2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

Using Data for Neighborhood Improvement 187
context, community is taken account of to make policies and programs
more relevant, responsive, and effective. As organizing principle, community
is seen as the unit of planning and action toward which policy
is directed, for which programs are developed, around which strategic
goals are established, and through which activities and services are provided
(Chaskin 2002).
This dual orientation to neighborhood informs a focus on data as
essential both to understanding context and to informing and assessing
the effects of action. These efforts also take place within a broader
embrace of what might be called the empirical imperative: the increasing
push toward evidence-based policy and practice and toward datadriven
planning in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors (Briggs
and Rzepnicki 2004; Davies, Nutley, and Smith 2000; Grantmakers for
Effective Organizations 2004; Reid 1994, 2002). Finally, these efforts are
often informed by notions about the relationship between information
and empowerment, about the ways in which democratizing data
by increasing access to information and community actors’ capacity to
use it can allow communities to enhance reflective practice and to harness
the power of data for their own purposes (Sawicki and Craig 1996;
Schön 1983).
As the outline of these orientations already begins to suggest, the value
of neighborhood data and analysis are invoked for a range of uses. They
can be used as a planning tool to help clarify goals and identify needs and
opportunities that can be translated into action. Neighborhood-level
data have served in this capacity at least since the Progressive era (with
more or less emphasis over time), when community-mapping research
was conducted by settlement workers, such as those associated with Hull
House, to provide demographic and social-needs assessment information
that could inform both service provision and advocacy activities
(Addams 1895). Neighborhood data also can be used for outreach and
engagement, in which data collection serves the reciprocal purpose of
collecting information and involving neighborhood residents in identifying
priorities, assessing community assets, and recruiting participants
in community-change activities (Kretzmann and McKnight 1993). Youth
mapping projects, for example, have sought to mobilize young people to
collect information about their neighborhoods in ways that provide useful
information not available from existing data sources, build skills and
commitment among participating youth, and provide youth employment
(Kaufman 2011).