Chi Nguyen, a sophomore urban studies major from Hanoi, Vietnam, received second place in the Map Gallery Competition at the 24th annual Memphis Area Geographic Information Council (MAGIC) Conference held Nov. 20-21. She presented her project titled “Examining Crosstown Mid-Autumn Festival and Vietnamese Cultural Impacts in Memphis.”
The MAGIC Map Gallery Competition offers undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to demonstrate their creativity and technical expertise in cartography.
Nguyen presented her project from the Introduction to GIS course taught by Dr. Shaolu Yu, associate professor of urban studies.
After surveying attendees of the 2025 Crosstown Vietnamese Mid-Autumn Festival for their demographic information (ethnicity, average household income, educational background, age range), Nguyen geocoded their residential locations using the mapping software ArcGIS. The festival is an annual event with crafts, Vietnamese foods, and performances. It is held in in Memphis’ Crosstown Concourse and draws considerable community participation.
Nguyen also geocoded the addresses of Vietnamese restaurants, religious sanctuaries, and businesses, and she used this information, U.S. Census data, and demographics from the festival as indicators of Vietnamese culture influence in Shelby County.
“This project and Dr. Yu's GIS course have significantly changed how I view data and interact with it,” said Nguyen. “I have always been fascinated by how built environments affect community and want to work toward creating equitable changes in urban spaces. Meanwhile, GIS is an incredible tool that allows me to visualize and analyze spatial data with social contexts. In the future, I will have a full comprehensive report with the data collected from the survey, which includes the demographic data as presented in the poster and other qualitative responses from the attendees.”