‘Vacant’ lots are routinely seen as problems in urban neighborhoods, vilified for their unsightly appearance, potential environmental threats, and as sites for undesirable activities. In the discourse of city government, these lots are in need of ‘development’ and an infusion of capital to make them worthy spaces for the city and for profitability (Buffalo News, 6/21/2005). However, an alternate view sees these sites not as vacant, but as spaces of opportunity for community activities, gardening for beautification and food production, children’s playspaces, and other uses for new public space. In the typical processes of decision-making and planning children of marginalized communities are ‘out of the loop’. This project takes children’s uses, views, and visions of neighborhood spaces as central to a counter-mapping – creating an alternative geographic narrative – of the terrain of the West Side based on children’s everyday lives and perspectives. The Children’s Urban Geographies research team undertook a project spanning five weeks in July and August 2005 with 10 children to explore these questions.