Abstract
This chapter describes the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), a network of “information intermediaries” in 34 cities that develop and maintain neighborhood-level data warehouses. Their common mission is to make the data broadly available and help local stakeholders, particularly the residents of distressed neighborhoods, use the data themselves to achieve their goals more effectively. The chapter first reviews the types of NNIP institutions (primarily civic groups and university centers) and the range of their local administrative data. It then discusses how NNIP data are used to advance community interests by (1) comprehensively reviewing the well-being of the community, (2) addressing strategic issues, (3) and serving as the basis for program evaluation. It illustrates these themes by providing brief case studies from three NNIP partners in New Orleans, Cleveland, and Providence. The chapter concludes by describing the work of the partnership as a whole and implications for national policy.
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Notes
- 1.
These groups had all been a part of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Community Planning and Action Program, which, under the leadership of James O. Gibson of the Foundation, gave special emphasis to data development and use in all of its sites.
- 2.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation has been the leading funder of NNIP since it began. The Rockefeller and Fannie Mae Foundations have also provided substantial support. For more information about NNIP, see http://www.urban.org/nnip.
- 3.
See Coulton (2008) for a comprehensive review of local administrative data files that are available in most communities.
- 4.
The public can obtain HMDA files from the FFIEC (http://www.ffiec.gov/hmda). Also see Pettit and Droesch (2008).
- 5.
For IRS files see (http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=98123,00.html). Business pattern data are found at (http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/zbp_base.html). NCES data can be accessed at (http://www.nces.ed.gov/ccd/).
- 6.
This program was initiated to provide the content for the Fannie Mae Foundation’s DataPlace web portal, but is continuing independently to provide more complete data to NNIP partners, researchers, and local planning organizations.
- 7.
For more examples of comprehensive community indicator initiatives outside of NNIP, see the Community Indicators Consortium (CIC) at http://www.communityindicators.net.
- 8.
See http://www.thewilliamsinstitute.org/ (Dallas) and http://www.communitiescount.org/ (Seattle).
- 9.
For more information, see the Reentry Mapping Network web site at http://reentrymapping.org.
- 10.
The Valassis Residential and Business Database is an address-level listing of addressing actively receiving mail which we purchased in order to display these counts at the block level.
- 11.
Before teaming with GNOCDC, the Brookings Institution solely produced the Katrina Index as a monthly report from December 2005 to December 2006. The partnership began in January 2007, and the project was renamed the New Orleans Index in August of that year.
- 12.
The Rhode Island Family Life Center was renamed OpenDoors in January 2010.
- 13.
For more information about SII, see http://www.neighborhoodprogress.org/cnppsii.php.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
See the NNIP site to access the tools and guides at http://www2.urban.org/nnip/publications.html
- 17.
For more information on the LISC Sustainable Communities program, see http://lisc.org/section/ourwork/sc.
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Kingsley, G.T., Pettit, K.L. (2011). Quality of Life at a Finer Grain: The National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership. In: Sirgy, M., Phillips, R., Rahtz, D. (eds) Community Quality-of-Life Indicators: Best Cases V. Community Quality-of-Life Indicators, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0535-7_4
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