The Mapping City Neighborhoods initiative is a key element of an effort to define and empower New York City neighborhoods. It anticipates the arrival of the .nyc TLD in 2013. We've big dreams for what we call dotNeighborhoods and maps are a important part of them. So we're biking around city neighborhoods to prepare for the arrival of Astoria.nyc, BrooklynHeights.nyc, Chelsea.nyc, DonganHills.nyc, Edgewater.nyc, and 346 other dotNeighborhoods.

• Intro...

On Sunday, May 13, we're calling on neighborhood lovers city-wide to help create digital maps of neighborhood borders. (New York City neighborhoods are unofficial designations, always changing, and no official maps now exist.)

To participate, Bikers will activate the Open Paths app on their Android or iPhones, slip the phone in their pocket or backpack, circumnavigate their neighborhood, and send us their data-path. From this data-path we will create neighborhood maps. These maps that will initially be displayed on NYCwiki.org, and moved to their corresponding dotNeighborhood sites with the .nyc TLD's activation.

You need a bike, a neighborhood map (this is the hard part: you've got to make it), and cell phone loaded with the OpenPaths app developed by the New York Times Labs.

While we're askign that you do it on Mothers Day, we'll accept you map data any time until the end of May.

• See details on the mapping app and how you can help make neighborhood maps.