Professor Claudia Coulton joins national book launch in webcast today

Case Western Reserve University’s Distinguished University Professor Claudia Coulton, from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, often shares with audiences how harnessing data benefits the greater public good. It’s now the topic of a new book, Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data (Urban Institute Press, 2014) that she has co-written with authors from the Urban Institute, a nonprofit organization that values providing data and other evidence to strengthen communities. An hour-long webcast on Wednesday, Nov. 12, at 2 p.m. will serve as the book’s national launch. Registration is required. Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data is available in hard copy or as an e-book—the latter version free and available to the public. Readers can download the ebook or order the hard copy at urban.org/StrengtheningCommunities. The book was made available with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Erika Poethig, an Urban Institute fellow and director of the urban policy initiatives, will moderate a discussion about how databases can drive community changes with the authors:

• Coulton, Distinguished University Professor and Lillian F. Harris professor of urban social research, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University;
• G. Thomas Kingsley, senior fellow, Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, Urban Institute; and
• Kathryn L. S. Pettit, senior research associate, Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, Urban Institute.

The roots for the book originated in the 1950s, when urban renewal efforts swept the country to save and rebuild deteriorating neighborhoods. “But urban renewal created a tremendous backlash. It did not take into account the needs of the people living in the neighborhoods,” said Coulton, who founded and co-directs the social work school’s Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development. She has become an expert on how neighborhoods impact the wellbeing of residents. “Since the 1950s, there has been a tension around the concept of neighborhoods in the city, and a struggle between the people in the neighborhoods and city hall about where to invest—downtown or neighborhoods,” Coulton said. Neighborhood residents often feel more attention is focused on downtown projects at the expense of their communities. Neighborhood leaders needed hardcore data, which was difficult to obtain from city halls, to rally support for their causes and have neighborhood problems addressed, she said. In the early 1990s, Coulton and Art Naparstek, former dean of the Mandel School, spearheaded the creation of Northeast Ohio Community and Neighborhood Data for Organizing (NEO CANDO), a massive database that allows neighborhood and community groups to access information needed to receive resources. By 1995, Coulton and researchers at Brown University, the Piton Foundation in Denver and the Urban Institute formed the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership to encourage others to build similar databases to help develop local policies and communities. That effort has since grown to 40 cities. “Many were patterned after NEO CANDO,” building on the Cleveland model and adding innovations that were driven by individual city needs, she said. The information has allowed communities to build support and funding for neighborhood initiatives with real numbers. And technology has allowed much of the information to be presented publicly. For example, Chicago posts daily online crime statistics with exact locations and crime descriptions. Harnessing this information, as well as who controls the databases, is discussed in the book by the authors and essayists who contributed to the book.