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Measuring neighborhood distress: A tool for place-based urban revitalization strategies
Abstract
The United States federal administration's recent Promise Neighborhood and Choice Neighborhood initiatives are part of increasing calls for place-based strategies in the delivery of education and human services in inner cities. Within this new policy context, measures of community-level inequality emerge as a key tool for identifying places which manifest relatively high levels of social and economic distress and where this condition places acute pressures on local service-delivery nonprofits. Measuring and spatially showing levels of neighborhood social and economic distress can enhance our understandings of the needs associated with low-income communities and facilitate civic engagement in the development of neighborhood-based responses. A “neighborhood distress score” can be generated and used to target services into urban areas but can also encourage greater resident civic participation. This score is based on the variables identified in the literature and input from community and civic leaders in Boston, MA.
... 21 To select one or more suitable locations from this longlist, we then needed to define a set of socio-spatial suitability criteria. To determine these, we studied criteria in the literature on affordable housing location methods [Ackerson, 2013;Aldrich and Crook, 2013;Jennings, 2012 [Ackerson, 2013]. Another tool for place-based urban revitalisation strategies, the neighbourhood distress score, includes public safety variables in addition to housing, education, employment, poverty, and income levels [Jennings, 2012]. ...
... To determine these, we studied criteria in the literature on affordable housing location methods [Ackerson, 2013;Aldrich and Crook, 2013;Jennings, 2012 [Ackerson, 2013]. Another tool for place-based urban revitalisation strategies, the neighbourhood distress score, includes public safety variables in addition to housing, education, employment, poverty, and income levels [Jennings, 2012]. Finally, the Housing Suitability Model (HSM), developed by the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies, the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, and the GeoPlan Center, recognises that objectives can conflict with each other. ...
In recent years, many cities have begun experimenting with the temporary use of “waiting spaces” as a tool for upgrading the city. A variety of temporary initiatives have emerged. Some civil society organisations see this as an opportunity to address the pressing demand for more and higher quality affordable housing. But how does this work in practice? This paper describes and evaluates the location-finding process developed for the Solidary Mobile Housing Pilot Project, part of an ongoing participatory action research project for the co-creation of temporary housing on urban waiting spaces with and for homeless people. Based on this experience and knowledge exchanges with key experts and field actors, we are assessing the possibilities and limitations of using un(der)used spaces to provide an immediate (although partial and short-term) answer to the current affordable housing crisis through the provision of temporary housing with and for vulnerable people in the Brussels-Capital Region.
... 21 To select one or more suitable locations from this longlist, we then needed to define a set of socio-spatial suitability criteria. To determine these, we studied criteria in the literature on affordable housing location methods [Ackerson, 2013;Aldrich and Crook, 2013;Jennings, 2012 [Ackerson, 2013]. Another tool for place-based urban revitalisation strategies, the neighbourhood distress score, includes public safety variables in addition to housing, education, employment, poverty, and income levels [Jennings, 2012]. ...
... To determine these, we studied criteria in the literature on affordable housing location methods [Ackerson, 2013;Aldrich and Crook, 2013;Jennings, 2012 [Ackerson, 2013]. Another tool for place-based urban revitalisation strategies, the neighbourhood distress score, includes public safety variables in addition to housing, education, employment, poverty, and income levels [Jennings, 2012]. Finally, the Housing Suitability Model (HSM), developed by the Shimberg Center for Housing Studies, the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, and the GeoPlan Center, recognises that objectives can conflict with each other. ...
In recent years, many cities have begun experimenting with the temporary use of “waiting spaces” as a tool for upgrading the city. A variety of temporary initiatives have emerged. Some civil society organisations see this as an opportunity to address the pressing demand for more and higher quality affordable housing. But how does this work in practice? This paper describes and evaluates the location-finding process developed for the Solidary Mobile Housing Pilot Project, part of an ongoing participatory action research project for the co-creation of temporary housing on urban waiting spaces with and for homeless people. Based on this experience and knowledge exchanges with key experts and field actors, we are assessing the possibilities and limitations of using un(der)used spaces to provide an immediate (although partial and short-term) answer to the current affordable housing crisis through the provision of temporary housing with and for vulnerable people in the Brussels-Capital Region.
... The tradition in policy is to rely on standard measures of socioeconomic status such as the poverty rate or median household income (Brazil and Portier, 2022). In contrast, opportunity mapping consolidates multiple variables derived from publicly available data sources into single composite indices, where the upper and lower bounds of an index correspond to the highest and lowest opportunity levels in a region (Jennings, 2012;Knaap, 2017). Although sharing in this multivariate approach, applications of opportunity mapping vary widely across a number of factors, including their intended use, geographic scale, and the number and types of variables included in the model. ...
... Third, we focused on five opportunity measures, but others exist, and continue to be developed, even within California. Most of these measures are city, region or state specific (Jennings, 2012;Walter et al., 2018), and thus were not included in this study because of its California statewide focus. Future work examining other opportunity measures, and more generally, comparing the statistical methods to measuring opportunity, is needed. ...
Backed by decades of empirical research, there has been increasing acknowledgment in policy, practice and research of the importance of neighborhood opportunity in shaping well-being. This has led to the proliferation of opportunity maps in cities throughout the United States with the purpose of identifying low opportunity neighborhoods in need of investment and intervention and high opportunity neighborhoods that can offer access to resources and amenities to disadvantaged population groups. By explicitly linking investment to the identification of neighborhoods that are high or low in opportunity, opportunity indices have the potential to help transform local and regional landscapes of spatial inequality. Despite this common goal, indices rely on varying theoretical conceptualizations, data, variables, and statistical approaches. How much these opportunity definitions overlap has yet to be fully examined. In this study, we compared five approaches to measuring neighborhood opportunity in California. We found low to moderate overlap across the indices, with disagreement higher for low opportunity designations. As with any quantitative analysis, opportunity mapping is not a purely technical exercise and requires a series of subjective decisions. The only way to validate these decisions is for opportunity measures to be constructed transparently and vetted by the research community. This study is a first step in this process.
... Il s'agissait de parcourir la ville afin de recenser des lieux inoccupés ou sous-exploités, de contacter Organization of Johnson County, l'accent est mis sur l'évaluation de la diversité dans les écoles élémentaires, car les conditions de vie associées à la pauvreté sont considérées comme un obstacle à l'apprentissage des élèves [Ackerson, 2013]. Autre outil favorisant l'élaboration de stratégies de revitalisation urbaine basées sur le lieu, le « neighbourhood distress score » (score de détresse du quartier) intègre des variables relatives à la sécurité publique en plus des niveaux de logement, d'éducation, d'emploi, de pauvreté et de revenu [Jennings, 2012] 25 Notre analyse documentaire nous ayant appris qu'il fallait utiliser une méthode de sélection au cas par cas plutôt qu'une méthode générale et normative, nous avons décidé d'adopter une approche basée sur des scénarios pour la deuxième étape de la méthode de tri progressif. En collaboration avec les étudiants en architecture de la KU Leuven, nous avons d'abord organisé un atelier avec nos partenaires afin de mettre au point plusieurs scénarios possibles de sélection de sites à partir de notre analyse documentaire des méthodes de détermination des lieux propices à l'implantation de logements abordables (figure 5). ...
In recent years, many cities have begun experimenting with the temporary use of “waiting spaces” as a tool for upgrading the city. A variety of temporary initiatives have emerged. Some civil society organisations see this as an opportunity to address the pressing demand for more and higher quality affordable housing. But how does this work in practice? This paper describes and evaluates the location-finding process developed for the Solidary Mobile Housing Pilot Project, part of an ongoing participatory action research project for the co-creation of temporary housing on urban waiting spaces with and for homeless people. Based on this experience and knowledge exchanges with key experts and field actors, we are assessing the possibilities and limitations of using un(der)used spaces to provide an immediate (although partial and short-term) answer to the current affordable housing crisis through the provision of temporary housing with and for vulnerable people in the Brussels-Capital Region.
... In shrinking cities, geographic targeting prioritizes efficiency and directs limited resources to select areas (Thomson, 2008). As a place-based approach, targeting strategies focus on reinvesting in physical fabric to bolster socioeconomic outcomes (Jennings, 2012). However, the market-based criteria that accompany targeting programs favor so-called middle neighborhoods, as they "concentrate government investment for the purpose of maximizing spillover investments from nongovernmental sources" (Thomson, 2011, p. 590). ...
In shrinking cities, commercial district decline has mirrored other patterns of depopulation and deindustrialization. Uneven development has emerged as the prevailing spatial pattern for shrinking cities in recent decades. Cleveland’s Storefront Renovation Program (SRP) is a local historic preservation-based strategy focused on improving commercial corridors. In this paper, we investigate whether the urban geography of the SRP aligns with theories of uneven development in shrinking cities. Using address-level data of projects and investments from 1983 to 2016, we analyze the spatial distribution using hot spot analysis, the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, and a neighborhood typology. Overall, we find the SRP program moderately contributed to uneven development, and increasingly so in recent decades, with clear clusters of investment in gentrifying neighborhoods and downtown Cleveland, while also supporting reinvestment in White, working-class areas early in its history.
... As much as anything, ABCD is a process of reframing a community in terms of the resources that are already at handwith the intention of using these resources as the basis for collective action. ABCD can thus be considered as one of the strength-based approaches that can be found in a range of fields, including the strengths perspective in Social Work (e.g., Saleebey 2008); positive psychology in Psychology (e.g., Seligman 2004) and appreciative inquiry in Organizational Change (e.g., Cooperrider and Whitney 2005 Jennings (2012) notes that "place-based strategies for improving urban living conditions are gaining increasing attention" (p. 464) and are particularly complementary to the asset-based community development approach. ...
Community practice has been an important area in social work practice since the beginning of the profession. In many countries of the world, social workers work with communities, empowering them to develop sustainability and strength. In North America, society generally has high mobility, low interpersonal support from family and friends, and high levels of social isolation. Social work practice tends to focus on individual work and social work education favors clinical social work practice. Neo-liberal policies have affected social development by focusing on economic stability to the detriment of the development of people and communities, with communities experiencing the consequences of a society focused more on the individual than the collective. This chapter focuses on capacity development in a geographical community to illustrate the growing desire to mobilize and strengthen local communities in Canada. In Edmonton, Alberta, community development has long been an important part of overall city development, through community leagues and support from the City of Edmonton’s Citizen Services Department. Over 35 neighborhoods are now engaged in Edmonton’s Abundant Community Initiative, locally known as Abundant Community Edmonton (ACE), which combines the asset-based community development approach with a place-based community approach, offering a unique social development outcome for Edmonton. This chapter will describe ACE in general and the experience of a Block Connector in an Edmonton neighborhood in particular, and will discuss the issues surrounding this type of community development and ways forward for future practice with communities.
... The severity of these problems vary from neighborhood to neighborhood (Guerrieri, Hartley & Hurst 2012;Jennings 2012;Silverman, Yin & Patterson 2013). Revitalization of distressed neighborhoods is a complex issue that often brings with it a wide range of challenges and controversies; discussion of which is well beyond the scope of this paper. ...
In recent decades, the number of craft breweries in the United States has increased dramatically, increasing from around a thousand in 1996 to over six thousand today. In order to minimize start-up and initial operating costs, many craft breweries have located in older buildings in economically distressed neighborhoods. Craft breweries are particularly adept at engaging in adaptive reuse, with the result that they occupy buildings that were previously once churches, cinemas, fire stations, etc. This investment by craft breweries, in conjunction with investment by other businesses (as well as the public sector), has resulted in the revitalization of many of these neighborhoods. Neighborhoods that were once full of abandoned buildings and suffered from social problems such as high crime rates have become destinations for residents and tourists alike. At the same time, however, there is a dark side to this neighborhood revitalization as rising real estate values has forced many established, often low-income, residents to leave these neighborhoods. In this paper, I examine the growth of the craft brewing in the United States and the preference of many craft breweries for inexpensive building space in economically distressed neighborhoods.
... However, Guidi and Andretta (2015) point out that GDP is not the only explanatory factor; social capital and tradition in political cooperation should also be considered. Similarly, Cruz et al. (2017) look into social innovation at the local level (municipalities and intermunicipality cooperation) in Catalonia and conclude that these initiatives mostly occur not in those areas with more pressing social needs but in middle-income areas with a tradition of social mobilization (see also Jennings, 2012). ...
The aim of this Special Issue is to offer new systematic analyses on European alternative (non)economic solidarity practices since the global financial crisis, that have attracted limited media and scholarly attention. Its seven articles are devoted to multidimensional analyses providing complementary perspectives on alternative action organizations across Europe and rest on Action Organization Analysis, a new hubs-website approach extending Protest Event Analysis. They deal with the emergence and continuity of alternative action organizations in different contexts, while they focus on its multiple tactics and the ways in which they address crisis-related needs under diverse conditions of vulnerability and hardship. Our contributions rely on original data produced in the context of Work Package 6 of the EU-funded FP7 project “Living with Hard Times: How Citizens React to Economic Crises and Their Social and Political Consequences” (LIVEWHAT), conducted across nine European countries.
... However, Guidi and Andretta (2015) point out that GDP is not the only explanatory factor; social capital and tradition in political cooperation should also be considered. Similarly, Cruz et al. (2017) look into social innovation at the local level (municipalities and intermunicipality cooperation) in Catalonia and conclude that these initiatives mostly occur not in those areas with more pressing social needs but in middle-income areas with a tradition of social mobilization (see also Jennings, 2012). ...
Solidarity alternatives have emerged as the response of organized social activists to periods of economic hardship all over the world, in different times. This article explores to what extent such activities have emerged across European regions following the financial crisis of 2008. Research has addressed the relationship between the economic context and the emergence of alternative action groups, tracing their spatial variation, but few works offer systematic comparative data at the regional level. This article offers a spatial overview of temporal changes among 2,600 Alternative Action Organizations (AAOs) at the regional level in nine European countries, before and after 2008. It also provides evidence of how the number of AAOs and their focus on the most needy change as a function of the intensity of the crisis and its effect on the poor and unemployed. We find no differences between countries either in terms of the number of emerging AAOs nor in their capacity to refocus their attention on the most needy, due to the intensity or type of crisis. We thus confirm existing research that explains alternative action as a response to crisis within the context of resourced and experienced social action organizations rather than as a direct reaction to economic hardship. Our results provide comprehensive evidence across multiple contexts showing that social resilience through alternative action is not produced directly by contextual distress but seems to be mediated by existing resources. This is relevant to understanding the mechanisms behind the widely acknowledged claim that alternative economies arise in contexts of economic crisis.
... Scholars and practitioners have drawn from the opportunity neighborhoods framework and attempted to develop housing suitability models for use in the siting of affordable housing (Ackerson, 2013;HUD, 2013;Jennings, 2012;Thompson, Arafat, O'Dell, Steiner, & Zwick, 2012;Wang, Blanco, Kim, Chung, Ray, Arafat, O'Dell, & Thompson, 2012). Much of this work has been influenced by the opportunity mapping approach developed at the Kirwin Institute (Powell, 2002;Powell, Reece, & Gambhir, 2005;Powell et al., 2007;Reece, Rogers, Gambhir, & Powell, 2008). ...
In this article, we examine the content and structure of the new affirmatively furthering fair housing mapping tool (AFFH-T) developed by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as part of its new assessment of fair housing (AFH) process. Our analysis is focused on the degree to which the data included in the AFFH-T is suitable for the development of plans to site affordable housing in opportunity neighborhoods, and the utility of this tool as a public participation GIS (PPGIS) platform. Our analysis highlights strengths and weaknesses of the AFFH-T and we offer recommendations for its further development.
... While concepts like "community schools" and "place-based strategies" and "school-centered community revitalization" have been defined in the practitioner-oriented literature (e.g. Children 's Aid Society, 2013;Jennings, 2012;Kronick, 2005;Khadduri, Schwartz, & Turnham, 2008), "place-based school reform" has evaded such a clear conceptualization. The purpose of the paper is for university stakeholders to have a clearer sense of how they might actually go about co-designing a school improvement strategy that is in coordination with (or, is linked to) a neighborhood development strategy. ...
In this article, a layered conceptual framework for " place-based school reform " is presented as a way to link the concept of school reform and neighborhood development. Because many universities have been involved in community-school-university partnerships, the university community engagement literature will be connected to this increasingly attractive concept that seeks to both improve academic outcomes and to link a schooling system to a neighborhood. Implications for universities seeking to co-create urban shared spaces are discussed.
... From the above, it is clear that 'placebased' concepts are deployed in distinctive and not necessarily consistent ways; often informed by opaque conceptualisations and the operationalization of these concepts can lack precision . For example, some deploy the term to refer primarily to neighbourhood-based interventions (Jennings, 2012), others equate placebased measures with a specific scale of activity, such as the local level (Huggins and Clifton, 2011), whereas some provide little, if any, explanation of their use of the concept. With this in mind, we deploy the term 'modality' to draw attention to the different modes by which placebased forms of development are conceptualised and operationalised. ...
The policy field of regional development is perennially faced with new challenges and, as a result, it continues to evolve. More recently, according to some researchers there has been an important transformation or change in emphasis in the character of regional development. Some have characterised this qualitative transformation as a shift from an 'old' paradigm of regional development that sought to compensate lagging regions to a 'new' paradigm, commonly labelled 'place-based development', which attests that all places can grow when policymaking is attuned to spatial particularities. Nevertheless, recognition that all places exhibit potential to grow and develop does little to advance longstanding debates about how to go about realising inherent possibilities specific to particular places. This paper aims to provide an exposition of this new paradigm of regional development to help to (i) enhance our understanding of contemporary modes of regional development; (ii) develop a clearer understanding of its progressive potentials alongside some unresolved tensions; and (iii) identify practical matters when implementing place-based principles.
... Cities are places where, through the urbanization of nature, uneven and often debilitating and damaging socionatural relations of power work together at the detriment of socially vulnerable groups (Heynen 2014). The analysis of the spatialization of (environmental) inequality is critical so that planners are able to apprehend the evolution of the spatial distribution of neighborhood distress and the various structural and systematic processes that have created and recreated such distress over time (Jennings 2012). ...
As marginalized neighborhoods benefit from cleanup and environmental amenities often brought by municipal sustainability planning, recent trends of land revaluation, investments, and gentrification are posing a conundrum and paradox for environmental justice (EJ) activists. In this article, I examine the progression of the urban EJ agenda—from fighting contamination to mobilizing for environmental goods and resisting environmental gentrification—and analyze how the EJ scholarship has reflected upon the complexification of this agenda. I argue that locally unwanted land uses can be reconceptualized from contamination sources to new green amenities because of the displacement they seem to trigger or accelerate.
Community-driven development (CDD) is gaining momentum as the challenges of the top-down economic model are realized. CDD is based on the assumptions that designing and implementing entrepreneurial solutions with and by the communities could enhance efficiency in resource allocation, build capabilities and skills of the members, and lead to transformative social change. Community-based social enterprises are an example of CDD. While important, CDD is also criticized for its problematic conceptualization of community and for overlooking power dynamics in social relations. Critics argue that programs designed and implemented by and with the communities run the risk of exacerbating existing power relations if the social context is overlooked. Therefore, a key question that needs to be asked is how to navigate power relations in CDD. In this chapter, we discuss constructive work as a strategy to navigate power relations in the communities. Constructive work is a prefigurative strategy proposed by Gandhi to create a new just social order while implicitly challenging the old unjust social order. It involves the construction of social relations, practices, systems, concrete structures, and processes to resist oppression and create self-reliant communities. We provide examples to show how constructive work can be applied by scholars and practitioners.KeywordsCommunity enterprisesPrefigurationDignity of laborCommoningCultural temporalityMeans-ends equivalenceProactive long-term orientationSahyogi Mitra
Urban rapid development has created poor open spaces and fewer outdoor learning environments for children. This issue highlights the quality design of urban public and open spaces that can significantly help children's healthy growth and development. The urban plaza is one of the potential urban open spaces that positively affect the development of talent and creativity in children and develop their physical, social, emotional, and cognitive skills. As public art is an encouraging landscape medium, integrating public art in urban plazas can aid substantially in achieving this goal. The lack of a decision support tool for designing inclusive learning environments at urban plazas has persuaded us to develop the children-oriented urban plaza design (COUP) Toolkit. The COUP Toolkit is a universal tool that can aid design professionals and children's therapists in assessing and evaluating the impact of urban plaza design on children's skills growth. By applying the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method, it was found that the Urban Oasis type of urban plaza contributes the most to skills development in children (WAlt.3 = 0.336), compared to other types (i.e., street plaza, corporate foyer, transit foyer, street, and grand public place). The COUP toolkit has 14 features for designing the urban plazas embedding the public art. Applying AHP indicated that performance art (W2.2 = 0.106), interactive instrument art (W2.3 = 0.106), and spatial composition (W1.1 = 0.103) are most vital in the design of a children-oriented urban plaza. The COUP toolkit was validated through a case study, the Musical Swings (i.e., 21 Balancoires) urban plaza in Montreal, Canada. The COUP toolkit is a rating system and proposes four grading labels based on the scores earned during the assessment process: gold, silver, bronze, and not-certified. The COUP toolkit determined that Musical Swings is ranked as silver; hence, it needs minor improvements, particularly in providing fountains (WSMC2.5 = 0.57) and wading pools (WSMC2.6 = 0.60) to create a proper learning environment for children.
Sustainable Local Economic Development has been an emerging approach to economic development for more than a decade, with the goal of enhancing economic, social, and environmental sustainability. As practitioners seek and implement sustainable economic development projects, an indicator framework is needed to ensure these projects are contributing to the sustainability of the community. The purpose of this paper is to propose an indicator framework using the five principles of Sustainable Local Economic Development (SLED). Specifically, the indicator framework is designed to score historic property redevelopments that utilize Historic Tax Credits. These projects have become more prevalent in community/economic development as they provide communities an opportunity to reactivate or enhance physical assets for the purpose of development. The goal of the indicator framework is to provide practitioners the ability to analyze data related to the historic property redevelopment project and determine how well the project meets the five principles of SLED.
The intent of this study is to develop an understanding of the forces and factors that trigger and accelerate the decline of residential properties in the City of Surrey, British Columbia (BC), and to create a framework for action that can stem such decline. Identifying residential properties trending toward a distressed state is essential given the effects of declining neighbourhoods and inherent risks to the community. There are numerous implications of declining properties and neighbourhood distress which include heightened fire risk, crime and disorder, and by-law violations at or near such places.
The consumption of a place brand is an interdisciplinary science lying between tourism, marketing, economics, sociology, urban planning, sustainability and psychology which creates challenges for researchers who prefer to dwell in narrowly defined empirical studies (Papdopoulous and Heslop 2002; Fan 2006; Gilmore 2002; Prichard et al. 2011). There is a need for a polydimensional viewpoint in design of research studies. A place brand as defined by Zenker and Braun (2010: 4) is a sum of the networks of association in the consumer's mind developed from the visual, verbal and behavioural expression of a place which itself is based on the aims, communication, values, general culture of the place's stakeholders and the overall place design. To add to this complexity is the issue of mobility in tourism consumption.
Where you find distressed neighborhoods, you will also find poorly performing public schools. Yet many contemporary school reform efforts ignore neighborhood-level factors that undeniably impact school performance. The purpose of this study is to use a case study approach with social institutional and urban school reform regime frameworks to demonstrate why school reform and the re-creation and redevelopment of distressed neighborhoods should occur simultaneously. At the same time, researchers will examine the role of higher education in catalyzing partnerships with so-called anchor institutions for the explicit purposes of simultaneously improving neighborhoods and reforming schools. By focusing on a federal Choice neighborhood initiative, the study will not only make the case for connecting school reform and neighborhood development but also present a model that demonstrates how this can happen. The study will also make a strong case for the university's unique role in fostering neo-collaborative structures fit to take on wicked problems of neighborhood distress and urban decline.
This paper critiques the idea of multiculturalism in the delivery of public health to low-income and communities of color as incomplete and limited. Health activists, and very importantly, community health centers in these places must become more involved with struggles against structural inequalities. Using the theory of social determinants of health, it is proposed that the leadership of community health centers consider how spatial inequalities impact directly on the particular health needs of low-income groups and people of color. Until public health addresses inequality, higher rates of ill health and health disparities will continue to plague economically distressed urban neighborhoods in the US. Based on an earlier study for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, including a literature review and interviews with key informants, the author argues that public health is a key venue for the empowerment of inner city neighborhoods. Therefore, community health centers should be perceived and supported as community actors involved directly or indirectly with a range of economic and political issues, rather than simply the place - albeit quite multicultural - where poor and working-class people go when they are sick.
The authors develop and assess a scale of perceived neighborhood disorder. The scale of neighborhood disorder has high reliability, external validity, and shows interesting distinctions, and overlaps between physical and social disorder. It also shows that order and disorder are two ends of a single continuum.
GIS has emerged as an elitist, anti-democratic technology by virtue of its technological complexity and cost. The question of democratizing this technology has been addressed in the GIS and Society literature. This paper addresses the thorny issue of uneven access to GIS and the associated social power it confers. Following the principle that effective access to information leads to better government as well as to community empowerment, this paper explores the issues of providing equitable access to GIS at the grass-roots level. The paper discusses a university/community partnership with the distressed, inner city neighborhood of Metcalfe Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In this project, the members of an inner- city neighborhood organization were given training in GIS for accessing public information, creating new databases from their own surveys, and analyzing these databases, with the purpose of making them able and active adjuncts to the conduct of city management and the formation of public policy. The paper evaluates the successes and failures of the project. It also explores the nature of GIS usage in this resource poor community organization between 1993-2000.
: To determine which area based socioeconomic measures can meaningfully be used, at which level of geography, to monitor socioeconomic inequalities in childhood health in the US.
Cross sectional analysis of birth certificate and childhood lead poisoning registry data, geocoded and linked to diverse area based socioeconomic measures that were generated at three geographical levels: census tract, block group, and ZIP code.
Two US states: Massachusetts (1990 population=6,016,425) and Rhode Island (1990 population=1,003,464).
All births born to mothers ages 15 to 55 years old who were residents of either Massachusetts (1989-1991; n=267,311) or Rhode Island (1987-1993; n=96 138), and all children ages 1 to 5 years residing in Rhode Island who were screened for lead levels between 1994 and 1996 (n=62,514 children, restricted to first test during the study period).
Analyses of both the birth weight and lead data indicated that: (a) block group and tract socioeconomic measures performed similarly within and across both states, while ZIP code level measures tended to detect smaller effects; (b) measures pertaining to economic poverty detected stronger gradients than measures of education, occupation, and wealth; (c) results were similar for categories generated by quintiles and by a priori categorical cut off points; and (d) the area based socioeconomic measures yielded estimates of effect equal to or augmenting those detected, respectively, by individual level educational data for birth outcomes and by the area based housing measure recommended by the US government for monitoring childhood lead poisoning.
Census tract or block group area based socioeconomic measures of economic deprivation could be meaningfully used in conjunction with US public health surveillance systems to enable or enhance monitoring of social inequalities in health in the United States.
For well over two decades, the public health community has undertaken a broad range of initiatives to identify and eliminate various health-related disparities among populations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Office on Smoking and Health (OSH), for example, has committed resources to help states eliminate population disparities related to tobacco use. These initiatives have enjoyed a degree of success and some measurable decreases in population disparities. However, traditional public health approaches that are overly influenced by reductionist paradigms more content with risk factor assessment of at-risk strata may not be sufficient to produce successful results when applied to more intractable disparities. The elimination of disparities will require a more encompassing and comprehensive approach that addresses both population strata at risk and the communities in which they reside. This article proposes a new, concentrated model to address the elimination of population disparities-a model that focuses on community as the critical unit of analysis and action to achieve success.
After decades of hand-wringing and well-intentioned efforts to improve inner cities, ghettos remain places of degrading poverty with few jobs, much crime, failing schools, and dilapidated housing. Stepping around fruitless arguments over whether or not ghettos are dysfunctional communities that exacerbate poverty, and beyond modest proposals to ameliorate their problems, one of America's leading experts on civil rights gives us a stunning but commonsensical solution: give residents the means to leave. Inner cities, writes Owen Fiss, are structures of subordination. The only way to end the poverty they transmit across generations is to help people move out of them--and into neighborhoods with higher employment rates and decent schools. Based on programs tried successfully in Chicago and elsewhere, Fiss's proposal is for a provocative national policy initiative that would give inner-city residents rent vouchers so they can move to better neighborhoods. This would end at last the informal segregation, by race and income, of our metropolitan regions. Given the government's role in creating and maintaining segregation, Fiss argues, justice demands no less than such sweeping federal action.
PPGIS is often presented and promoted as a more people-centered GIS compared to a traditional technocratic, expert-driven tool or methodology. Yet, the umbrella of PPGIS is quite broad. Within such a wide context, it may be helpful for practitioners and scholars of PPGIS to better understand exactly what PPGIS is. Or, in other words, having a clearer conception of what "public" and "participation" are, and how they relate to expected outcomes and outputs within a GIS context, is very important as the ideas and ideals of PPGIS continue to gain momentum. Understanding the variations in the types of "public," cross-referencing them against the distinctions in "participation" and linking the intersection of types of "public" and "participation" to expected GIS outcomes and outputs would greatly enrich the field. Moreover, such delineation would allow PPGIS practitioners and those considering PPGIS approaches to appreciate the linkages of certain types of participation processes, specific elements of the public, and particular types of expected project results. This paper offers a review of key literature relevant to public participation and presents potential integrated matrices to guide future PPGIS thought.
Diffusion and acceptance of geographic information systems (GIS) technology is not fully understood in public or private organizations, and even less is known about the role of GIS in the nonprofit sector. Using spatial analysis, this study examines the extent to which nine nonprofit organizations in Columbia, Missouri, meet the needs of their target populations. Findings revealed that nonprofit entities met from less than 1% to about 20% of client demand for services. Reactions to GIS analysis of program outputs was largely positive, with most of the nonprofits expressing an interest in using GIS technology to further communication and networking with other organizations. GIS is viewed by nonprofit administrators as a potentially useful tool in grant applications, strategic planning, program reporting, and advocacy activities, among others. Nonprofit administrators embrace GIS if they can use it to help with more immediate and practical concerns, such as improving client care and services.
Historically there have been very few attempts to build neighborhood-level indicators as a means of measuring neighborhood problems and designing policies to address them. However, recent developments in desktop geographic information systems, combined with the devolution of social programs to the local level, have created the technology and the need for such indicators. In the history of indicator use, five lessons for neighborhood indicators stand out. First, it is imperative that the numbers have a specific policy purpose. Second, geographic indicators play a special role, more important than that of subject area indicators, because policy is administered through geographic units and because neighborhoods and cities themselves affect the quality of people's lives. Third, one must from the outset distinguish clearly between indicators that measure neighborhood well-being and indicators that measure the well-being of neighborhood residents. Fourth, to be most useful, indicators must be unbundled, that is, not tied to an overall index. Finally, the movement to use geographic indicators, especially on the neighborhood scale, is in its infancy. Neighborhood-level indicators are just beginning to be used to make and evaluate policy, and to search for the causes of change in neighborhoods and in the lives of their residents.
If neighborhood residents are to influence urban development effectively at the most local level of the neighborhood, they need information. One information foundation to ensure effective participation is a user-friendly database whereby people can quickly access information on their own neighborhood. An increasing number of cities are developing neighborhood data systems, which collect and provide data at the neighborhood level for foundations to develop better funding strategies, for governments to develop better policy, and for community organizations to develop better practice. This paper reports on the models of 19 neighborhood data system projects, most of which are affiliated with the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership. The discussion is organized around the themes of how to start, housing the system, program structure, data access, data management, end-user training, staffing, and funding.
ABSTRACT Communication, whether oral, written, or graphic depends upon the ability of one individual to transfer information to another. In this essay we have tried to illustrate the fact that error in choroplethic mapping inhibits the transfer of information and that there are methods for improving this type of map as a communicative tool. We have done this by first defining overview, tabular, and boundary map uses. Second, techniques for the measurement of the error components of these three uses have been developed. Third, new reiterative and forcing manipulative techniques for choroplethic map data processing have been evolved. Lastly, the relationship between map accuracy and the information carrying capacity of a choroplethic map is set forth in hypothetical terms.
There are over 200 identified community based indicator projects in the United States. This paper reviews the factors that
contribute to the success and failure of community indicator projects and discusses the types of desired outcomes that communities
are trying to achieve. Both organizational and political factors contributing to the success of community indicators projects
are discussed. Appendices include information on many of the community indicator projects in the United States. Advice for
communities seeking to launch an indicator project are outlined.
Reducing health disparities is the purported mission of a huge network of professionals representing many specialties and organizations offering a variety of products and services. Given its elaborate infrastructure and specialized set of activities, we identity the network as the health disparities industry. In this article, we question the ethics of this industry. Specifically, we ask whether the public mission is trumped by questionable industry leadership, ethics, and quality assurances. Drawing on general principles of ethics and differentiating ethical concerns from ethical problems, we conclude that the collective behaviors within the industry may represent an ethical conundrum. The article concludes with a call for the cross-examination of the industry practices.
As a social construct, race has been and remains a powerful organizing feature of American social life. Racial categories both reflect and reinforce group differences in access to economic, political, and social resources. In the United States, racial ideologies operate politically, legally, and socially to limit African Americans' and other labeled racial groups' access to economic resources (Darden 1986; Farley et al. 1994; Hummer 1996; Krieger 1999; LaVeist 1992; Massey and Denton 1993; Williams 1996, 1999). For example, institutional or structural forms of systematic discrimination can limit educational, employment, and housing opportunities.
In this article, we suggest that efforts to reduce or eliminate well-established racial disparities in health must consider the complex relationships between race and socioeconomic status, including the political, social, and economic processes that create and maintain racial differences in access to social and economic resources.
African Americans in the United States have a higher than average risk of morbidity and mortality, despite declining mortality rates for many causes of death for the general population. This article examines race-based residential segregation as a fundamental cause of racial disparities, shaping differences in exposure to, and experiences of, diseases and risk factors. The spatial distribution of racial groups, specifically the residential segregation of African Americans in aging urban areas, contributes to disparities in health by influencing access to economic, social, and physical resources essential to health. Using the Detroit metropolitan area as a case study, this article looks at the influences of the distribution of African American and white residents on access to these resources and discusses the implications for urban policies to reduce racial disparities in health status.
The paper develops a deep criticism of the dominant approaches to the study of urban poverty in the United States. According to the author, these approaches simplify the notion of ghetto to the extreme, thus turning this concept into the equivalent to pocket of poverty and divesting the term of historical specificity, heuristic potential and psychological value. The author advocates for the recovery of an institutional approach to the notion of ghetto and for the end to the exoticism built around this concept; thus, it is argued that the ghetto is the complex result of the articulation of a series of institutional agents and factors along with the operation of dominant political and economic structures. These agents and structures transcend the ghetto and reverberate throughout society rather than being the result of local particularities or the cultural essence of its dwellers. The paper aims to lay the foundations for further research.
Neighborhood data systems: A best practice analysis
- R Stoeker
- Ross C.E.
- Lobao L.M.