools.

PostGIS installation on Mac OS X (using the homebrew package manager)

  1. Install PostGIS and all its dependencies:

     brew install postgis

  2. Initialize PostgreSQL data directory:

     initdb /usr/local/var/postgres

  3. Start PostgreSQL database server:

     pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log start

PostGIS installation on Ubuntu Linux

  1. Add UbuntuGIS packages

     sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ppa
 sudo apt-get update

  2. Install PostGIS and all dependencies

     sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1

To install the Python PostgreSQL driver you'll probably make sure to have python-dev and postgresql-9.3-dev installed too.

Setup a database user

  1. Create role that will be set as owner for our project database.

     createuser django
 Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) n
 Shall the new role be allowed to create databases? (y/n) y
 Shall the new role be allowed to create more new roles? (y/n) n

If you see an error like $USERNAME does not exist, first do: sudo su - postgres and then finish running the commands above

  1. Set the user password

     psql
 # ALTER ROLE django WITH PASSWORD 'django';
 ALTER ROLE
 # \q

Setup the project database

  1. Create the project database, owned by our database role

     createdb -O django bostongreenmap

  2. Install the PostGIS spatial database extension

     psql -c "CREATE EXTENSION postgis;" -d bostongreenmap

Python

Django 1.5 is a Python module and requires Python 2.6.5 or higher.

Python 2.7 comes pre-installed with most modern operating systems (Mac OS, Linux, etc.) and there are installers available for Windows. Please see installation instructions for your platform for more details.

To see if or which Python version is installed on your system, open a terminal or shell and type:

python --version

Virtual Environments

It is good practice to sandbox and isolate Python projects from each other. The virtuelenv tool helps to do that and prevents potential future version conflicts among Python modules. The tool virtualenvwrapper is a convenience helper that makes virtualenv a little easier to use. The following steps will install both:

  1. Install pip, a Python package management system.

    Please follow the installation instructions for your platform: pip installation

  2. Install virtualenvwrapper and virtualenv

     pip install virtualenvwrapper

    Initialize virtualenvwrapper in your shell startup file (~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, etc.):

     export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_PYTHON=/usr/bin/python
 export WORKON_HOME=~/.venvs
 source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
 export PIP_DOWNLOAD_CACHE=$HOME/.pip-downloads

  3. Create new virtual environment:

     mkvirtualenv bostongreenmap

Get a local copy of the project

git clone https://github.com/codeforboston/bostongreenmap.git
cd bostongreenmap

Download the project manually if you're not familier with git

Setup the Django project

Activate previously created virtual environment:

workon bostongreenmap

Install all project dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Create a private config file in bostongreenmap/bostongreenmap/local_settings.py with at least the following content:

from settings import *
DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.contrib.gis.db.backends.postgis',
        'NAME': 'bostongreenmap',
        'USER': 'django',
        'PASSWORD': 'django',
        'HOST': 'localhost',
        'PORT': '5432',
    }
}

Tell Django to create all necessary database tables, and create a project superuser if it doesn't exist yet:

python manage.py syncdb

Some requirements are managed by a third party data migration module. Apply all migrations:

python manage.py migrate

Import sample data or database

This command will import the Boston Common Park and a related facility and activity.

python manage.py loaddata fixtures/sample.json

A backup of parks and MBTA resources as of 1 April 2014 is available in /fixtures/green.sql. You can load this in using psql (or possibly pg_restore).

Client Installation

Set your localhost configurations for fabric. In fabfile/init.py, the function "localhost()"

env.user = {{YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM USERNAME}}
env.code = {{PATH TO YOUR 'client' FOLDER}}

Install NPM, Node.js, Grunt.js, Ruby, and Compass using Fabric (Note: Node.js and and Ruby are dependencies of other programs and aren't actually used in any of our code)

fab localhost install.all

Run a local development server

python manage.py runserver

Access the site at http://localhost:8000.

Project History

The first iteration of this project was created during Boston's Hack Day Challenge in 2011. A team of 7 volunteers (Christian Spanring, David Norcott, David Rafkind, Holly St. Clair, Patrick Robertson, Peter Gett, Tom Morris) prototyped the application in 48 hours, which was among the winners of the challenge. The original code repository is still available and can be found here: https://github.com/bostongreen/bostongreen.

After the challenge, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), the employer of 2 of the volunteers, worked with Boston Parks Advocates and a group of Boston Parks Trustees to turn the application into a service for people who live and work in the Metro Boston Area.

The code repository was moved to Code for Boston's GitHub account in Spring 2013. Code for Boston seems to be an excellent home for the project: it started as volunteer effort and should be owned by volunteers, it is a public service application built on top of open data and it is an open source project than can be replicated with local green space data in any other community.

Data Schema Basics

The map is based entirely on open space data in the public domain.

The core concept of the application is very simple and should be applicable for green spaces in any community or location. There are 3 basic elements that build the heart of the application: Park, Facility and Activity.

A park visitor can perform Activities, such as playing Frisbee or Football, on a Facility, such as a Field, in a Park.

This means, the 3 basic elements relate to each according to the following schema:

Park [1:m] Facility [m:n] Activity

A Facility can only be located in one single Park, whereas a visitor potentially can perform multiple Activities on a single Facility.

There are more elements, such as Neighborhoods, Parkowners, Types, etc., to the data schema, but those 3 ones are essential to understand the philosophy of the application.

© Boston Green contributors