A method for reading a trail, river, or waterfront as physical, digital, and social infrastructure.
Public filings, an official route, and community-need documents stay separate. Nearness is not a relationship.
Elizabeth River Trail is the worked example.
It keeps three questions separate:
- What are the institutions? Internal Revenue Service Form 990 filings establish legal identity, governance, and financial pattern.
- Who sits near the route? Official route geometry and verified institutional footprints establish spatial context.
- What needs are documented? Hospital Community Health Needs Assessments provide one recurring, legally structured window into local need.
Each claim keeps its own source and limit. The evidence gate records the publication rule.
- Read the field note — the complete, plain-language method.
- Review the Elizabeth River Trail example — small data receipts and source boundaries.
- Rerun the distances — a local Python command and smoke tests.
The method developed across three applications: the Columbia and Snake river system, a trans-Texas trail corridor, and the Elizabeth River Trail. See method lineage.
David Valentine is the author. Full Harbor is the publishing commons lab.
- David Valentine's original code, text, documentation, methods, and tabular outputs: CC0 1.0 Universal
- No credit is required. Citation metadata is available for anyone who chooses to cite the work.
- Third-party materials retain their own terms. See the license scope and source notice.
- OpenStreetMap-derived geometry remains subject to the Open Database License 1.0.
- Elizabeth River Trail route geometry remains identified as a derivative of the Foundation's public Google My Maps route.