Building and Operating Neighborhood Indicator Systems

Building and Operating Neighborhood Indicator Systems:

A Guidebook

G. Thomas Kingsley, Editor March 1999

National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership THE URBAN INSTITUTE

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

CONTENTS

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

THE NATIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD INDICATORS PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Concept and Initial Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 NNIP Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

ORGANIZATION AND SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Social Indicators: History and Key Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 NNIP Partner Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Building a Neighborhood Indicators System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Using a Neighborhood Indicators System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Costs and Prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

CHAPTER 2: SOCIAL INDICATORS: HISTORY AND KEY CONCEPTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

SOCIAL INDICATORS: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 1960?75: An Idea That Came Too Early . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 1975?90: Waning Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 The 1990s: A More Promising Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

DEFINITIONS AND APPROACHES: INDICATORS, BENCHMARKS, NEIGHBORHOODS, AND GIS SYSTEMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Indicators and Benchmarking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 The Importance of Neighborhood Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 A Pragmatic Approach to Defining Neighborhoods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Geographic Information Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

ANNEX: GEOCODING SOFTWARE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

CHAPTER 3: NNIP PARTNER INSTITUTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

The Atlanta Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 The Boston Foundation, Persistent Poverty Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change,

Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The Piton Foundation, Denver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 The Providence Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 The Urban Strategies Council, Oakland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Common Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

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