In 1998, Dan McCormick, a program officer at Richmond Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), had an "ah-ha!" moment; he had just read an article on GIS, and saw what it might do for community development.  Knowing little about GIS himself, but excited by its promise, he brought together a group of stakeholders, including community development corporations (CDCs), Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), and the City of Richmond to explore the possibility of bringing GIS to Richmond's community development industry. 

The group not only explored, but went on to create the Richmond Neighborhood Indicators Project (RNIP), which collects data on the health of Richmond's neighborhoods, and allows users to map them in customized way.  RNIP has flourished thanks to a collaborative spirit among the CDCs, the willingness of the City of Richmond to share data, a high-level of expertise in GIS and neighborhood indicators at VCU, and a strong financial and institutional commitment from Richmond LISC, and it is now a highly valued asset to Greater Richmond's community development industry.

Laying a Strong Foundation

"Your maps are only as good as your data," is a common mantra at RNIP.  It's not surprising then, that RNIP has focused so much energy on identifying indicators that provide a broad-based picture of neighborhood health.  The RNIP team wanted to develop indicators that would be useful to all the partners in the project, rather than focusing them narrowly on a particular issue.  And they succeeded; GIS maps of RNIP indicators now help CDCs plan and market their work, city officials evaluate the strength of current programs, and Richmond LISC inform public policy decisions and increase understanding of community development.

The original list of indicators used in RNIP was developed by an advisory committee of neighborhood-based CDCs, city staff, Richmond LISC, and VCU personnel.  While the project currently tracks over 100 specific pieces of data on economic and social well-being in neighborhoods, VCU staff also condensed the initial list using factor analysis down to 14 key indicators to be used as a standard for gauging neighborhood health.  These 14 are viewed as a starting point, and will be modified over time.  More research is needed to determine which indicators are the most sensitive measures of neighborhood change, which ones are most closely tied to change factors, and which ones best reflect the objectives of neighborhood improvement programs.  Dr. Robert Rugg, one of the drivers of RNIP at VCU explains, "Ultimately, we want to be able to measure factors that cause change.  We want to be able to predict: if you do this kind of improvement in a particular neighborhood, here's how it is likely to impact the neighborhood's health."

In the meantime, the indicators are already being used. In addition to providing CDCs access to the GIS system in her office for their own work, Greta Harris, senior program director at Richmond LISC, develops GIS maps to help current and potential funders understand how Richmond LISC targets its investments.  Harris explains, "many of our donors are not familiar with the geography of the neighborhoods where we work.  They just can't picture where their money is going.  Once they see our map which highlights targeted neighborhoods, total dollar investments, and projects developed, it's like a light bulb clicks on.  It's so important for us to communicate the focused nature of our efforts, and GIS enables us to do that." (See sidebars for other ways RNIP is used.)

Partnership is Critical

Each member of RNIP brings a unique set of experiences, skills, and resources to the project that has been vital to its success.  According to McCormick, "Forming an advisory committee of stakeholders who recognize the importance of indicators and GIS to our community development efforts has been key to the success of this project.  We've had a lot of technical challenges to deal with, but without buy-in and commitment from the city, neighborhoods, and CDC practitioners, they would have been non-issues, because we never would have gotten off the ground."

CDCs. CDC staff, defined as the "priority end-users" for RNIP, strongly guided both the development of the indicators and the design of the GIS system to map them.  Prior to RNIP, neighborhood boundaries were only generally defined by the city, and information was often unavailable on a neighborhood-specific basis.  As part of RNIP, CDCs and community groups helped develop neighborhood boundaries and target areas for the GIS system.  Stephanie Gist of the Oregon Hill Home Improvement Council (OHHIC) explains: "Our neighborhood comprises a six-by-three block area.  Before the GIS system was developed, we had census data, police, city assessor, and community development information, but none of these resources could give us any information on our specific neighborhood.  With a 2.5 person staff, it was impossible for our organization to compile this information alone."

Local Government.  As the source of some of the richest available data for the mapping and indicators project, the commitment of the City of Richmond has been vital to its success.  The initial willingness of the city to share data, its current effort to develop compliant data management systems, and its recent shift on privacy restrictions (RNIP data was initially limited to block-level aggregations), is indicative of the collaborative nature of the community development industry in Richmond.  According to Connie Bawcum, deputy city manager, "We recognized that developing the neighborhood indicators was going to be highly useful to the city.  As we went along and saw the potential for our work, we grew more committed.  Recently, we have made a 180-degree turn on confidentiality.  There was a fear of letting data become public, but we have gotten past that.  Aren't we better off just putting all of this out there?  People will help us by correcting errors, fighting crimes, and making changes that help the city."  The city now plans to make its comprehensive database available to the public via the Internet and has developed a web-based mapping program.

Building on the work in the City of Richmond, the RNIP team is now developing relationships with officials from two neighboring counties so they can include county administrative data in RNIP.  The team hopes to develop a unique region-wide mapping program to support the efforts of CDCs working in all three jurisdictions and provide a tool to help officials measure the health of targeted areas that fall on both sides of city/county borders.

LISC and VCU. As a trusted partner to the local community development industry, Richmond LISC has been able to facilitate and maintain the partnership that makes RNIP possible. Richmond LISC has also taken on the responsibility of securing funding for RNIP, dedicating staff time to oversee the project, and creating a GIS center in its office where nonprofits can access the system to create maps.  Critical to the success of RNIP has been the technical expertise and ongoing staffing provided by the VCU's Department of Urban Studies and Planning, through a contract with Richmond LISC.  Students in the department's graduate program provide back-end support preparing the data to go into the system and customer support helping CDC staff create and analyze maps.

Dedication

Close to $100,000 has been invested in RNIP to date, including initial seed capital provided by LISC and a grant from the Community Foundation of Richmond.  This is a small amount compared to that invested in other indicator and GIS projects across the nation; the progress made on RNIP is a reflection of the commitment and effort of all partners involved, as much as the amount of resources dedicated to it.

Harris explains why Richmond LISC, as well as other project partners, continually dedicate human and financial resources to RNIP.  "To be honest, at the outset we had no idea what this project would entail, financially or in terms of staff time.  But we always find a way to keep it going and make it better, because it is exactly what our industry needs.  We all want to know that the resources invested are realizing our hopes for the region's neighborhoods.  RNIP allows everyone-private investors, local government, LISC and CDCs-to see the benefits community development brings, not just to targeted neighborhoods, but to the region overall."

In 1998 a University of Minnesota student created an early warning system to identify properties at risk of being abandoned.  The project caught the attention of a wide range of community development stakeholders: neighborhood associations, the City of Minneapolis, and the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (a program that distributes tax increment financing funds to Minneapolis's low-income neighborhoods), but it was the neighborhood associations who made the first push to turn it into something larger.  Excited by the prospect of using data to identify at-risk properties, and believing strongly in the potential of GIS to advance their work more broadly, agroup of six neighborhood associations  each invested about $6,000 to begin building a GIS collaborative.

Less than three years later, Minneapolis Neighborhood Information Systems (MNIS) is going strong.  Not only are the neighborhood associations that founded it are actively using GIS in their work, the collaborative has also received a large, multi-year grant from the Department of Commerce, hired a staff person to maintain GIS applications through the University of Minnesota, and gained access to administrative data by engaging the city as a partner.

Success Factors

Community connection. Neighborhood organizations were strong proponents of GIS, hungry for access to more data, and committed to improving their abilities to use GIS in their work. Barb Jeanetta of the Twin Cities LISC office attributes this enthusiasm for data to NPCR's style of working with communities. "Because of the way NPCR works, neighborhoods identify their own research projects. As groups were working with researchers, they got interested in data and mapping.  I think that's why it is so pragmatic and grassroots-GIS has been generated out of what the neighborhoods were already working on."

Supported by the MNIS program staff, neighborhood groups have been innovative and ambitious in their use of GIS.  They have created asset maps to attract new residents, investment maps for analyzing how residential properties are affected by proximity to commercial and industrial land use, a lead paint risk assessment, and an evaluation of a targeted home improvement loan program.

University as a partner. Support from the University of Minnesota is extremely strong and consistent with the values of neighborhood organizations.  NPCR sees its goal as supporting and building from the work already happening in neighborhoods.  Kris Nelson, program director of NPCR said, "The neighborhoods know what kind of research they are looking for. We leave it to them to guide the university, rather than the other direction."  Nelson, NPCR and CURA have demonstrated a commitment over time to let the community lead and to support with fundraising, technical assistance, and research. 

MNIS was able to hire a full-time program coordinator in October 2000.  The program coordinator is supported by the university and based in the community, building upon neighborhood associations' enthusiasm and providing technical support.  The coordinator assists groups in organizing their own data, helps them determine hardware and software needs, and provides one-on-one support to get them up and running.  Beyond individual support, the coordinator runs monthly trainings where groups share projects they are working on followed by specific skill-building workshops (e.g. how to make maps with land use data). These trainings provide a learning environment where groups are encouraged by each other's successes.

Funding secured.  After two unsuccessful attempts, MNIS received a Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) grant from the US Department of Commerce in Fall 2001.  The grant for $500,000 over three years is shared between the city and the community/university partnership.  Along with providing the resources to further develop and support community GIS, this grant has affected MNIS in other ways. For example, it spurred the city to increase its commitment to facilitating neighborhood access to data.

City cooperation. Community enthusiasm for data and the receipt of the TOP grant helped the city make a commitment to creating a neighborhood-friendly data platform.  At the outset of MNIS, the City of Minneapolis's administrative data was extremely difficult to access.  It was in multiple formats, departments were not sharing information with each other, and there was little incentive to share data with the public.  MNIS has helped make data cleaning and sharing a public issue, and the City of Minneapolis has invested significant resources in converting data and creating a central data file that will be made available on the Internet.

The roots of the success of MNIS can be a model for other GIS collaboratives: active participation and collaboration of all parties, and the leadership of the neighborhood organizations.

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