• DEMOCRATIZING INFORMATION: First Year Report of the National Neighborhood Indicators Project MARCH 1996 THE URBAN INSTITUTE Center for Public Finance and Housing TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . i CONTEXT.. .............................................. ii THE PLANNING PERIOD: CONCLUSIONS . iii THE NATIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD INDICATORS PROJECT . vi CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION ................................................ 1 INITIATION AND THE WORK OF THE PLANNING PERIOD ... 1 Concept and Initiation . 1 Summary of Planning Period Activities . .... 3 STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT . 5 Part !-Findings and Conclusions of the Planning '-'"",.,,.,rt 5 .8 The 1990s: A More Promising Environment 8 REFERENCES . 11 First I - FINDINGS AND THE PLANNING CHAPTER 2 - PARTNER-CITY INSTITUTIONS ................................... 13 The Atlanta Project . 13 The Boston Foundation, Persistent Poverty Project ....... 14 Center for Urban Poverty and Social Change, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland ......... 15 The Piton Foundation, Denver . ............ 16 The Providence Plan . ....... ........... 17 The Urban Strategies Council, Oakland . .. .. 19 The Woodstock Institute and the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago . ............. 19 Common Features . ... 21 REFERENCES . 22 CHAPTER 3- NNJP PARTNERS' CURRENT DATA SYSTEMS ...................... 24 DEFINITIONS AND APPROACHES: INDICATORS, NEIGHBORHOODS, AND GIS SYSTEMS . 24 Indicators and Benchmarking . .......... 24 The Importance of Neighborhood Data . , . 26 A Pragmatic Approach to Defining Neighborhoods . 27 Geographic Information Systems (GIS) . 30 CURRENT SYSTEMS: DEVELOPMENT AND CONTENT . 31 Data Selection and System Building . 31 Data from the Decennial U.S. Census . 33 Administrative Data Sources 34 Surveys and Inventories 40 REFERENCES PARTNER-CITY APPLICATIONS, FUNCTIONS, AND Information-Led Collaboration Entrepreneurial Impartiality ... 49 The of the One-Stop Shop . 50 City-Wide Initiatives . 60 Agencies/Service Providers . .. 63 Communities . .. 67 The Private Sector . ....... 68 Researchers .. 70 OPERATING COSTS ... ...... '' .. ' ....... ' .... ' ... ' ..... 70 The Composition of Project Costs . ...... 71 Total Costs . 75 Conclusions . ......................... 76 REFERENCES . '.' .... ' .. 77 CHAPTER 5 - ENHANCING NEIGHBORHOOD INDICA TOR SYSTEMS ............... 80 PRINCIPLES FOR SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT . ............ 81 Data vs. Indicators: Avoiding Narrow Conceptions ........................... 81 Defining Types of Indicators Depending on the Use at Hand . .... 82 The Importance of an Asset Orientation . ............. 82 Qualities of Good Indicators . 84 Indexes vs. Typologies . 84 CONCEPT: A MORE COMPLETE SYSTEM OF INDICATORS ....................... 85 Attributes of a "Healthy Neighborhood" .................................... 86 System Contents . 86 Data Sources and Availability . 87 PRIORITIES FOR ENHANCING NNIP PARTNER SYSTEMS . 88 and Community Economic Development . 98 Community Assets: Social, Cultural, and Civic . 99 Broader Potentials . 100 PROSPECTS FOR A NATIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD INDICATORS DATA SYSTEM . 100 Concept and Technical Feasibility . 101 Contents and An Asset Orientation . 101 The Potential Uses of NNIDS 1 CHAPTER 6 INTERESTS AND CAPACITIES IN OTHER CITIES ...... 110 SURVEY "INDICATOR READINESS" IN MAJOR CITIES 110 Survey Respondents and Questions 110 Summary of Results 112 Barriers and the Potential Role for NNIP .. 116 SURVEY FINDINGS BY CITY . 118 Baltimore, MD . 118 Birmingham, AL . .. .. .. 118 Cincinnati, OH . 119 Columbus, OH . 119 Dallas, TX . ...... 120 Dayton, OH . 120 Detroit, Ml . ............ 121 Ft. Lauderdale, FL . 121 Honolulu, HI . 121 Houston, TX . ................... ........... 122 Indianapolis, IN . 123 Jacksonville, FL . ...... 123 Kansas City, MO/KS . ..... 124 Los Angeles, CA . .. 125 Memphis, TN . ............ 125 Miami, FL . ..... 125 Milwaukee, WI . ..... 126 Minneapolis, MN . ..... 126 New Haven. CT . ............. 127 New Orleans, LA . ................ 128 New York, NY . 128 Norfolk. VA . 129 Philadelphia, PA . ......... 129 Phoenix, AZ....... .............. 130 Pittsburgh, PA . ............ 130 Portland, OR . ....... 131 Rochester, NY .... 132 StLouis, MO Salt Lake REFERENCES CHAPTER 7- FACILITATING LOCAL USE OF NATIONAL DATA SETS ............. 138 WHY RELEVANT DATA SETS ARE UNDERUTILIZED . 138 The U.S. Census ... 138 The American Housing Survey (AHS) . ....... 139 Other Data Sets . 141 APPROACH: METROPOLITAN PROFILES ................................ 141 The Concept of Metropolitan Area Profiles . 142 Construction and Content . 142 Interpretation: The Start of Inquiry-Not the Answers . ......... 144 REFERENCES .................................................... 144 PART II- PLANS FOR PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION CHAPTER 8- PLANNING FOR NNIP IMPLEMENTATION ......................... 149 PURPOSES AND OVERVIEW ............................................... 150 Purposes . 150 Planned Activities: Overview . ............ 151 APPROACH AND SCHEDULE: DEVELOPMENT . ...... 152 APPROACH AND SCHEDULE: DISSEMINATION AND CAPACITY BUILDING .......... 154 Establishing the Network and Basic Dissemination . 154 Technical Assistance and Capacity Building . 155 National Awareness and Continuing the National Network . 156 PROJECT STAFFING AND MANAGEMENT . 156 Project Management . .. 156 The Project Team . 157 Project Oversight . 157 ANNEX A - BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARIES: NNIP TEAM ... .... 167 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This report presents the work of the planning period of the National Neighborhood Indicators Project (NNIP). It documents the emergence of what we judge to be important new local capacities in the use of information in addressing the problems and opportunities of America's urban communities. The potential is there, but it is not likely to be taken advantage of automatically. We suggest an approach for enhancing current techniques and capabilities and for facilitating their application in a much broader array of cities. Although the report itself was compiled by Urban Institute staff, primary credit should go to our partners in seven cities whose work forms the basis for our optimism about the role of neighborhood level information in advancing social change. Their past accomplishments, and their ideas about how this field might be best advanced, underlie our central conclusions and recommendations. They include: David S. Sawicki (Atlanta), Charlotte Kahn and Glenn Pierce (Boston), Malcolm Bush and Robert Goerge (Chicago), Claudia J. Coulton (Cleveland), Terri J. Bailey (Denver), Joaquin Herranz (Oakland), and Pat McGuigan and Jack Combs (Providence). a National Neighborhood Indicators Data also serves as the project's Administrative Coordinator. designed and conducted the survey of neighborhood information system interests and capabilities in other cities and authored the chapter on the results. Maris Mikelsons developed materials on the potentials of the American Housing to to of their data sets, on their the sites. Talton Ray, George C. Galster, Harry Hatry, and George E. Peterson all provided many helpful comments and valuable guidance as the work was underway. Ware did an admirable job in report formatting and production. Finally, we express our thanks to the representatives of funders, national interest groups, federal agencies, and local affiliates who participated in our planning committee meetings. The authors, of course, bear full responsibility for the findings and conclusions documented herein, but the ideas and suggestions of these participants have had important impacts on our thinking in virtually all phases of the work. Representatives of our funders who participated include: Nick Bollman, Craig Howard and Dennis Collins of The James Irvine Foundation; George Knight, Esmael Baku, and Hubert Guest of the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation; Lisa Linowes of the Surdna Foundation; Susan Motley of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Joan Shigekawa and Mary Rubin of The Rockefeller Foundation; Janet Thompson of Citibank; James Wagele of the Ban kAme rica Foundation; and Garland Yates, Robert Zdnek, and Bill O'Hare of The Annie E. Casey Foundation. Attendees representing a national agencies and interest groups and local affiliates include: Don Chen and Jeff Allen, Surface Transportation Policy Project; Rick Cohen, Local Initiatives Support Corporation; Steve Costa, Oakland Sharing the Vision; Pat Costigan, Enterprise Foundation; Angela Duran, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Herbert L. Green, Jr, National League of Cities; Barbara Allen-Hagen and Joan Hurley, U.S. Department of Justice; Jim Haye, Oakland Community Partnership; Maureen Hellwig, Erie Neighborhood House; Betty Herrera, Westside Neighborhood Leadership Initiative, Denver; Kevin Kelly, National Congress for Community Economic Development; Joan Kennedy, City of Hampton, VA; Robert McNulty and Phil Walsh, Partners for Livable Communities; Andy Mott, Center for Community Change; Ron Prevost, U.S. Bureau of the Census; Barbara Puis, National Council of State Legislatures: Ronald Register, Cleveland Community-Building Initiative; Margery A Turner and Paul Gatons. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Chuck Wilson and Merrie Nichols-Dixon. U.S. General Accounting Office. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The National Neighborhood Indicators Project (NNIP) is a multi-year initiative, designed to develop indicators of the changing social, physical, and economic conditions of neighborhoods in America's cities and to apply them in support of comprehensive community building. It.