2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

Using Data for Neighborhood Improvement 151
ing improvement, would clearly not be enough to be transformative.
Kubisch et al. (2010) have identified 48 major community change efforts
initiated since the early 1980s.
To be sure, the potential of neighborhood improvement initiatives has
been questioned over the years. Although the exact path for the future
is not clear, several reasons suggest that, even in a resource-constrained
environment, support for these approaches will continue in some form.
First, the most important criticisms of the past now seem to have been
muted. One example is the argument made by some (starting in the
1980s) that poverty reduction should focus on people-based programs
instead of place-based programs. It is now difficult to find policy discussions
in the literature that do not recognize the need for both (Duke
2012). Another example is the argument that the emphasis should be
on mobility strategies that, instead of focusing on trying to fix troubled
neighborhoods, facilitate the movement of the poor out of them and
into “neighborhoods of opportunity” elsewhere. Here too, however,
these seemingly contrasting approaches are now more often being seen
as complementary. In the view of Pastor and Turner (2010, 1), “we need
a broader portfolio of ‘place-conscious’ strategies that simultaneously
improve neighborhood conditions, open up access to opportunity-rich
communities, and realign regional growth and development to better
connect low-income people and places with regional opportunities.”
A second boost for neighborhood improvement has been the recent
engagement of the public health sector. The field’s new emphasis on prevention
has been coupled with a growing understanding that preventing
some of the nation’s most intractable health problems requires addressing
the problems of distressed neighborhoods. Marjorie Paloma of the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation points out, “This growing recognition
of housing, neighborhoods and factors such as income and education—
the social determinants of health—has led the health sector, and increasingly
the housing and community development sectors, to look beyond
improving access to health care to address root causes to help people avoid
getting sick in the first place” (Paloma 2012).
Finally, the Obama administration has raised the profile of placebased
approaches through prioritizing policies supporting neighborhood
improvement. Office of Management and Budget Director Peter
Orzag called on all federal agencies to explicitly examine and enhance
the “place” impacts of their programs (Orzag et al. 2009). Furthermore,
as noted in chapter 2, the Obama administration launched several new