Peter A. Kwaku Kyem Ph.D. Department of Geography Central Connecticut State University 1615 Stanley Street, New Britain, CT, 06050 E-mail: Kyemp@mail.ccsu.edu Examining the Community Empowerment Process in Public Participation GIS Applications. ABSTRACT: Although currently the subject of disagreement, the extension of Geographic Information System (GIS) applications into local and indigenous communities has become the focal point for claims of empowerment, political access, equity and legitimacy. The community- based GIS applications (termed Public Participation GIS (PPGIS)) have been presented generally as the means for transforming bureaucratic organizations into benevolent institutions that entertain and address the concerns of underprivileged groups. Yet, there has been little discussion of difficulties entailed in the transfer of political power to the communities. We are also not sure of how the filtering of spatial information through foreign GIS experts obscures the real concerns of people in the communities. An investigation into how PPGIS applications empower communities has therefore become imperative. This paper examines how external factors and conditions within local communities impede successful PPGIS applications and thereby prevent full empowerment of the people. INTRODUCTION A few years ago when Geographic Information System’s (GIS) applications began to spread among public organizations and private businesses, few people foresaw widespread applications of the technology in marginalized communities. Today, times have changed and the decline in prices of computers, accompanied by remarkable improvements in the quality of computer hardware and accessories, and the shrinking of hardware component sizes, have made GIS adoption very attractive and feasible even in local and indigenous communities. Thus, concerned that mainstream applications of GIS and related computer technologies do not incorporate the interests of less powerful members in society, some GIS practitioners have recently embarked upon less conventional uses of the technology to empower people in local communities. This movement, generally termed as Public Participation GIS (PPGIS), aims to develop a GIS that is adaptable to “inputs from ordinary citizens and other non-official sources” (Obermeyer, 1998:66). The landscapes of