2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

152 Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data
initiatives that call for cross-agency work within low-income neighborhoods,
including Promise Neighborhoods (Tough 2008; Promise Neighborhoods
Institute 2011; Biglan et al. 2011; US Department of Education
2012), Choice Neighborhoods (US Department of Housing and Urban
Development 2011a, 2011b), and the umbrella Neighborhood Revitalization
Initiative (White House 2011).
The Role of Data in Strengthening
Communities: A Review
As noted in chapter 1, Ahlbrandt and Brophy called for better data to guide
this growing movement in 1975, but the response was initially negligible.
One reason may have been that multi topic neighborhood-level data
did not seem essential to the bricks-and-mortar, project-by-project world
of community development at that time. Probably more important, however,
were the severe constraints that still remained on the supply side.
The technical and institutional innovations that supported producing
and sharing administrative data and building geographic information
system (GIS) capacity were not present until the late 1980s.
However, once such systems started to be built, they were used productively,
if haltingly, in various ways even in the earliest comprehensive initiatives.
Over the years, both the frequency and sophistication of data use
have increased in community work. Experience shows examples of all the
basic types of applications we introduced in chapter 4: situation analysis,
policy analysis and planning, performance management, education
and engagement, and understanding neighborhood effects and dynamics.
Most often, projects have involved two or more of these applications.
Still, even today the community revitalization field cannot be characterized
as data driven overall. Most of the practitioners and neighborhood
residents who steer these initiatives are not yet regularly using
data in these types of applications. The recent examples discussed below
suggest progress in using data, but also demonstrate the barriers still to
be overcome.
The review of experience in the remainder of this chapter discusses
uses of data in recent neighborhood improvement efforts that
illustrate themes that the authors judge to be key elements of what
this field has accomplished and where it is headed. The review is