FEBRUARY 2006 - A recent report from Metro Chicago Information Center (MCIC) examines patterns of major food chains based on density, income, race, and place. The new report, Chain Reaction: Income, Race, and Access To Chicago's Major Player Grocers shed new light on Chicago's retail patterns by community area, and illuminated the complex and pressing question: why do communities of color have substantially fewer major player grocers on a per capita basis? Is it pure economics, or are location patterns influenced by race?

With a grant from The Partnership for New Communities, MCIC explored this question. Their aim was not to study all Chicago grocery stores or to perform a gap analysis community by community, but rather to develop a meaningful and roughly comparable grouping of grocers and other chains that would allow them to analyze and understand general investment patterns by income, race, and place.

MCIC also analyzed a wide-range of commercial location patterns, such as major fast food restaurants, major pharmacies, and liquor stores, all of which are frequent substitutes for food purchasing in low-investment communities. Additionally, MCIC did baseline analysis on other commercial indicators relating to health and wellness, services, food and drink, entertainment and culture, and general shopping.

For this analysis, MCIC used Chicago's 77 Community Areas to group and study patterns by store concentration, income, race, and place. Communities were assigned to a race category: White, Black, Hispanic, Asian or diverse. For example, a community where 50% or more of the population is Black was categorized as a "majority Black" community. Diverse communities were those where no single race comprises 50% or more of the population.

Among the key findings:

• Income, race, and place are strongly correlated in Chicago. Access to quality food and other consumer goods is a major obstacle for Chicago residents that live 1) in a low-income community, 2) in a minority community, and 3) on Chicago's South side.

• The highest-income communities have 2.6 times the rate of major player grocers than the lowest income communities. Poverty and store access are inversely related; as poverty concentration goes up, store concentration goes down.

• There are 11 Chicago communities with no major player pharmacy: 10 are on the South side and those 10 are all majority Black communities.

• Of the 11 communities that have no major player pharmacy, 7 have no major grocer either, and all 7 are majority Black communities.

• Majority Black communities have nearly twice the rate of liquor stores than communities of another majority race, and South side communities have roughly five more liquor stores on average than North side communities.

• Black communities have the highest fast food location rates: 13.7 major player fast food restaurants per 100,000 population. They have almost 4 additional fast food restaurants on average than the typical Chicago community.

• South side communities have a rate of 12.5 restaurants - 1.8 times the rate of major player fast food restaurants per 100,000 population than North side communities.

To download a copy of the report, please go to: http://info.mcfol.org/www/Datainfo/hottopics/communitydevelopment/pdf/CHAINREACTION.pdf.

For more information on MCIC, visit their website at: http://www.mcic.org/.

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Columbus Partner Launches DataSource

NOVEMBER 2005 - In October 2005, in addition to celebrating their fifth anniversary, Community Research Partners unveiled DataSource, a unique web-based resource that empowers users to create customized maps, tables and reports for a variety of geographic areas-zip codes, neighborhoods, and school districts-within Franklin County, Ohio. DataSource can be accessed through the Internet at http://www.datasourcecolumbus.org.

Users have the power to access, analyze, and map a wide range of area data drawn from a number of different sources including Franklin County Children Services, Columbus Public Schools, Franklin County Auditor's Office and others. The demographic, social services, education and property data in DataSource will allow the community to understand community trends, conditions and needs, plan programs, and effectively allocate community resources.

Community Research Partners is a nonprofit partnership of the City of Columbus, United Way of Central Ohio and the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy at OSU, and a recent addition to the NNIP partnership. CRP has worked over the past two years with the University of Pennsylvania Cartographic Modeling Lab, the Columbus Department of Technology, and many local funders and data providers to develop DataSource for Franklin County.

Thanks to DataSource, users can now:

• Map the answer to a question: Which zip codes have a housing vacancy rate of 20% or more?

• Chart one variable against another: What is the relationship between poverty and public assistance?

• View data trends over time: What has happened with proficiency test passage rates in CPS elementary attendance zones over the past five years?

• Analyze data by a variety of geographies: Display data on the percent of persons receiving Food Stamps for zip codes and for school districts.

• Use pre-programmed reports: View a complete data profile of a census tract.

• Share data across multiple service systems: How can agencies work better together to understand and address child welfare issues?

Community Research Partners has already developed a training CD to help people navigate the site, and is committed to continuing the training and outreach to Columbus organizations and residents.

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Four New Cities Join NNIP

SEPTEMBER 2005 - The National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) is very pleased to announce that four new organizations have formally accepted our invitation to join us as Partners. This brings the total number of local Partner-cities in NNIP up to 26.

To become an NNIP Partner, an institution must demonstrate that central to its mission is: (1) building and operating an advanced information system with integrated and recurrently updated information on neighborhood condition in its city; (2) facilitating the direct practical use of data by community and city leaders in community building and local policy making; and (3) giving emphasis to using information to build the capacities of institutions and residents in distressed urban neighborhoods. The candidate must either have already built such a system and be operating it in this manner, or have made demonstrable progress toward doing so. The new Partners are:

• The Metropolitan Chicago Information Center (MCIC), Chicago

• Community Research Partners (CRP), Columbus

• The Foundation for Community Empowerment (FCE), Dallas

• The Center for Community Building and Neighborhood Action (CBANA), Memphis

These organizations are all quite advanced and have been doing outstanding work in their local communities.

Founded in 1990, MCIC is an independent nonprofit (largely funded through work with local foundations, local governments and other area nonprofits) that has earned a reputation as the premier source of information for social policy decision-making in Chicago. MCIC has always followed the essence of the NNIP approach: "We are neutral third party experts committed to generating strategic information sets that improve local and regional economic and quality of life conditions in communities . . . From large institutions to grassroots organizations, MCIC is committed to building client capacity and effectiveness." And, while it has also worked on city and regional strategies, community development has always been an important part of its portfolio. That role expanded markedly in 2002 when MCIC was selected to be the data intermediary to serve the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's long-term, 16 neighborhood, New Communities Program (NCP) - already noted for its resident led "Quality of Life Planning" approach. MCIC is substantially expanding its holdings of neighborhood level data to do this work. MCIC is also a primary partner with the Northeast Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC) in the efforts to build a multi-source virtual data warehouse for the Chicago region (one of those featured in the June Brookings meetings on that topic). Their web site is a http://www.mcic.org/.

Community Research Partners is a non-profit organization established in 2000 by United Way of Central Ohio, the City of Columbus and the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy at the Ohio State University. Its mission is to support and advance human services and community development policy and practice through measurement, evaluation and research, as a means to create positive community change. Consistent with NNIP principles, its work includes community data collection and analysis; needs assessments, asset inventories and environmental scans; and training, technical assistance and facilitation. CRP has developed Franklin County DataSource, a web-based community statistical system with the development help of the Cartographic Modeling Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. Topically, CRP has dealt with a variety of issues facing its community. They recently prepared a report on mortgage lending for the Urban League, with a focus on racial and neighborhood patterns. Last year, they coordinated the Ohio Working Poor Families Project, with stakeholders to collect and use indicator data to assess Ohio's efforts to assist working poor families to become economically self-sufficient. They also published a comprehensive study on student mobility focusing in on one elementary school, combining quantitative information with interviews of parents, and input from local community groups. Their general information web site is at www.communityresearchpartners.org and the beta of DataSource is at http://gis.columbus.gov/crp/default.asp.

The Foundation for Community Empowerment (FCE), founded in 1995 by J. McDonald "Don" Williams, is a catalyst for the revitalization of low-income neighborhoods in Dallas through the empowerment of individuals, community- and faith-based organizations and entire communities. FCE seeks to build bridges of opportunity, and to foster relationships where investments of money, time, people, and resources should be made. FCE's asset-based programmatic work is focused in three areas: community development, education initiatives, and social capital development.

FCE is launching a new research Institute this fall devoted to conducting non-partisan outcomes research and public policy evaluation related to comprehensive community revitalization of low-income urban areas. The Institute will house the two indicators projects led by FCE, the "Dallas Indicators Initiative" and "Analyze Dallas." The Dallas Indicators Initiative is a web-based tool designed to consistently measure, monitor and report on key "indicators" for the health and well being of the Dallas metropolitan statistical area. Analyze Dallas is a census tract/zip code level neighborhood indicators web-based tool to be used by those working to improve low-income neighborhoods in Dallas. Analyze Dallas is designed to make information (on crime, vital statistics, education and health, etc) widely available, understandable and useful to non-statisticians and lay-people in the community, and to help community-based organizations strategically incorporate information into their existing efforts to rebuild neighborhoods. Their accomplishments are detailed on their web sites: http://www.fcedallas.org/ and http://analyzedallas.org.

A coalition of civic leadership groups and universities in Memphis began trying to develop a data intermediary based on the NNIP model several years ago. CBANA, at the University of Memphis, is now playing the central role, working with the broad-based Shared Urban Data System - SUDS - developed in collaboration with the University's Center for Community Criminology Research. CBANA works directly with the public sector, nonprofit collaboratives and community-based citizen groups, linking methodologies such as neighborhood inventories and analysis of administrative data with strategic interventions and policy change. Work at the neighborhood level has included Asset Mapping and "Comprehensive Community Initiatives" (collaborative work with residents and other stakeholders addressing multiple neighborhood issues). CBANA is also one of the few organizations that won an award from the Brookings Urban Markets Initiative to conduct a pr. Their project, called "Neighborhood Markets for Affordable Housing," entails adding more parcel level information to their database, using it to model market conditions in two neighborhoods, and then using the analytic work for strategic planning in those neighborhoods. In addition, CBANA has taken the lead in developing a process called "Community Based Code Enforcement," bringing together neighborhood groups and city agencies; the central activity is "neighborhood-level monitoring and peer persuasion." CBANA's web-site is in construction, but their work, along with SUDS, is documented at http://www.suds.memphis.edu.

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Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance Releases Vital Signs 3

MAY 2005 - The Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (BNIA) released its Vital Signs 3 report in late October of 2004, exploring trends in Baltimore neighborhoods from 2000 to 2003. BNIA launched the Vital Signs initiative in November of 2002, innovatively connecting the monitoring of local conditions with community involvement and action. The annual report provides a common yardstick by which all stakeholders can know the changing conditions of Baltimore neighborhoods and quality of life over time and assess the impact their actions, strategies, and initiatives have on those conditions. In addition, the Vital Signs are used as catalysts for making decisions strategically and cooperatively for long-term neighborhood improvement.

In addition to tracking and reporting the Vital Signs trends annually, the Alliance works to ensure that everyone who lives, works, plays, and invests in Baltimore has access to, a clear understanding of, and ability to use the Vital Signs. BNIA provides training to access, utilize, and understand what the indicators are, how to track progress in certain areas, what indicators to choose and why, how to understand impact of strategies over time, and more.

Vital Signs 3 covers more than 40 Vital Signs organized into 7 topic areas: Housing and Community Development, Children and Family Health, Safety and Well-being, Workforce and Economic Development, Sanitation, Urban Environment and Transit, Education and Youth, and Neighborhood Action and Sense of Community.

The report outlines the goals and purpose of Vital Signs in Baltimore, includes tables with Vital Signs for each topic area, as well as thorough explanations of each Vital Sign and the trends over time. Vital Signs are presented by Community Statistical Area (CSA) and census tract. Some of the positive trends in Vital Signs 3 include:

• Foreclosures are down 21 percent since 2001

• Violent crime decreased 24.3 percent between 2000 and the end of 2003

• Teen birth rate decreased by 18.2 percent between 2000 and 2003

• Rate of people with vaccine preventable diseases (like Hepatitis A and B, flu, etc.) decreased by almost 37 percent

• Over 2,500 new businesses were started in Baltimore City since 2000.

To download the report or for training on use of the Vital Signs, please go to http://www.bnia.org/indicators/index.html. BNIA also provides a Statistical Interactive Mapping system for the CSA and census tract levels through their website at http://www.bnia.org/mapping/index.html.

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Nashville Joins NNIP as 22nd Member

JANUARY 2005 - The National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) is proud to announce that the Neighborhoods Resource Center (NRC) of Nashville, Tennessee has accepted our invitation to become the 22nd partner.

The Neighborhoods Resource Center's mission is to assist residents in the formation and development of on-going neighborhood organizations that take action to improve the quality of life in their community. The NRC was formed to offer organizing assistance to grassroots neighborhood associations in building membership, identifying common goals, and developing strategies to move community groups ahead.

The NRC currently assists residents by providing information, leadership training, consulting and support services, and by forming collaborative relationships with, and providing support to institutions that serve neighborhoods. The services at the NRC have evolved to include a state-of-the-art Geographic Information System, capacity building workshops, jobs-based economic development, neighborhood technology training and deployment, as well as additional intensive neighborhood organizing efforts.

The NRC offers intensive assistance to approximately twelve Nashville neighborhoods, while serving as a consultant to many more. Below are two examples of how NRC successfully helped residents use information to improve their neighborhoods.

• NRC assisted United Way in identifying areas that in need of Family Resource Center, based on census data and neighborhood assets. NRC's study revealed that the Edgehill neighborhood was the area of highest need without access to a Family Resource Center. NRC helped the Organized Neighbors of Edgehill (ONE) in applying to United Way to become that FRC. ONE was selected, and the FRC began in 2004.

• The Cleveland Park Neighborhood Association had trouble getting police officers to take their complaints seriously. The group used NRC crime data to compare reported crime to the residents' perception of crime - which matched almost perfectly. By sharing this information with police officers from the area, the group was able to show that they knew the problems of their area. They began a better relationship with Metro Police and "reclaimed" the park itself

To become an NNIP Partner, an institution must demonstrate that central to its mission is: (1) building and operating an advanced information system with integrated and recurrently updated information on neighborhood conditions in its city; (2) facilitating the direct practical use of data by community and city leaders in community building and local policy making; and (3) giving emphasis to using information to build the capacities of institutions and residents in distressed urban neighborhoods. The candidate must either have already built such a system and be operating it in this manner, or have made demonstrable progress toward doing so.

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For additional information, e-mail NNIP at nnip@ui.urban.org.