Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 2014, volume 41, pages 251 – 271 doi:10.1068/b38151 The prospects and problems of integrating sketch maps with geographic information systems to understand environmental perception: a case study of mapping youth fear in Los Angeles gang neighborhoods Jacqueline W Curtis GIS | Health and Hazards Lab, Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio 44242, USA; e‑mail: Jmills30@kent.edu Ellen Shiau Department of Political Science, California State University Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032, USA; e‑mail: eshiau@calstatela.edu Bryce Lowery, David Sloane Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California, Lewis Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90089‑0626, USA; e‑mail: bryce.lowery@usc.edu, dsloane@usc.edu Karen Hennigan Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, SGM 501, 3620 South McClintock Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90089‑1061, USA; e‑mail: hennigan@usc.edu Andrew Curtis GIS | Health and Hazards Lab, Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio 44242, USA; e‑mail: acurti13@kent.edu Received 19 August 2011; in revised form 30 November 2012; published online 31 January 2014 Abstract. How people feel about places matters, especially in their neighborhood. It matters for their health, the health of their children, and their social cohesion and use of local resources. A growing body of research in public health, planning, psychology, and sociology bears out this point. Recently, a new methodological tack has been taken to find out how people feel about places. The sketch map, a once popular tool of behavioral geographers and environmental psychologists to understand how people perceive the structural aspects of places, is now being used in concert with geographic information systems (GIS) to capture and spatially analyze the emotional side of urban environmental perception. This confluence is generating exciting prospects for what we can learn about the characteristics of the urban environment that elicit emotion. However, due to the uncritical way this approach has been employed to date, excitement about the prospects must be tempered by the acknowledgement of its potential problems. In this paper we review the extant research on integrating sketch maps with GIS and then employ a case study of mapping youth fear in Los Angeles gang neighborhoods to demonstrate these prospects and the problems, particularly in the areas of (1) representation of environmental perception in GIS and (2) spatial analysis of these data. Keywords: sketch maps, geographic information systems (GIS), environmental perception, fear Background Numerous studies have indicated that people’s perception of certain characteristics of the urban environment influences a range of behaviors, from engaging in physical activity to socializing with neighbors; these behaviors then have implications for people’s mental