The Public Service Leadership model includes commitments to stewardship of public trust and to the public good (Partnership for Public Service 2025). These historical maps show us similar commitments, but to radically different definitions. Public Trust was kept by preserving the property rights, values, and amenities of some, while ostracizing others, relegating their homes to areas of the city nearer to less favorable land uses and areas less capable of receiving financial investment. Protecting the public good now includes a commitment to improving the lives of all (Partnership for Public Service 2025), but requires we leverage the historical contexts which can help establish equity as opposed to equality.

The inequality maps are difficult to read through a modern lens, but they convey an important lesson that racial segregation, environmental injustice, and systemic disenfranchisement were all aspects of governance very recently. Vanderbilt Writing Studio (2012) reminds us our assumptions and reactions affect what we notice and how we think and write about it. Looking into the past can be challenging when faced with these truths, but it's important to balance our own norms against the content of the material so we can draw accurate conclusions and correlations from them. This particular example is close to home, because my family traces back three generations to the areas which would become "South Phoenix", and experienced economic and social injustistces typical to minority families within and nearby to these red-lined areas. As a public servant, understanding local history will help me develop better contextual understandings which affect the relationship building necessary to engaging others (Partnership for Public Service 2025).

As a disclaimer, I am color-blind, which affects how I perceive and interpret information conveyed through color - contextual, written information like labels helps. In examining the electoral map of Maricopa County, which is where I'm from, the popular vote shows how close the 2020 election was, with a total difference of 45,109 votes. This is a sobering reminder that every vote counts, but also that our neighbors are equally likely to agree or disagree with our own political beliefs. Aston (2021) wrote around this time that we are not having a shared conversation and instead are talking past each other, likely due to differing hierarchies of goals and assumptions.