Philly has free, publicly accessible essential resources, like drinking water and bathrooms, located throughout the city. Importantly, can you find them when you need them?
That’s the mission of the website PHLASK, an online database intended to provide answers and spark conversations on this very topic, said Billy Hanafee, a project contributor.
“When and where are resources made freely available, and when and where aren’t [they] freely available?” he said. “Why is that the case? And as soon as we ask why that is or isn’t the case, we can have an important conversation and ask, ‘Should we try to do more about this? Is this a problem that needs to be fixed?’ ”
PHLASK was born out of a social practice art project called Philadelphia Assembled.
“It assembled a variety of different city stakeholders and civically minded activists to collaborate and work together on shared mission and shared issues that were kind of important to these different stakeholders,” Hanafee said. “The project was initially conceptualized at the time to ask or challenge where and why water is or isn’t accessible freely, and to start mapping out places that people could access water for free, kind of in an effort to document how people can or can’t access water, and what businesses or the public is doing to support people in accessing water.”
While the project started as more of a documentation effort, Hanafee explained the project evolved into a website in 2018.
“Essential” community resources
While PHLASK initially started to help Philadelphians find free drinking water throughout the city during the pandemic, project convenor Gabriel Cardona said it has evolved to include more kinds of resources.
“If we can show people where they can get free food and water, why not expand to other resources that people would like to have available to them?” he said. “And so our current version is basically expanding beyond food and water to [also] include foraging resources and bathrooms.”
The app is constantly adding more information and Cardona notes that crowdsourcing is an important part of the resources.
“A smaller group of developers and people can’t really see everything that is available in the city,” he said. “So, [with crowdsourcing, we ask] based on what’s available, what are we missing? What have we not looked at? We need to make sure that we’re expanding so that other people can know where they can get access to a water fountain or a particular food bank that should get some more attention and love.”
The web app works by first identifying your current location. It will then show a listing of drinking water resources near your location, but you can adjust the settings for what types of resources you are looking for.
This version includes food, foraging (ie, trees), bathrooms and water.
Users also can enter suggestions and sites to potentially be added to the map on a part of the page. Hanafee said it can take time to get a good sense of resources, and used foraging as an example.
“There are a few different kinds of ones,” he said. “There’s a pear tree on South 13th Street somewhere. I added a cherry tree recently, and there are some others. And I think it’ll just take time to get more.”
Equal access
Cardona explained the website can also provide insight into the distribution of assets across the city. He acknowledged many of the resources available are more plentiful in Center City.
“I think a lot of them are converged kind of along that Center City area,” he said. “But if we look beyond that, are there areas that could benefit from something like that?”
These resources meet the most basic of human needs, Hanafee said, which is why it’s important that people be able to find them.
“It’s important for us to explore how resources are made available to the community, because we believe that a lot of resources should be provided as a basic human right, foundationally, starting with water,” he said.
Hanafee said there is not always a “right or wrong” answer as to how many resources are enough, and the group hopes that the map can help start those conversations.
“If someone looks at our app and they see that there’s only a certain amount of bathrooms [listed], they can ask, is that a problem?” he said. “Or do we say no, actually, this many bathrooms made freely available is good or that society is doing its due diligence to provide free bathrooms to people and that it’s their own incumbent responsibility to find access? So the project, from an art perspective, is supposed to be enabling us as a team and as a community to explore these topics and build a solution towards it.”
Beyond this, Hanafee said, the group is always looking at more resources to add to its list.
“We’ve mapped out these four resources that we can identify as being for free in certain parts,” he said, adding the group then asked what other materials should they map, and should they be made available for free. Among those they’ve considered mapping — mini-libraries that have free books and health or feminine care products.
A team contribution
The PHLASK team is made up entirely of volunteers. Hanafee explained the project was incubated through Code For Philly, a group using tech, data and design for civic engagement.
Individuals get involved in the project for a variety of reasons, Hanafee said.
“Some of the main themes around why folks get involved is to improve their skills so that they have something to demonstrate and they have practical applications for these skills,” he said. “So it’s a great way to learn.
“On the flip side, there are folks that get involved because they want to enhance their own mentorship skills and feel that they have something to contribute.”
Among collaborators, Cardona said, he has seen lots of technical growth as well.
“Developers that are seasoned in other domains come in with different perspectives and take a look at what we’ve built and they have provided their own guidance on what we could be doing differently, which helps me learn,” he said. “And then for other members that have joined, I’ve seen people just ask for interview advice or resume advice, and we’ve collaborated in that sense.”
Despite this, Hanafee said PHLASK hopes to create an environment where people who don’t consider themselves coders or may not have any prior experience coding will feel welcomed.
Cardona and Hanafee both emphasized the group remains a community, and that even if members step out of the work or move away, they often still remain in touch.
To join, visit the PHLASK website and click “join the team.”
Hanafee said he is excited for the future of the project.
“The more people that we can bring in to share more information, the better our data is going to be, and the better it’s going to serve the community,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
