2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

222 Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data
neighborhood data can advance the process. This awareness requires
knowing the potential audiences for the information and being positioned
to provide the data in a timely fashion when they can make a difference.
Chapter 2 describes how NNIP partners are embedded in their
communities and are entrepreneurial in this regard, identifying issues
for which data would enhance the policy debate or decisionmaking. By
virtue of their knowledge of the neighborhoods and data availability,
they are often at the table and able to steer the discussion toward the
role that data can play in formulating strategies and solutions. Foremost
on their agenda is assuring that the policy or issue under discussion is
informed by an appreciation of the variation among neighborhoods and
the values of community engagement and equity.
Local actors organize their efforts for community change in different
ways. The next two sections review common approaches that rely on
neighborhood-level indicators to motivate stakeholders, target resources,
and inform policy and program responses. The following section offers
three case studies from Austin and Dallas, Texas, and Camden, New
Jersey, that all involve using neighborhood data to address local concerns,
describing the players, strategies, and results to date.
Community Indicators Projects
Community indicators projects represent one approach for using neighborhood
indicators to motivate collective priorities and action. Organizers
of community indicators projects select indicators that relate to a set
of community goals. These projects may span topical domains with a
lens of measuring quality of life or sustainability. Others may focus on
assessing the well-being of a particular group, like children or the elderly,
or on a sector, such as health or arts and culture.
The selection process may be conducted in a relatively short amount
of time by a small advisory committee or be designed to engage broader
segments of the community as well as subject matter experts. The projects
aim to update the indicators recurrently (most often annually or
biannually) and sponsor a periodic review by stakeholders on whether
things are getting better or worse.
The projects vary on how closely they are linked to policy or program
decisions. The design of the review process may incorporate developing
action plans to “move the needle” on certain indicators. Other projects
may serve to raise awareness of conditions and trends generally, but in