2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

Institutional Context 69
embedded into other websites, blogs, and social media, making them
not just easily sharable but accessible to everyone. CURA maintains one
such application. Through it, users can view characteristics of housing
and other socioeconomic variables by neighborhood in both Minneapolis
and Saint Paul. Most of the metropolitan counties maintain webmapping
applications to disseminate public information, such as the
legal characteristics of properties within their boundaries and the locations
of recent crimes. Some of these counties are even creating applications
designed for mobile phones. Carver County’s phone app, for
example, provides on-the-go users with information related to trail locations
and other active-living events in that area. 13
Finally, to draw on the collective intelligence of a cross section of
community-oriented problem solvers, local governments in the Twin Cities
region have begun to host collaborative problem-solving events called
hack-a-thons and code challenges. These events bring together a diverse
group of community members (e.g., programmers, data providers, and
community activists) and charge them with working toward the common
goal of creating useful applications, visualizations, and tools for
public consumption. To heighten the likelihood of producing something
worthwhile, these activities are compressed events that transpire over a
short period of time, such as a weekend or a long day (or even just eight
hours). These events underscore the value of making use of public data.
As a case in point, various sponsors, including the Minneapolis-based
McKnight Foundation, helped CURA host Visualizing Neighborhoods,
an eight-hour hackathon that convened data visualizers, designers, artists,
scientists, civil servants, and neighborhood leaders to “explore how
data can be used for research, analysis, mapping, outreach, engagement,
and communication” in neighborhoods throughout the Twin Cities.
The goal of the event was to initiate dialogue, strengthen communities,
experiment with data, and design prototype projects for neighborhoods.
Community data were central to this entire process. 14
Remaining Barriers
From the formation of the Land Management Information Center more
than 35 years ago to the web applications and hack-a-thons debuting
today, the data-sharing environment in the Twin Cities continues to
advance rapidly. Still, despite the seemingly open data policies of some