2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

4 Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data
The Purpose and Focus of This Book
In the two decades since the first NNIP data system was developed, dramatic
changes have occurred in the community information field and
its context. First, the partnership itself has expanded, with local partners
now in about three dozen cities. The local partners and the partnership
have completed a substantial body of work, including policy and
community-building applications, technical innovations, and guidebooks
for practitioners. 4
But the nature of the work of the local partner organizations and the
environment in which they operate have also been markedly affected by
other important developments:
• Technological advances have yielded unprecedented reductions in
the costs of data assembly, storage, manipulation, and display.
• The amount of relevant data available to the public has been vastly
expanded. These sources include new national data files with
small-area or address-level data (from the federal government and
commercial sources), as well as publicly available local government
administrative files and data available from commercial sources.
• Data visualization platforms and online tools have been developed
that make it easier for users to work with neighborhoodlevel
data.
• Many local governments have markedly improved their own internal
data capacities (e.g., staff knowledge, data collection, program
and policy applications).
• More outside consultants are now available who can help local
organizations take advantage of these new capacities.
These changes have already enabled a wide variety of users to apply
data more effectively, not only in practical efforts to address short-term
issues, but also in research that furthers understanding of the process of
community change, thereby setting the stage for better solutions in the
long term. To date, however, documentation of these changes and their
impacts has been partial and fragmentary.
The purpose of this book is to rectify that deficit—to tell the story
of how the community information field has evolved over the past two
decades in a balanced manner and to identify ways it has influenced
community change. Our aim is not only to document the advances, but