Co-Production of Local Knowledge: Participatory Cartography and Geosocial Spaces for Community Health Equity

Abstract

This article introduces a bottom-up, community-empowered approach to understanding the role of intersecting geographic and social structures in municipal policy and planning. Using participatory cartography and interactive geographic information systems, the study co-produces local knowledge with public engagement. Findings reveal how geographic and social dimensions jointly inform community health promotion and identify inequities in access, especially among marginalized groups. Results provide guidance for residents, administrators, and planners on distributing place-based resources and leveraging local knowledge to promote health equity.

Keywords

bottom-up empowerment community engagement geospatial health equity social justice place-based

Introduction

Communities represent an essential intervention pathway for advancing health and equity. The pivotal role of communities is underpinned by local environments that contribute to the health of their inhabitants (Frumkin 2003; Gidlow et al. 2010; World Health Organization 2012), as people and community spaces interact in daily life (World Health Organization 2017). Local environments encompass both the geographic and social domains that shape health outcomes. Green spaces, parks, trails, and recreational facilities enhance health through engagement in physical activity and an active lifestyle (Li 2022, 2025; Li and Spini 2023), while social infrastructure and interpersonal relationships benefit health through place attachment and social cohesion (Kaźmierczak 2013; Klinenberg 2018; Peters, Elands, and Buijs 2010). Identifying geographic and social dimensions and understanding how they interact to shape health are vital for developing interventions to create healthier and more equitable communities.

Despite a substantial literature on community spaces and health, prior research pays limited attention to the intersecting roles of geographic and social dimensions in shaping health from the lens of community inhabitants who possess firsthand experiential knowledge of the living environment. This constitutes a clear gap where the interacting geographic and social dimensions of community spaces remain underexplored (Li 2022; Scharlach 2017), and existing methods rarely capture these interactions in ways that reflect the residents’ lived experiences. In reality, spaces with well-maintained sidewalks may be enhanced by social settings such as café terraces or community centers, which motivate people to spend time outside, interact with others, and increase physical activity. Without participatory approaches to document these intersections, this gap in the literature limits our understanding of the mechanisms through which local inhabitants benefit from the intersections of geographic and social environments to improve health and well-being, impeding the development of synergistic interventions to guide community investment, planning, and equitable health promotion.

To address this gap in the literature, the present study uses a bottom-up, community-empowered approach of participatory cartography to co-produce with inhabitants to better understand the linkage between geosocial spaces and health in a Swiss municipality. Local inhabitants possess situated knowledge of the community, as they live in apartment buildings, visit libraries and churches, use transit stations, and play in parks and green spaces. The aim of this study is to understand, through participatory activities and co-production with inhabitants, the mechanisms through which spatiality, relationality, and sociality work together to shape health, and how interventions can be developed by leveraging local experiential knowledge to create healthier and more equitable communities.

Geosocial Spaces

The study is conceptually grounded in the geosocial approach to community diagnosis and health promotion, an integrative paradigm that “treats the community as a living laboratory where researchers partner with residents to assess the interactions between the social and material environment, and how their functions may promote health” (Li, Spini, and Delgado Villanueva 2024, p. 227). This approach elucidates the synergy of geographic and social domains in relation to health in cities and communities, transcending the meaning of space to include physical as well as social structures, and the relationships that reflect interpersonal connections, where they are also shaped by social identities, informing the development of more precisely targeted interventions (Li 2025).

Based on this framework, geosocial spaces are conceptualized as intersecting geographic and social environments, recognizing not only where people reside but also how people conceive of and interact with the environments in which they live, including themselves and other members of the community as constituents of an integrated living experience. As such, geosocial spaces represent health-related motivators and barriers at the intersection of the geographic and social domains (Li 2025). For instance, older people living in socially supportive environments tend to engage in more frequent walking than those living in less supportive environments with similar built structures (Carlson et al. 2012). Older men tend to be more physically active than older women (Tourlouki et al. 2010), frequently walking to social settings to engage in social interactions in terrains with challenging topography (Legrand et al. 2021). These examples of geosocial spaces illustrate the intersection of spatial form, relationship, and social life, alongside their joint roles in shaping health in the community. It is recognized that factors such as security enforcement, class divisions, and cultural norms may additionally shape how physical and social resources are accessed and experienced, thereby influencing their potential health benefit.

Local Knowledge

Local knowledge substantiates the understanding of geosocial spaces by offering precise and granular firsthand information of lived experience. Held by community inhabitants, local or indigenous knowledge is an “organized body of thought based on immediacy of experience” (Geertz 1983, p. 75) and illuminates the “local embeddedness” of contexts or settings, characteristics, circumstances, and their practical connections (Smith 2010). Local knowledge complements professional knowledge with community-driven situated experience, practicality, common sense, time-tested traditions, and narratives (Agrawal 1995; Corburn 2003, 2007; Richardson 2022). Local knowledge has been successfully applied to promote health in regional authorities in western Canada (Smith 2010), to inform climate-related health inequities in Nairobi, Kenya (Corburn et al. 2022), and to address environmental health hazards experienced by marginalized groups in Brooklyn, New York (Corburn 2002). Local knowledge reflects that “to know a city is to know its streets” (Geertz 1983, p. 167).

Local Knowledge and Geosocial Spaces

Local knowledge is key to understanding the link between geosocial spaces and health because local knowledge is geosocially grounded (Figure 1). First, local knowledge offers granularity by interlacing spatiality with sociality, contributing to sharpened intervention targets that are identifiable at the intersection of geographic and social locations. In contrast to the unitary lens of social identity, local knowledge possessed by a specific group in a specific place attaches the geographic axis of differentiation to social memberships and social axes to capture foot-on-the-ground experience. Second, local knowledge complements professional knowledge to inform decisions through a bottom-up, community-driven approach, as opposed to top-down approaches where policies and decisions are implemented from administrative bodies with limited input from the inhabitants (Minkler 2010). The current process involving local knowledge is based on the principles of co-production and empowerment to engage inhabitants’ lived experience and capabilities (Klenk et al. 2017). Knowledge transmission may also be bidirectional as infrastructure developments (institutions and interventions) such as highways may reshape residents’ spatial awareness and mobility patterns, introducing new ways of accessing and interacting with the living environment (Aiello et al. 2025).

Figure 1.

Geosocially grounded local knowledge.

Put differently, local knowledge is embodied in “a neighborhood and/or a group with a shared culture, symbols, language, religion, norms, or even interests” (Corburn 2003, 421). In the interventions informed by local knowledge on environmental health hazards in Brooklyn, New York, the bottom-up approach revealed that Latino males aged between 16 and 60 in the neighborhood of Greenpoint/Williamsburg were disproportionately exposed to toxic chemical contaminants and heightened risk of cancer as a result of consuming the same species of fish locally caught in a polluted river (Corburn 2003). This would not have been uncovered without community-driven co-production of local knowledge at the intersection of geographic and social spaces, which informed subsequent analyses and interventions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Corburn 2003). In a nutshell, local knowledge facilitates decisions and interventions by mobilizing firsthand information that is “practical, collective, and strongly rooted in a particular place” (Geertz 1983, p. 75).

Participatory Cartography

How to engage community inhabitants to mobilize local knowledge? Participatory cartography is a research process (Cochrane and Corbett 2020; Denwood, Huck, and Lindley 2022) where inhabitants are involved as partners of research to co-produce spatial knowledge that informs decisions, interventions, and the broader society. While professional maps are “top-down, authoritarian, and centrist” (Goodchild 2007, 29), participatory maps are bottom-up and help to strengthen grassroot advocacy and local empowerment by giving inhabitants a voice (Cochrane and Corbett 2020). Participatory cartography has been applied to mobilize indigenous spatial knowledge and improve the resilience of communities against natural environmental risks in Switzerland (Reichel and Frömming 2014) and Germany (Klonner et al. 2021), and to diagnose place-based health disparities relating to access to public parks in Los Angeles, California (Douglas et al. 2020).

Participation, Local Knowledge, and Planning

Grounded in Arnstein’s (1969) concept of citizen participation, participatory cartography enables residents to map lived experiences directly onto planning processes and is recognized in the planning literature for the co-production of spatial knowledge (Forester 1999; Innes and Booher 2010). This aligns with planning theories that emphasize dialogue, inclusivity, and shared decision-making to address complex urban challenges (Healey 2008, 2020; Innes 2004). Moreover, recent scholarship on geospatial citizenship highlights the role of geographic information systems (GIS) mapping in promoting civic engagement and local empowerment. Malakar and Roy (2024) conceptualize “geospatial citizenship” as the capacity of individuals to use geospatial tools to represent their spatial realities, negotiate meanings, and influence local governance. Panek and Netek (2019) highlight collaborative mapping to strengthen digital participation and build community agency. These approaches align closely with the current study using participatory cartography.

Locally grounded experiential knowledge serves as a conduit connecting participation and planning by capturing the social meaning of space and the relationship between spatial form and social life. In this sense, an interpretive role is attributed to planning where it accounts for how social behaviors, everyday practices, and underlying values shape and are shaped by spatial arrangements (Hopkins 2001; Natarajan 2017). This perspective emphasizes that effective spatial planning depends not only on identifying patterns of use but also on interpreting the meanings and motivations that underlie them. Local knowledge derived from lived experience therefore provides firsthand insight into these dynamics between spatial structures and social life, as well as the values that underlie these dynamics, enabling a more direct engagement with the social meaning of space.

Participation, Cartography, and Geosocial Spaces

Participatory cartography is uniquely suited to engage the community and to illuminate the link between geosocial spaces and equitable health promotion. First, the purpose of participatory cartography is to enhance the visibility of the relationship between places and local communities with the use of mapping processes (Flavelle 2002) and, more recently, with the use of satellite maps and GIS (Corbett 2009). This helps bottom-up messaging where the needs, expectations, and lived experiences of inhabitants are communicated to stakeholders in the municipality for health promotion. Second, participatory cartography captures what inhabitants identify as elements of significance both geographically and socially in their immediate living environment (Bird 1995; Tobias 2000). This adds a nuanced understanding of geosocial spaces and their links to health. This insight contributes to precision interventions based not on geographic location alone (i.e. a neighborhood) or social identities alone (i.e. a demographic group), but the intersection of geographic and social locations, that is, sharpened outreach targets. Third, participatory cartography fosters an equitable and inclusive environment where voices in the community are given the opportunity of expression (Corbett 2009; Rambaldi et al. 2006; Wentworth et al. 2024). This is aligned with research that aims to build a healthier and more inclusive community and to facilitate planning despite recent advancements in technologies.

Methods

Background

Situated in western Switzerland, the municipality of Chavannes-près-Renens (Figure 2) has a diverse population (Li, Spini, and Lampropoulos 2023). This municipality confronts health and social challenges, including health inequities, deprivation, a lack of social infrastructures, and social isolation among segments of the population, particularly older migrants with limited educational attainment (Li and Spini 2022, 2025; Li, Spini, and Lampropoulos 2023). To promote social inclusion and health, a longitudinal community-based study was launched in 2019 to better inform decisions and interventions with local and experiential insights (Li, Spini, and Delgado Villanueva 2024; Li, Spini, and Lampropoulos 2023).

Figure 2.

Study location.

The overarching project consists of bi-annual surveys of the entire adult population registered in the municipality and field activities in the form of co-production with municipal inhabitants and partners. The project has been inspired by participatory research that aims to engage and promote the capabilities of local residents to bring about changes in the community (Minkler and Wallerstein 2008). Instead of focusing solely on social identities such as age and gender, this research emphasizes the role of place to sharpen intervention targets incorporating both geographic and social dimensions, that is, a geosocial approach. This approach offers granularity for tailored outreach and interventions according to the lived experiences of both “who” and “where.” Data were anonymized in line with the study’s ethical assessment by the Cantonal Commission on Ethics in Human Research, a public body to ensure the protection of research subjects and the compliance of human research projects.

Data

Three waves of community data collection were carried out: wave 1 (2019–2020), wave 2 (2021–2022), and wave 3 (2023–2024). The project aimed to involve the entire adult resident population of the municipality. In the first wave, all 6,220 eligible adults were contacted by post, and the analytic sample consisted of 1,401 adult residents aged 18 years or older (Li and Spini 2022). Approximately 54% of the baseline sample were female, about 39% aged 18–40, 39% aged 41–64, and 21% aged 65 or older; about 10% obtained primary education, 51% secondary education, and 39% tertiary education (Li, Spini, and Delgado Villanueva 2024).

Key Measures

The main objective of the overarching study was to enhance health equity and social empowerment. As described in Li, Spini, and Lampropoulos (2023), key measures included self-rated health status, as has been widely used to assess health outcomes and health disparities (Jylhä 2009); mental health assessed using three questions querying respondents how often they felt “calm and peaceful,” “full of energy,” and “downhearted or discouraged” (Rumpf et al. 2001); social empowerment assessed with questions on respondents’ ability to improve neighborhood’s living conditions, help with organizations, intervene in local decision-making, make a specific request to the municipality, and community cooperation in difficult times (Zimmerman 1995).

Participatory Cartography

Activities engaging the public were carried out to mobilize inhabitants’ experiential knowledge of health-enhancing community resources from the municipal territory and infrastructure, not only for physical health but also for mental, social, and spiritual health. The activities were open to the public and conducted outdoors on Saturdays. Participants anonymously shared their perspective of the local environment, reflecting on lived experience and how social and territorial resources have shaped health and equity in the municipality.

The cartographic process has several phases (Li et al. 2022; Li, Spini, and Delgado Villanueva 2024), as illustrated in Figure 3. First, participants positioned colored markers on an aerial map corresponding to public spaces such as parks, trails, and community centers that support physical, social, or mental well-being. An aerial map was used to capture land use and infrastructure conditions, and to foster a more equitable and inclusive research environment given its intuitive nature and the limited use of technologies which might otherwise digitally exclude members of the society (Brown and Kyttä 2014; Craig, Harris, and Weiner 2002). Second, participants reflected on their experiences of these spaces with oral contributions. All data were anonymized. Analogue data were digitized using QGIS and spatially joined to the transport base map with street names and landmarks to facilitate situational recognition. Finally, a web-based interactive map was generated using QGIS2web to illustrate the spatial and narrative information. Participatory GIS data are not without challenges, including biases and spatial inaccuracies. To mitigate, community inputs were cross-validated through field checks to ensure credibility and usability.

Figure 3.

Overview of participation.

Results

The participatory cartography process revealed a rich set of geosocial spaces in the municipality. Inhabitants identified community settings ranging from recreational parks and sports facilities to religious centers and social support hubs that jointly fostered physical activity, social connection, and health. Analysis of narratives and locations highlighted how territorial features (e.g., accessibility) and social dynamics (e.g., trust, belonging) intersect to shape everyday health experiences. Three patterns emerged: (1) geosocial spaces tend to cluster near educational, recreational, and spiritual spaces; (2) multifunctional facilities serve as focal points that integrate physical, mental, and social health; and (3) marginalized groups especially benefit from spaces that combine territorial accessibility with social ties.

Table 1 summarizes selected geosocial spaces identified through participatory cartography. The prominent theme that emerged from pairing narratives with community spaces was that they motivated the active participation in the living environment while incentivizing social interactions. This indicates that community spaces, while serving as venues for recreation, exercise, or religious worship, are an embodiment of the interplay between the spatial form, relationships, and social life.

Table 1.

Illustrative Geosocial Spaces Identified through Participatory Cartography.

Name of site	Description	Geosocial domains
Name of site	Description	Physical	Categorical	Relational
L’Ancre	“The anchor”: a day reception for people in a situation of material, relational, or emotional precariousness	x	x	x
Centre paroissial	“Parish center”: a reformed church in the municipality	x	x	x
Terrain de Chavannes	Football field in the municipality	x		x
Forêt	Small forest area in the municipality	x		x

Source: Author’s illustration.

In particular, L’Ancre, or the Anchor, a built structure (physical domain) that functions as a day reception for people in situations of material or relational precariousness, was identified for its geosocial resources, particularly given its targeted support for isolated and socially disadvantaged people (relational domain) at the intersection of migrant status, age, and gender (e.g., older migrant women) (categorical domain), or for those who have been categorically “on the margin of the society” (Figure 4). Participants commented:

Figure 4.

The setting of the multifunctional sites “L’Ancre” (left) and “Centre paroissial” (right).

Reception place 3/7 for isolated and socially disadvantaged people. Le Déca every Tuesday: coffee reception to drop off, share, and get support. Street chaplaincy.

Similarly, Le centre paroissial (Figure 4), a protestant reformed church in the municipality, was pinpointed for its roles in supporting older residents’ social engagement (relational domain) while providing a physical location for community gatherings (physical domain), particularly benefiting older migrant women (categorical domain). Participants indicated:

Snack for seniors. Writing workshop 1st Thursday of the month (9:15 a.m.–11:15 a.m.). Rental of premises.

Other geosocial spaces identified by inhabitants included a football field and forest areas in the municipality, where inhabitants engaged in physical activity alongside socialization with other members of the municipality. Example narratives:

Refreshment area on the pitches, aperitifs with friends during and after matches, moments of interaction between families . . .

Forest walk space, relaxing, unwinding while the kids play football . . .

. . . we often come across people when I come to see my father play and it’s always nice to chat here: refreshment bar and football pitch . . .

La Chamberonne, the beavers, the trout, and the Dorigny forest, the calm and the sound of water . . .

Laundry is the place to meet up with friends . . .

Cedars Park, very calm, relaxing, very pleasant with a little snack bought at Migros [a Swiss supermarket]

. . . At noon, near the cemetery, the calm, the sound of the wind, the trees, and the others who do the same . . . Then, there I rest in my bus . . .

The swimming pool at the Collège de la Plaine: a weekly swimming spot, perfect for clearing your head!

Inhabitants identified a range of public spaces deemed as health-enhancing through participatory cartography. These spaces congregate near existing facilities that are intended for educational, recreational, or spiritual purposes (Figure 5). Spaces that are advantageous to social health are observed near CP22, a local facility for youth care, alongside Ecole de la Planta, a junior school in the municipality, where community events frequently take place. In addition to providing services to the community, they benefit from the ease of public transportation given that the local bus serves the entire street. Furthermore, the spaces that promote physical or mental health concentrate near recreational venues such as Forêt du Caudray or Parc Robinson, which are well-endowed with physical resources including trails and green spaces. These community venues were identified for relaxation, recharging batteries, and engaging in physical activity.

Figure 5.

Interactive map with selected comments from residents.

In addition, the spaces identified for their health-enhancing resources are especially prevalent in multi-functional facilities. For example, Piscine de Renens, a swimming pool and water sport facility, was seen by the inhabitants as simultaneously supporting physical health, mental health, and social health. While inhabitants go there to swim and enjoy water sports, the space simultaneously offers opportunities for socialization where families and friends gather, benefiting from a sense of peace and tranquility for mental recharge and reflection.

Discussion

This study presented a community-empowered approach of participatory cartography that engages residents to co-produce local knowledge for equitable health promotion. In particular, the study sought to illuminate an understanding of the joint roles of geographic and social structures in a Swiss municipality. Grounded in the geosocial framework for community diagnosis and health promotion, the study conceptualized geosocial spaces as interdimensional environments where physical, relational, and social realities intertwine to condition health outcomes. Findings reveal that geosocial spaces contributed to physical activity, social health, and mental health, particularly for members of marginalized groups. Geosocial spaces were found to be most prevalent in multifunctional facilities intended for educational, recreational, and spiritual pursuits.

The results from this study build upon and extend prior literature. First, the finding that geosocial spaces contributed to physical activity, social health, and mental health, often with added resources for members of marginalized social groups, is broadly in line with prior evidence on the physical and social benefits conferred by public spaces (Villanueva et al. 2015). Research shows the strengthening of social ties via public parks in Manchester, UK, particularly in neighborhoods with well-maintained recreational facilities (Kaźmierczak 2013). Research based in the Dutch cities of Utrecht, Haarlem, and Arnhem shows that urban parks contribute to social cohesion through place attachment and social interactions, especially among ethnic minority groups (Peters, Elands, and Buijs 2010). The present study reveals the synergy of spatial and social dimensions in simultaneously offering these benefits. The study found, for instance, that a municipal football field acted as a venue for social interactions between friends, families, and other members of the community during sports or social events. The finding that the municipal infrastructure for day reception enhanced well-being for socially disadvantaged groups offered insight into the role of a physical space concurrently providing social meaning in both the categorical and relationship domains, consistent with the geosocial framework for community diagnosis and well-being where these domains interact to condition health (Li, Spini, and Delgado Villanueva 2024).

Second, planning scholarship recognizes the role of community knowledge for effective spatial planning as it captures the interplay among social behaviors, values, and structures (Natarajan 2017). Early work suggests that planning integrates behavioral patterns and their underlying values, framing planning as a form of socially informed decision-making (Hopkins 2001). Subsequent scholarship positions planning as an arena for experiential knowledge, which can be co-produced through interaction among stakeholders (Corburn et al. 2015; Healey 2020). Participatory approaches, including community engagement and participatory GIS, are central to this perspective on interaction among stakeholders as they enable access to firsthand local knowledge that is embedded in the lived experience of space, revealing how people use, value, and interpret the living environments (Hasanzadeh et al. 2025; Saija et al. 2017). Within urban planning research, co-production and participation have been shown to enhance the legitimacy and relevance of planning decisions by embedding lived experiences into formal governance processes (Healey 2008, 2020; Faga and Eckbo 2006; Innes and Booher 2010). Community knowledge also aligns with scholarship on the operationalization of local capabilities and public participation to improve neighborhood well-being (Binet et al. 2025; Esnard and MacDougall 1997). In short, local knowledge serves both to inform planning by interpreting the social meaning of space and to translate spatial patterns into socially grounded insights for context-sensitive planning.

The present study contributes to this dialogue on planning and community knowledge by demonstrating how participatory cartography can facilitate co-produced local knowledge in a municipal context. The novel concept of geosocial spaces where physical, relational, and categorical interactions converge foregrounds inhabitants’ lived experiences to inform actionable planning decisions. This approach illustrates that community engagement can reframe planning, highlighting not only where physical and social resources converge but also how these intersections support health and well-being across diverse population groups. The findings are suggestive that planning can benefit from recognizing these interdependent geographic and social domains to develop strategies that align with both the material and relational dimensions of space, as well as their underlying social meaning. In practical terms, geosocial spaces and community participation provide planners with contextualized and experiential insights into community priorities, preferences, and patterns of use, thereby strengthening the capacity for equitable and locally informed interventions.

Third, the study contributes to the literature by demonstrating, through participatory cartography, how intersecting geographic and social dimensions of the community can be identified through community engagement and jointly deployed to inform health promotion from the perspective of local residents. Aligned with Arnstein’s (1969) concept of citizen participation, as well as the literature on consensus building within the context of planning (Forester 1999; Innes 2004; Innes and Booher 2010), this study shows how local knowledge can be integrated into community planning and health promotion. For example, the study operationalizes participatory GIS as both a research and planning tool to uncover inequities in access to resources and facilitate evidence-informed planning interventions (Brown and Kyttä 2014; Corburn 2003; Elwood 2006). This research practice generates targeted policy and intervention measures that would prove beneficial to a community’s overall quality of life, including incentives to integrate social exchanges into active networks, and to consider the intersecting geographic and social domains in planning to engage the social meaning and experiential interpretation of community spaces to facilitate equitable health promotion.

The study offers implications for research and practice. To enhance health in the community, the study adopts co-production with inhabitants via participatory cartography to mobilize local knowledge. The first key feature of this approach is civic engagement and bottom-up contributions to health promotion. In contrast to national health programs that tend to utilize a top-down model to address health disparities, this research embraces the participation of local inhabitants whose health is most affected by the municipal living environment, echoing prior literature advocating for civic engagement in research to influence decisions and policies (Minkler 2010; Minkler and Wallerstein 2008). For example, inhabitants’ feedback on difficulty accessing some public venues or issues of noise and pollution indicates that priority attention is needed to maintain the venues in question and ensure fair and equal access to these spaces. In addition, inhabitants’ perception that multifunctional spaces incentivized both physical and social engagements suggests that investment in these venues would benefit more durable health-promotion efforts in the community.

The second key feature is customized interventions interlacing geographic location with social membership. Instead of focusing solely on social identities such as age and gender, this study sharpens intervention targets to specific groups in specific places. This geosocial approach offers granularity for outreach and interventions according to the lived experiences of both “who” and “where.” Just like the interventions informed by local knowledge on environmental health hazards in Brooklyn, where Latino males aged 16–60 in the neighborhood of Greenpoint/Williamsburg were disproportionately exposed to toxic chemical contaminants and heightened risk of cancer (Corburn 2003), this study pinpoints intersecting geographic and social domains for health promotion and communications (e.g., older residents may be more likely to use religious spaces for socialization).

In addition, the geospatial information generated via participatory processes in this study would inform varied stakeholders, particularly as the outcome of cartographic activities is transformed into an interactive web-based map on the municipal website. For local inhabitants, the interactive map offers reference for the geographic location of public spaces and the behaviors, use patterns, and prior experiences of these spaces from fellow inhabitants, serving as a guidepost for future health-promoting activities in the local environment. For administrators, the web-based map facilitates decisions and interventions, for example, on whether actions are needed to improve accessibility and upgrade maintenance, or to offer customized communication to specific groups in each location based on experiential knowledge from residents. For planners, the web-based map provides geospatial information on the inhabitants’ preferences and perceptions relating to geosocial spaces in the community. Designs to expand mixed-use facilities may contribute to health promotion, as are initiatives to ensure coverage by public transportation near multifunctional community spaces.

Limitations

This study is not without limitations. Inhabitants participated in the cartographic activities on a voluntary basis, and the perceptions and insights they expressed may not represent those of the entire municipal population. Due to anonymization needs, it was not possible to reveal detailed group memberships of participants. Due to resource constraints, the participatory activities did not include more elaborate processes such as walk-along interviews or transect mapping. Future research should employ these complementary techniques where feasible to gain insights into the role of geosocial spaces in the day-to-day experiences of a locality. While this study provides valuable insights into the geosocial dimensions of community health, power dynamics among participants can influence whose knowledge is represented, and variability in data quality may arise from differing levels of familiarity with mapping tools. Acknowledging and addressing these issues is crucial for producing equitable and actionable findings to inform planning and health promotion.

Conclusion

The study demonstrates a bottom-up approach to engage local residents’ experiential knowledge to inform health-promotion efforts. Participatory spatial outputs provide actionable insights for municipal inhabitants, administrators, and planners, serving as a tool for understanding place-based health resources and assessing community needs. Equitable interventions for health promotion in the community would benefit from considering lived experience at the intersection of geographic and social domains.

From a planning perspective, the geosocial framework for community diagnosis and health promotion offers a lens to integrate physical, relational, and categorical considerations into the design and maintenance of public spaces. Findings show that multifunctional spaces simultaneously support physical activity, social cohesion, and the inclusion of marginalized populations, offering a roadmap for planners to prioritize interventions that address multiple community needs. By translating participatory spatial outputs into actionable guidance for municipal administrators and planners, the study provides a recognizable pathway for embedding equity-focused strategies within planning processes (Linovski and Loukaitou-Sideris 2013; Sieber 2006). These place-based, participatory insights enhance the capacity of planning institutions to make context-sensitive decisions, helping to bridge community experiences, spatial data, and policy priorities (Binet et al. 2025; Faga and Eckbo 2006). Overall, the research demonstrates how integrating local knowledge and public participation with planning can strengthen both the legitimacy and effectiveness of planning interventions while promoting health equity.

In summary, the study introduces and operationalizes the concept of geosocial spaces as a lens for understanding the intersections of space, society, and health. Methodologically, it illustrates how co-production can engage communities to obtain granular, locally grounded experiential knowledge. Together, these contributions advance planning scholarship, inform equitable planning, and provide guidance for community health-promotion strategies that respond to both geographic and social dimensions of the living environment.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the municipality of Chavannes-près-Renens, its administrators, services, residents, the consultation and research platform, and its researchers for comments and support. The author thanks the technicians and research assistants for their support. The research reported in this article was conducted while the author was affiliated with the LIVES Centre and the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lausanne. The author acknowledges the support of funding bodies for Cause Commune. The author thanks Dario Spini for support. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

ORCID iD

Yang Li

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Yang Li is Professor and Director of Research at the Lincoln Institute for Rural and Coastal Health, University of Lincoln, UK. His research focuses on aging, spatial and health inequalities.

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